Oh yeah Zwanzig did help by showing Overdrive Ursula was at least as good as berserk without being super risky. That is important, too, but hardly worth making another video over I think

Hey, I'm pretty sure the video tutorial I have posted in Guides is still largely good. Maybe the only thing it's missing is the Trickmaster strategy where you kill him on the ground without using the table. I haven't reviewed it in quire some time. If there's more that needs updating I can review it and make another, this game is hard to make notes for though, and the SDA knowledge base notes are very outdated for sure

I would prefer if a full reset was done in the interest of fairness and for RNG reasons. When the game file is selected appears to affect the action RNG, and that's one reason why blizzard is hard to manipulate on console.

magu1230 - SSS Rank (47Character) Run in 3:09:10

Thanks! The nicovideo run is at like 2x speed and heavily overwhelmed by a japanese text crawl but it's also the only example of a Fergus centered route that I know of.

If you know of any notable runs in the Japanese RTA community, please post them here so we can learn from them:

Links to Useful Japanese RTA Runs:

magu1230 - 1:51:48

If a moderator could submit magu's run to the leaderboard I would appreciate it.

Ryuta - 1:57:51

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

wire - 2:29:06 (Marathon run)

Leaving a list of the effects of the extra cards here for reference, as how game breaking an effect is often distinguishes whether it should define a new category:

Saix - Combo Boost - Boosts power with every strike of an attack card(Linear multiplier increase, 2x at 9 hits) resets when a card is broken. Passively resists fire, ice, lightning, and sleights - 20A - 80CP

Xemnas - Quick Barrier - When receiving consecutive attacks, guards beyond the second strike. Passively resists fire, ice lighning, sleights - 3R - 65 CP

Luxord - Omni Break - Breaks Enemy card no matter what the values are. Resist FILS - 15U - 99CP

Xaldin - Aero Guard - Activates "Aero", inflicting damage to enemies that touch it. Resist FILS - 3H - 65CP

Demyx - Water Charge - "Dramatically" (Multiplier unclear) boosts the power of water type attacks. Resist RILS. - 2R - 80CP

Xigbar - Shot Charge - Powers up projectile attacks. Resists FILS - 2R - 80CP

Roxas - Double Strike - Doubles you attack card damage - 20A - 99CP

Attack cards are pretty irrelevant as a single copy and there are already more efficient was to farm good attack cards in moogle rooms so I'm leaving them out for now lol.

Regarding whether the category needs to be split as NG+ I would as an initial impression argue not to do that. None of these enemy cards can offer a significant route changing EARLY advantage by definition because the Key to Rewards doesn't show up until the second world set. The conditions to achieve "NG+" are not difficult by any standard and in fact are likely to be naturally present on any runner's save file (except for the Days movie only I'm that sadistic).

Probably most compelling to me though, is that the bonuses seem fair in comparison to the amount of effort you put into them. Demyx and Xigbar offer to replace your rhapsodies, but you're farming KtR encounters in Neverland halfway into the game over Traverse Town encounters at the very beginning. Saix and Roxas each offer a new spin on attack card buffing, but Saix rewards timing and accuracy, while berserk rewards timing and defense. Roxas offers a safer option at the cost of mare time in map cards sunk into the door, and less overall damage in its 20 attacks. Luxord is essentially "free" route wise because Warp is absolutely worth picking up but Omni Break reads as a shittier Attack Bracer in just about every possible way, this stuff wouldn't be prioritized if you could use it on magic because in CoM speedrunning your one enemy card slot needs to give you more damage in some direct or indirect way (Sleight Lock for example puts more cards in your deck while stuff like this only helps you if you're bad)

Really the point is folding it into any% is not only natural, it's incredibly low impact and creates decisions instead of removing them by allowing more concrete viable options for a run which is skewed toward having a different kind of deck but ends up going for or finding naturally an errant key to rewards. There's tension involved with grabbing stuff in the second world set because you want to have your deck cleaned up by then but the more benefits you tack onto it the more complex the decision becomes. Really the only reason I see to distinguish a NG+ effect that you can't get rid of at startup screen ("Do you want to start this game based off a previous save file etc etc") is if the effect is difficult to get, significantly changes the way the entire run is played from the early game on, or has an incredibly dominant effect at any point of the game. I don't see any of this being the case and while I think "no special chests" can be a category, I don't see why we should shut them out of what is considered "any%"