Tomba! 2 is a fun little action-adventure game for the PlayStation 1, and is the sequel to the original Tomba! (also known as Tombi in other regions.) The game offers many side quests, upgrades, and is fully voice acted. You don't really see much of that in an any% run, so I felt I should point that out. You do, however, see a lot of cutscenes. Mostly cutscenes, really.
As far as I know, there are no sequence breaks in this game. Due to the way you progress in the story, even if I were to find a way to skip a portion of the game, I would in all likelihood have to go back and do it anyway. The goal of the game is to defeat the Last Evil Pig. To get to the Last Evil Pig, you have to beat all the elemental Evil Pigs. To beat them, you need to get their corresponding pig bag. To get that you need to... you see where I'm going with this? Sequence break proof. However, there is one useful glitch to help speed up the game, which is a movement technique I call boost-jumping. Boost-jumping is performed by attacking and then jumping. Doing so, with the right timing, will increase your forward momentum slightly. If done repeatedly, your momentum will increase more and more, although there really isn't a good place in the game to get a lot of speed. It's not a huge game changer, but I pretty much always go for a boost whenever I can. Now then, onto the run itself.
Fisherman Village:
Only thing I need to explain here is that it's faster to just give the bucket to Kainen rather than talk to him. Also, the Magic Wing I get near Win's Windmill takes not time to get, due to there being an Event Pop-up being on screen, which prevents me going through screen transitions. All the other wings I get throughout the run are right in the way, so this is really the only one I need to point out. Pretty decent, except for grabbing the pig early on, but whatever. Lastly, I grab the Fast Pants because they make me go fast.
Large Underground Mine:
You need to remove all the Cappers from the pipes in order to proceed, so I make sure to do that. I talk to the save point outside the Trolley so I can teleport there later. After I clear the Cappers from the right side, I death warp to get back to the beginning and grab the Cappers there, as it is faster than walking. The first part of the mine went very well.
The next part of the mine starts out a little sloppy. I lose a little bit of time at the start because I forgot to turn analog on. That's a pretty good feeling. After that is the sand. The sand is completely random, and I also wasted a cycle. What I try to do here is rather than dumping the sand the normal way and getting a cutscene, I manually dump the sand (which is done automatically if you let go of the wheel-barrow) out at the side of the hole. Unfortunately, I wiffed the first pile of sand, and had to go get some more. During the 3D sections of the game, you can save a little bit of time by talking to npcs at certain spots. Whenever Tomba starts a conversation, there is a default position he needs to be in before the scene can start. If you start the scene from somewhere else, Tomba will slowly walk to the default position, so it is much more optimal to start talking as close to this position as possible. On the subject of default positions, after I get the hammer, I hit the plunger to the bomb room on the right side instead of the left for the same reason. Once you save Gran, it's faster to run back to town than use a wing.
Kujara Ranch:
Some sloppy movement here and there, but no real mistakes. Once you get the Big Sack, you can jump through the pole, as the game doesn't handle changing planes very well. Once I get the Fire Hammer, I can damage boost through the big ice pigs to save a little time. Normally once you melt the pig, it will turn into a little ice pig, who will be flashing blue and is invincible. If you take damage however, you can just push him out of the way. You have to be quick though, as they can hit you on the ladder if you aren't fast enough. There really isn't much to talk about in the second part of Kujara Ranch, other than you will freeze if you aren't wearing the Squirrel Suit.
Donglin Forest:
You need to kill all the orange ghosts to proceed. I like to extinguish them before I get the blue key, as it makes jumping on them a little easier. If you kill the guardian at the same time you catch a snow firefly, a glitch will happen where you will sink through the ground. It doesn't really do anything, but I thought I should mention it. In the Laughing/Crying Forest, it is possible to skip the cutscene of the grapple guy if you are invisible. However, your just kinda stuck there if you do that, and the setup required to fix that takes too long, so I just watch the cutscene. Getting the Turbo Pants is faster than skipping them, and after I do I teleport to the Deep Forest to avoid having to get another crying fruit. Ignore the fact that I haven't been to the Deep Forest yet, I don't know why I can teleport there either. All the see-saws have to be facing downward to lower the gate to proceed.
Circus Town:
Cutscenes. The clown pig is RNG. More cutscenes. Yes, that is as fast as the Flying Peyon goes. No, you cannot skip it.
Water Temple/Ice Pig
The first bit is nerve wracking as there is a large threat of drowning. I use the Grapple during my jumps because to stops me in the air so I can make them with more precision. After I get the Crystal, I drown on purpose to take me back to the beginning of the stage. The Swimming Pig Suit is functionally identical to the normal Pig Suit, except it can swim.
Now, Ice Pig. The first of the Evil Pigs, and one of the more troublesome. The fights are complicated as far as what the Pigs do. Their attacks/actions are all manipulatable, and depend on what you do, whether you hit them, throw them into a bag, miss a throw, or do nothing. However, WHERE they do these attacks is random. It is also worth noting that the Pig Bag starts rotating as soon as the cutscene starts, you can see it if you look closely. All of the Pigs start out the fight by using their spell attacks twice, every time. If you manage to get them into the bag both times, their third action will be a laugh, otherwise they will charge. My pig fights went perfectly, so all of them laughed at me, making my life considerably easier. The problem with Ice Pig is that when I grab him, I do so very high in the air. All of the other pigs I have set ups where I aim whist holding them on the ground, but Ice Pig I have to manually aim mid-jump. The trick is to throw him at the opposite of the bag, IE if the bag is up, throw the pig down, and vice versa. After I beat Ice Pig, I grab the harp piece and death warp. The rest of Water Temple goes alright. Note that the Harp's Left Side does not spawn until you talk to the mermaid by the waterfall, otherwise my route would be slightly different.
Water Pig:
My setup for this fight is to grab her and wait for the bag to be at the bottom before I throw. She gets away from me on the third throw, but I get her anyway.
Ghost Pig:
My setup for this fight is to grab him and wait for the bag to be at the bottom before I throw. The one trick is that he spawns over a pit. To grab him, do a small, slow jump and hold right as soon as you grab him to land on the platform.
Flame Pig:
Use the Donglin Bell to get here faster than a wing. My setup for this fight is to grab him and wait for the bag to be at the bottom before I throw. The trick with this fight is that the bag moves around a volcano, making the second shot require a bit more finesse.
Earth Pig:
I do some snazzy jumps before the fight, but I mess up the last swing because the condor was playing some mad mind games. My setup for this fight is, surprise surprise, NOT to grab him and wait for the bag to be at the bottom before I throw, but instead to wait for the bag to be at the top AND moving away from me, at which point I do a short jump into the air and land on the pig, throwing him into the bag. Very happy to have gotten the all the Evil Pigs in three throws.
The Last Evil Pig:
Now that all the Evil Pigs are caught, you can challenge the true mastermind, the Last Evil Pig. Once you get to his chamber, he will stop time and seal his door with five seals, representing the five Evil Pigs, which you need to destroy with the corresponding magic. Make sure not to get too close to the fire seal, as doing so will initiate a cutscene. I put the robes I need on while I teleport to cut down on time spent menuing. The fight with the Last Pig is a bit more complicated than the others. He takes five throws to beat, rather than three, and his RNG works a little differently as well. At the start of the fight, I manipulate his RNG by getting him to spawn in the air and then hitting him twice. This will make sure that in the perfect fight, he laughs twice, and does not do his second spell attack (the thunder dash thing.) However, this was not the perfect fight, as I accidentally looked at my timer and got excited by my time, causing me to miss a couple shots because I am a scrub.
Conclusion:
This was not the perfect run and a time of 1:13 is possible. However I am done with this game. The run consists of mashing through cutscenes more than gameplay, and the gameplay isn't even fulfilling enough to justify it. If some new trick gets found I MIGHT pick the game back up, as I do not like to have out of date Pbs, but for real, this game sucks to speedrun, and I am glad to have 1:14, especially when my final goal was a 1:15. Finally, thank you to everyone who gave me some tips and tricks for the game. I could not have done it without you. Well, I probably could have, it just would have taken me longer. There really isn't too much going on in this game. But thank you all the same. |