Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (ntscus) (xb360) [Any %] [Individual Level] [Hard] [New Game+] [Character: Simon] [0:07:36.56]
Run Information
Completion Date May 5, 2014
State Published
Runner Patrick 'PJ' DiCesare
Tag New Game+
Tag Character: Simon
Segments 2
Internal Comments:
Comment State Information Checkpoint None

This is an improvement to 2 chapters in the Simon no-DLC IL table.

Chapter 2 [1:19.66]: Completed 2013-12-04
Chapter 5 [0:55.73]: Completed 2014-05-05

Links
Verification Thread
Run Comments

A major thanks to Aftermath for rerecording chapters 1, 3, 4, and 6 for me, and a huge shoutout to Omnigamer for recording the rest of them! The result is a set of absolutely beautiful videos that finally matches the amount of time I put into them! I definitely appreciate the effort.

As for game-related thanks, there are many more. CVHD is the first game I downloaded for XBLA. I vaguely remembered Aftermath jokingly telling me to play CVHD with him back before I even had a 360, so when I finally got one I bought this and asked if he still wanted to play. He's really the one who got me into the game, and much of a pain in the ass as it was to run, I really enjoy playing this. So, thanks Aftermath. After he beat every level with me (rather, for me), I obviously needed to do some farming/grinding for gear. I farmed a lot with a few different people (romscout, FDD, later Arkhanno) but Mecha Richter was a regular in the grinding sessions and I really appreciate that. Thanks! Most of my strategies for these levels were slowly developed on my own, but Aftermath, Mecha Richter, and later Arkhanno helped me fine-tune them and gave some really good suggestions/motivation to help me actually get this finished.

This game has kind-of been an ongoing joke between Aftermath, Mecha Richter, and myself with others eventually joining in on the fun just because this is such a ridiculous game to run. It is so unbelievably intense to speed run that none of us ever expected an IL table to be finished. In fact, it still really isn't "finished" because the DLC levels aren't included in this submission. This is still more than any of us expected, though. I finished my first IL of this game (Chapter 5) back in July of 2011 and was so exhausted and angry after doing that one level, I took a 4 month break before even trying another level. In fact, all 3 of us basically quit after that point because we realized what would be required of a submittable IL table. It's just the way this game works. The levels are so full of bullshit and randomness that even if your execution is spot-on, you can just get totally boned later on from one enemy not cooperating. This is especially true for Simon. Miraculously, in February and April of 2012 I came upon some determination and patience of a magnitude never before seen by humans. Haha. Ok, perhaps not, but I have no idea what made me actually finish this IL table. I think it was just excessive hatred.

The category might take a little bit of explanation. I originally used Soma, because he is really fun and fast to use. Eventually I downloaded Simon and thought he was just way too entertaining, so I started using him for farming. At some point, I just stopped using Soma all together and used Simon for everything. After a few long nights with Mecha Richter, Aftermath, Menace, and some Super Potions, Simon's subweapons were maxed and he was ready for action. The "no-zips" decision was made after we found out that they can be used in any level (and not just chapter 10!). We were so angry at this discovery that we just quit and resolved to never do an IL table because it would require either doing all the levels with zips (which is just retarded), or doing chapter 10 without the elevator skip (which is just retarded). Fortunately, SDA allows IL tables for just the basic game with no DLC levels, so away I went!

There are only a few speed tricks that I use in this game, but I use them extremely frequently. The first trick, and my favorite, is triangle jumping. This is basically just dive kicking as rapidly as you can, since dive kicks have a much faster speed than walking. Triangle jumping is the fastest method of ordinary movement for all non-Richter characters. The fastest method of transportation overall for all non-Jonathan characters is what is called "corner boosting". If you dive kick into the last pixel of an edge, you will maintain dive kick speed until you hit the ground. The primary focus in speed running this game, aside from not dying, is to try to hit as many corner boosts as possible. Every boost saves time (except for levels with built-in speed bumps...will be mentioned later). The last little trick I use is called backdash canceling (BDC). Basically, you can cancel a sub-weapon with a backdash, and you can cancel a backdash by crouching. By constantly cycling between sub-weapon, backdash, and crouch, you can very rapidly throw sub-weapons. Conveniently, you can bypass the crouching step by just assigning the sub-weapon of interest (R.Dagger!) to down+special and then just holding down on the analog stick while alternating mashing backdash and special.

There is one strategy that is extremely prevalent in this series of runs: dive kicking off enemies. Since Simon cannot yorick jump, he has to rely on clever manipulation of enemies in order to get to out-of-reach platforms. This is a major pain in the ass because a lot of the enemies cannot always be manipulated to behave (imps, harpies, mermen, sea/fire demons, etc etc etc). However, it is the dive kick that makes speed running possible at all so I can't be too mad.

I have a boatload of comments for each of the levels, but I think the more efficient way to do this would be to describe all of my gear/sub-weapons first and justify it in each level if it changes:

Equipment:

Head: Fuma Helm
Body: Berserker Mail
Boots: Sonic Boots
Cloak: Retro Cloak
Accessory1: Fool's Tablet/Crystal Necklace
Accessory2: Fool's Tablet
Item: Caviar/Mana Prism

Sub-Weapons:
A: Bible/R.Boomerang
^A: R.Axe/R.Boomerang/JAVELIN
<A: R.Dagger/R.Boomerang/JAVELIN
vA: R.Dagger

The goal here is to get as high of an INT stat as possible. I didn't have this equipment for chapter 1, but it would not save time there because I already kill Gergoth as quickly as possible. I have to use royal crown and bishamon raiment in chapter 2 because it gives me exactly the right INT stat to kill the sea demon with a dive kick after aggroing him with the bible. Any more INT would kill him. Similarly, in chapter 4 I substitute on fool's tablet with a crystal necklace to lower my int enough for fire demon to die after the second dive kick.

Ok, I think I can safely move on to level comments. Basically every level went exactly as I wanted, so I won't bother touching on most mistakes/good things. Just assume everything I did is intended.

Conclusion:

Since my original submission, only chapters 2 and 5 have been improved. I have been unable to improve chapter 3, and chapters 1 and 4 are essentially perfect. Chapter 6 could be improved with the same luck and two additional corner boosts, but I will not be attempting it. Even chapters 2 and 5 can be further improved by not missing the one corner boost I missed in each of those, but I am incredibly happy with all of these finally and have no desire to try to improve them!

Levels
Lord of Unseen Strings [0:01:19.66]

I LOVE this level. It is really nuts to run, but it is incredibly fun and looks great when it is done well. There is something insane like 9 possible corner boosts with my route, but I obviously don't try for all of them. In this run, I hit 5 of the 7 corner boosts I tried, and the two that I missed are the most insignificantly boosts in the stage (the boost off the box in the treant room basically does not even save time).

I could talk about this stage for tens of thousands of characters, but I'll just focus on a few things and summarize the rest as follows: this run gets perfect RNG in every place that matters, hit every single critical corner boost, had exceptional movement through the stage itself, and had the best ledge-BDC possible on Puppet Master.

The most frustrating part of this stage is the sea demon dive kick. With this equipment setup, I do the perfect amount of damage with the bible to aggro him without killing him. While I could use a higher INT setup to kill Pupper Master faster, it would make this skip impossible because Sea Demon would die too soon. The placement of the bible throw is obviously pretty precise because if it hits twice, he is dead and there is no way for me to get to the higher platforms. After he is aggro'd, I need him to give me a good pattern and hover in place. The demons really like to fly up and around you sometimes which makes it impossible to land a dive kick.

Puppet Master is a really easy boss fight if I can set it up correctly. I need to land just over halfway past the ledge leading into his room, or else the R.Dagger will not activate him. I have lost attempts here from jumping too far and landing into the room, and from jumping too short and mashing before he is active. So yea, I activate him and then do the best ledge-BDC I have ever done in my life. If you hold a diagonal into the ledge instead of just down during a BDC, you will constantly land back on the ledge. Without this, I'd have to do some normal BDC and then walk forward a bit to not fall off. This is much faster. Caviar is my food of choice here because I don't need the extra MP.

Song of the Unslakable Blade [0:00:55.73]

This is the first chapter that I ran (back in 2011), and it was so excruciating that it made me quit for 4 months. In fact, this run took the longest for me to improve, taking nearly 3.5 years since my first finished IL. I could write a few thousand words of comments about everything that can (and does) go wrong in this stage, but I'll do my best to sum it up a little more briefly.

There are a few things to focus on in this stage. First are the corner boosts in the beginning: a double corner boost off the pendulums and a single corner boost in the imp room. Those are actually more significant than in other stages because most of this stage is vertical. Getting those three in one run is pretty rare. Unfortunately, I missed the second pendulum boost in this run, but hit the corner boost after the switch at the top of the stage.

My route has changed in the few years since my first run. Instead of relying on the harpies at the end for my divekick boost, I carry some imps from the first gear room and hope that my movement was consistent enough to manipulate them in a way I am expecting. I'd say this is easier than the harpy boost, but I'd be lying. It has given me more runs to Death, though, so it is worth it.

The other massive change is the Death fight itself. Death is an awkward boss because if you hit him while you are outside the room, Death will fly away and enter his "attack you from outside the boss chamber" phase. What I need to do to fight him optimally is to throw some R.Daggers and then enter the room so they hit him, then back out of the room and fire more, then move back into the room so they hit him. It is awkward because each of those "cycles" is too brief for me to change grips to ledge-BDC mash or anything. I do this really slow BDC instead, which is really awkward and bad. However, this kills Death 100% of the time because he will not take action as you leave the room. The result is a much faster and less random boss fight.

This run is extremely good, with room to improve with a double pendulum boost and better ledge-BDC on Death. However, I have the spectacular damage boost block after killing Death, so essentially this run cannot be beaten in the style category. This is a 0.51 second improvement over my old time, which is staggeringly large for this game.