Devil May Cry (ntscj) (ps3) [100 %] [Single Segment] [Dante Must Die!] [DMC: Legendary Dark Knight] [1:29:37]
Run Information
Completion Date Jan. 22, 2014
State Published
Runner 'ahuynh'
Tag DMC: Legendary Dark Knight
Internal Comments:
Comment State Information Checkpoint None

Final time of 1:31:49 by ingame timer.
Done on the PS3 version
Does not obsolete sternn's PS2 segmented run because the PS3 and 360 timers do not count loading screens but the PS2 timer does.

Links
Verification Thread
Run Comments

This is a single segment speedrun on New Game with the Legendary Dark Knight on Dante Must Die! difficulty collecting 100% of items, ending with a time of 1:29:43. This is an insanely difficult category to even finish, because it does not require just completing the game while collecting items, but also requiring enough Special Bonuses and S ranks in every mission and as a result, a run can end even right at the very end.

The total number of red orbs to buy everything is 69465. This number includes all purchaseables and all doors that require a red orb payment. Meeting this is not trivial, for it is extremely difficult. I aimed to get Special Bonuses(SB) on Missions 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 21. In this run, I did not get a SB on Mission 14, but I made it up with Special Bonuses in 15 and 17. For those two missions, in an ideal run, no damage will be taken and thus a Special Bonus will be given, as it costs no time to meet the orb requirement. But as these two missions are boss missions, taking no damage is very hard.

The choice of the HD version was for one reason, Mission 3. The timer on the HD version does not consider loading times, giving an extra 15 seconds on Mission 3, making it so much easier to get the SB on Mission 3. Thus I decided to use it because I can feasily get the SB on Mission 3 in a single segment, which is really needed.

The choice of the PS3 HD over the 360 HD version was for one reason, the audio. The 360 version has terrible distortion that I can never seem to remove no matter how low I make the audio gain is. Perhaps it is hardcoded into the game that way, which would be terrible, for actually the 360 version is slightly faster because it loads things like grabbing items a bit faster than the PS3 version.

--Ranking Notes
The 100% definition of this game means getting an S rank on every mission. There are three categories that determines the rank of each mission: Time, Red Orbs, and Damage. Each category gives a maximum of 5 points, but if you miss the requirement, it only gives 3 or less points. Getting a full 15 points gets a Special Bonus, an additional 2000 orbs at the end. Getting 10-14 gives an S rank. Thus it is important for me to watch the damage I take, and collect red orbs when necessary to make up for damage.

Doing Secret Missions also gives extra points; some give 2 points, some only give 1. I take advantage of this in order to use items and still be able to get a Special Bonus in Missions 11 and 15. In Mission 17, it allows me to take a hit from an enemy and still get a Special Bonus, although a hit from a boss will no longer give enough points.

Doing Secret Missions and getting Special Bonuses also does one more thing, gives ranking allowances to following missions. As a result, it is possible to get a Special Bonus in missions 4, 7, 16. However, this cannot be done in a single segment, for you need to reset the game in order to get a ranking allowance. This is why in MIssion 4, I was able to meet the orb requirement, take no damage, but still not get a Special Bonus for I needed a ranking allowance to make up for the time requirement. The Secret Missions do not give enough ranking points alone.

--Item Usage
With Holy Waters costing a whopping 4100 red orbs, I cannot buy any with red orbs, so I instead collect the ones that are lying around. With Holy Waters also doing 1/3 damage to bosses, it is not worth it on such, and I use them on large amount of enemies. Holy Waters also do 1/3 damage to Kyklops compared to Normal mode, but I still use a Holy Water on them, for Kyklops are a mini-boss like enemy, and so it has the boss trait of taking 1/3 damage from every other attack as well.

-Mission Notes

--Mission 1 -
Mission 1 is known to me as the mission of very hard jumps. All of the jumps are not trivial, and it is very easy to overshoot or just miss. I need to get the Special Bonus to prepare for Mission 3, so I need to meet the orb requirement, and not take a hit. Both are not trivial. Meeting the orb requirement of 400 orbs is not easy, while also doing fast. Not taking damage is also difficult due to fighting 5 Bloody Maris.

It is due to this mission that I use the Legendary Dark Knight costume, for I need a Special Bonus in this mission. However, with regular Dante, it is extremely difficult for all Dante has is Force Edge, which does around 3/4 of the damage of the Yamato and has no Devil Trigger. Sometimes, it is even impossible to get a SB with regular Dante because the basement can spawn too many Bloody Maris for Dante to handle. Unlike LDK, the Marionettes in the basement will DT and dealing with DT'd Bloody Maris is just slow.

--Mission 2 -
Here, I also need a Special Bonus for Mission 3. The issue is there is a random factor, getting wither Sin Scythes or Blades in the courtyard. Sin Scythes are much easier, but Blades can give a lot more orbs, in fact even enough to buy a second purple orb instead of just one. I fight the enemies in the courtyard to meet the orb requirement. In this run I got Sin Scythes, which are really easy to deal with.

--Mission 3 -
This mission is the reason why I played on the HD version, although it is possible to not get a Special Bonus in this mission and still get enough orbs to buy everything. Getting a perfect fight with Phantom is extremely difficult.

While my fight with Phantom may seemed fast, it would have been too slow on the PS2 version to meet the time requirement. Everything must go perfect on this mission on the PS2 version, so I decided to use the HD version just for this mission.

--Mission 4 -
Since I do the 3 Secret Missions, I do not need to fight hallway Phantom, for I can still make the orb requirement collecting orbs elsewhere.

After fighting the Death Scissors, I stay near where it dies and do not run to the door because that might make the DT refill come much later.

Although I do not take a hit, I do not get a Special Bonus, because I needed to reset the game to get a ranking allowance. That would have made up for the time requirement, but since I decided not to reset, getting a Special Bonus is impossible.

--Mission 5 -
There was a ledge that Dante ended up grabbing that I did not intend to happen.

--Mission 6 -
This is another Special Bonus mission, and an extremely hard one, for the bat Plasma would often hit me off screen, so I use Vortexes to avoid damage.

At the end, I also do not immediately run towards grabbing the item, because that makes the DT refill from the Death Scissors come much later.

--Mission 7 -
This mission involves taking constant damage, which counts against ranking, and doing Secret Mission 5 would make up for the damage. However, doing that would be crazy, so I simply take a S rank. This also means I avoid fighting hallway Phantom, which saves time.

--Intermission
I do Secret Mission 5. Unfortunately, I die here, but it costs no time, because the intermission doesn't count towards the ingame timer. I still don't like it though because it looks terrible.

--Mission 8 -
Meeting the orb requirement simply means I pick up the orbs lying around.

There are two ways of fighting Phantom, either getting his health to zero, or having him drop on the glass 5 times. The glass method does not provide a DT refill. I also find it inconsistant, because sometimes Phantom just simply refuses to jump. As a result, I tend to prefer to attack him. Combining the two methods is possible, but I also don't like to do that because the glass tends to make the camera angles terrible.

Here is a link to a perfect fight, which is what I always try to do in the beginning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMoRdFrh8SA

--Mission 9 -
For some reason, I am always cautious against Blades, but I still ended up taking a hit anyways.

--Mission 10 -
The first area was a bit rough, because the light didn't go into the Fetish that I wanted. It eventually worked out but a bit of time was lost.

Similarly to the last mission, I also take a hit against the Blades, and I was just so cautiously slow against them.

In third area, it is possible to kill one Shadow and have it close enough to the gate that the light goes to the gate instead of the second Shadow. That didn't happen here.

--Mission 11 -
Starting from here, I spend a bit of time to get the Special Bonus. This includes killing the Death Scythe and picking up the hidden orbs. I save time by using a Holy Water in the well, allowing me to kill of the Blades quickly, a necessity for doing so also spawns a blue orb fragment. To make up for the Holy Water, I do the Secret Mission, which allows me to get the Special Bonus in this mission.

--Mission 12 -
In order to pick up the blue orb fragment in this mission, I need to do a Stinger jump, but it is a bit precise. I spend some time to make sure that I don't screw it.

Griffon 2 is different on the HD version, because he always spends a high HP energy wing in the beginning instead of a low HP one. However, sending a Meteor in the beginning makes him summon a weak HP energy wing instead. The issue though is that it also makes Griffon refuse to land, and just fly around instead. I found that if I destroy the wings with Rolling Blaze instead of letting it take me into the air and using the handguns to destroy it will make Griffon land faster.

--Mission 13 -
I spend a bit of time to get the 100 orbs and the blue orb fragment to get enough orbs to get a Special Bonus.

--Intermission
The secret mission can only be done during the intermission

--Mission 14 -
Normally, I try to get a Special Bonus here, but I ended up taking a hit from a Sin Scissors. This ended up saving time because I no longer have to orb farm. However, I need to make up for the orbs lost from not getting a Special Bonus, but since I was so close to the next missions, I decided to continue.

--Mission 15 -
I go backwards to get to the Secret Mission. I use two Holy Waters to end the Secret Mission quickly, and the extra ranking points from the Secret Mission makes up for the holy waters, allowing me to get a Special Bonus if I don't take damage, which usually doens't happen because of Griffon 3. However, in this run, I ended up taking no damage so I get the Special Bonus, which makes up for not getting one in the previous mission. Getting a Special Bonus in this mission costs very little time, it just that getting through damageless is not easy.

--Mission 16 -
A Special Bonus is impossible in a single segment while also doing the Secret Missions, so taking damage here really isn't that bad.

The Nightmare fight was far from perfect for I messed up quite a lot.

--Mission 17 -
There are two ways of doing the Secret Mission. THe first is to kill the Death Scythe, and then Vortex to grab the blue orb fragment. The other is to use Air Raid to grab the blue orb fragment. It is important that I have DT for the following fight with the Frosts, so I decided to use Air Raid, as it ends up killing the Death Scythe later, and thus I get a DT refill at the very end. With the Vortex method, I would need to fight the Fetishes halfway up the stairs to restore my DT.

I do take a hit against a Frost, but the Secret Mission makes up for that, so I ended up getting a Special Bonus.

--Mission 18 -
THe underwater Sin Scissors were a bit uncooperative, so I ended up having to spend a bit of extra time killing them, but I didn't lost that much time. Since I am not going for the Special Bonus, it's okay if I take some damage.

The Nightmare fight was overall pretty good, and almost perfect except for that I ran out of DT charging one of my Meteors. I had to make up for this by using 3 Meteors in the final barrage against the core instead of 2.

--Mission 19 -
I collect the Nobodies' red orbs to meet the orb requirement.

--Mission 20 -
Unlike Normal Mode, conserving DT is much more important, so I try to limit the Vortexing. I skip the Frosts, because most likely I would take a hit so it's not worth the bit of time fighting them.

Skipping the underworld is also possible but extremely risky. If a single hit is taken, the run is over for it would be a guaranteed A rank.

I also miss the first round at the core, and I lost over half of hte poentital damage I could have done because the last three hits that didn't make it are also the most damaging hits.

THe underworld was also messy. The Kick-13 missed the last Sargasso, so it was a pain to kill. Then the fight with underworld Nelo is also relatively quick, but I wanted to do an Inferno at the end but ended up kicking. I got a bit reckless trying to get the finishing hit, so I took enough damage to be in danger of dying. Switching to the handguns is also slower than keeping with the grenadegun, but again, I was at a risk of dying, so I used the safer handguns, and I really had to focus on the final core to make sure I don't die. As a result of the above, this mission was rather slow.

--Mission 21 -
I collect the red orbs from the Nobodies to get the Special Bonus.

In order to get to the Bangle of Time quickly, I take advantage of autoaim from Vortexing. However, I failed my first attempt because I ended up running into the terrain and didn't gain enough height. The second attempt worked, but it used all of my DT.

Later, I had to go through the tentacles without any DT. The easiest way with DT is to Vortex through them, but without it, I used slash cancelling instead.

I also normally equip the shotgun in this mission, except I also sometimes would go overtime just because of that, so I do it in the next mission.

--Mission 22 -
This was a pretty good mission overall, and can only be improved greatly by having a better Mundus AI. There was actually a run where I got through Mundus damageless and got a Special Bonus in this mission, but that is just too reliant on Mundus's AI.

--Mission 23 -
I grab a hidden 100 orbs, because it would be really sad if I get all the way to the end, take a hit, and not get enough orbs to get a S rank.

The final results screen shows much more orbs than gotten in this run. This is because the HD version keeps track of all orbs collected in all runs.

-Note
Getting under 1:29 is possible, maybe even 1:28. If I ever have more time, I might eventually try again for a better run, although there is a lot of luck involved as well as skill.