I’m personally against using turbo in general, I think it’s cheating. For Ys VI, the primary use of turbo is with Ericcil’s special attack, which requires you to mash the attack button for it to come out. For the English Steam version, the route uses Brillante rather than Ericcil, so there are fewer places where turbo helps, off the top of my head: underwater movement before Orjugan, Kishgal movement, Kishgal dashjump platform skip, Ark of Napishtim fight. For the Japanese version, the route uses mostly Ericcil, so there are more places where it saves time. Off the top of my head: Lanaluna boss fight, Romun fleet escape, plant mid-boss thing fight, Kishgal mid-boss fights (+ the ones I mentioned for Steam route). Basically the biggest time save comes in the Japanese version from being able to deal damage to bosses much more quickly and efficiently. Then there’s 1 skip that becomes easier which if missed costs a lot of time (20+ seconds I think), and movement in a few points which is pretty minor. Have to be honest on one thing though: these are just my assumptions, I’ve never tried using turbo. I’m 100% certain it helps against bosses, but it may not actually help for the Kishgal platform skip and movement in a few places (I haven’t tested), I just think it does because I think Ravi uses it in his run.

Edit: I just had a thought: If it were possible to put turbo in the left mouse click, dashjumping all throughout the run would probably become a lot easier and may even be faster. You’d need normal clicking for when you’re not dashjumping, though.

I come from a background with very strict ruling and separation of every little variation, so I guess I’m fine with the current setup. Ravi also said he’d have liked them separated back when I first beat him using the Steam version. I’d rather turbo not be allowed for the Japanese version either, but I don’t really want Ravi’s run to be invalidated… hopefully he’ll improve it without using turbo next time.

He has told me that he’s going through hard times at the moment, and has lost interest in speedrunning this game because of the Steam’s version superiority. Maybe he’ll come back when he’s ready now that they’ve been separated…

Edit: Message to Ravi: 日本語でもコメントしていいと思います。私が訳せます。

News, people: I’ve recently found out that the best way to skip dialogue is not only holding down Jump, but mashing Attack at the same time. I’ve done a few speedruns with this new knowledge, and almost injured my arm. The mouse-clicking mashing was retarded enough, but cutscene mashing brings the speedrun to a whole new level. I am now in favor of using turbo for the Attack button. I probably won’t bother speedrunning the game again if it won’t be allowed. On that note, does anybody know what program I should use or whatever in order to set a button (say, R2 on my gamepad) to turbo Attack?

Little more in-depth: by manually mashing, I’ve been able to make the intro cutscene 2 seconds faster (from ≈ 2′14″90 to ≈ 2′12″90). I haven’t actually done any other precise tests like that, so there is the small chance that it only helps for the intro (lol I wish). It should probably be confirmed first (I just finished a WR run with mashing cutscenes, can probably do rough comparisons with it soon), but if it’s confirmed that mashing through dialogues speeds them all up, then yeah, fuck that. Turbo should be allowed.

Try speedrunning this game, then say that again. Before, you could rest your arm during cutscenes, now, the run is 1h30′ of non-stopping mashing. I don’t want to go to the hospital for playing a game. I feel physically in pain speedrunning this game now. My WR run was affected by this and I dropped inputs because of the pain. Why should anybody be forced to go through that?

I could easily do multiple runs in a row before, now, after one run, I have to stop playing. There’s no reason to allow this. It’s just poisonous to the community at this point.

Edit: It might be dialogue-dependent. Really hard to tell… needs proper testing. Boring.

Are you seriously saying to not do a time saving trick in a speedrun?

My best segments are quite optimized. A sub 1′20″ would be very optimal given the current strats. I’ve been thinking maybe not getting the Lucky Silver Coin could be faster since it takes so long to get it, but it’d make the run harder, is all up to RNG anyway, and is hard to test.

lol I was playing devil’s advocate why did you give up so quickly.

For the Steam version, I kinda thought cancel + mash would be common knowledge? Earlier Japanese PC versions didn't have the "hold cancel to speed up text feature", just double-tapping confirm (like how it is with Eternal and Complete, if you guys are familiar with that).

Though I will say when I watched Ravi's run, it seemed as if he was able to go through most text a tiny bit faster than me, though I'm not sure how. I guess via turbo...?

As for whether it should be allowed, personally I say no for the same reason I opted to keep the cutscenes in my run: doing otherwise tampers with the game, essentially (unlike the Steam version, there is no option in the config to disable them - apparently, you have to mess with an .ini file). That said, if the community is in favor of it, I don't care all that much either way, so long as the runners are transparent about it. Not like my times for this game will be much of a leaderboard threat at this point. =p

“For the Steam version, I kinda thought cancel + mash would be common knowledge?” It’s something Ys speedrunners are used to doing, but Matty has told me that he didn’t know it was faster for Ark (even though he did it out of habit). Also, I’m not an Ys speedrunner… I’m a lone Ark runner with nobody to share tech with. Edit: Oh and do you know why the mashing makes the text faster? I can easily gain a second in the intro, but when I compared my WR to my previous one I didn’t gain anything on 2 other cutscenes that are 2+ minutes.

I’m 99.99% certain Ravi used turbo, yes (should be easy to tell if we look at his item-get menus, I never did).

I didn’t know that about cutscenes for the Japanese version. Sounds like an iffy subject… if it’s too closely relatable to hacking the ROM, then it should be banned, but I have no idea how it actually works.

So did your run have constant mashing? (Dialogues, movement.) I don’t remember whether you used the mouse as much as I do (pretty much the whole game except battles), but if so, how did you cope with the pain of mashing for 2 straight hours?

Edit: Also why haven’t you submitted your run, Korzic?

Well, the only thing I can think of why it would be faster is more chances to advance the dialogue as soon as possible. I never bothered testing, but I always assumed if it made a difference at all, it'd only be a tiny bit due to that.

The .ini thing I don't remember what needed to be done, but I think it was as simple as changing a 0 to a 1 somewhere in the file. Nothing fancy is required to disable them, it's just the principle of the matter.

Yeah, my run had constant confirm-mashing, since I played the game strictly as-is. I don't remember how much of a drain it was on me physically, but it was definitely starting to wear on me mentally. I spent a couple nights getting that run recorded. I haven't submitted partially out of laziness, and partially because I want to improve it at some point, hopefully with a Kishgal early entry included. But even if that series of clips can't be done consistently (I sure can't), I don't expect a run from me using it would hold up very well compared to other players. There's just an overall skill gap there, and it's not one I'm particularly eager to close.

“hopefully with a Kishgal early entry included”

That would be amazing to see! I wonder if that route would be faster than the Steam version… how much of the game does it skip? I guess you can’t obtain the Lucky Silver Coin with it?

It only skips the Romun Fleet and obtaining the medallion afterwards, so 10-15 minutes is my estimate. I think an optimized Steam run would probably still be faster than an optimized Japanese run using the skip. Not sure by how much, though.

Just Finished my first run ever, Personally against turbo but won't give shit to people if they use it.

ALAKTORN I have a question for you, what's the strat for the wyvern Corridor jump at the end? It's by far the most time consuming part of my run and I was wondering if there's a consistent way of doing it? right now I pretty much just do a dash jump and spam Jump+Attack while in the air hoping I do a spin.

PS: thanks for your run really helped me learn this speedrun :D

@Korzic: and be faster than the Steam version. Ravi has an unsubmitted 1′38″ and his goal was a 1′35″ IIRC and I play much better than him. Edit: I forgot if you skip the Romun Fleet that means you’re skipping the Starlight Medal too, though. Which either means you’ll make the endgame extremely hard or a lot slower to grind more. Edit again: Ah, I think you meant you don’t skip all the cutscenes to start the Romun Fleet… only the last one? Then it doesn’t save that much… (and you actually do get the Lucky Silver Coin). If your estimate is right it’s still faster than the Steam version, though.

@Kiniamaro: Awesome to see more runners! What are you running it on? I saw you post the Vita maps. On PC, what I do is use the keyboard (dashjumps are super hard on pad) and this series of inputs: Up, Attack means press right after), mash Attack while holding Up. You can test out doing it anywhere in the game, you kinda have to press Attack with a quick timing after the dashjump but it’s not actually that quick, you could even manually time it if you wanted but I prefer mashing. I’m planning on eventually doing a commentary over my WR to explain all of the strategies and such, but first I need to hit a good WR (maybe sub 1:20′…).

Oh yeah and to stay on topic, seeing as the consensus is to ban turbo I’ll try more speedruns without it and see how it goes. If you actually have the time + will to grind it out you may be able to get used to the pain (happens for everyone with snaking in Mario Kart DS), but I don’t think I’ll be able to reach that point…

@ALAKTORN: I can't remember for certain, but I think a run using the skip would diverge right after the encounter with Ernst in the sanctum. I think you're right that the Lucky Silver Coin can still be obtained, but it'd be a detour, as no further visits to Rimorge are necessary at that point, and so the Ruins would be exited on the Quatera side. Though yes, the missed EXP is also a factor, but I don't think it'd waste more than a couple minutes. And also the 2nd round of optional bosses for the Emelas Crown + other items isn't available, but that ideally should be omitted anyway (which I saw your current run didn't get, I think).