Let's get ripped!

Okay guys, some of you perhaps still remember me playing some FFIX challenges last year and of of them was getting Excalibur II. However that run was done on emulator (no save states used though) with NTSC version and also it was only about getting Excalibur II.

This time I am going to aim for getting it on my PS Vita (PAL version) and with max stats path A, so this is going to be much, much harder. It certainly does help that I played both Excalibur II and separate lvl 1 game but since it's been almost a year, I am a little rusty and will have to be pretty hard on myself.

One very sad thing about playing on PS Vita is that there is pretty much no way to record (sans playing on camera or buying 400 dollar capture card...) and apparently I can't even screenshot FFIX so this will be more like journal full of text and I will photo my save times but that's it. I also am not really that much of a fun person so you shouldn't expect many jokes etc. Hah actually this will be probably pretty dull Let's Play for you readers.

Still if you are interested in FFIX and this run, I'll be more than happy if you post here often and we can have a discussion about it as well.

I'll be starting today but I expect this run to take a loong real life time to finish so don't be surprised if few days go by without any updates.

Oh I kind of forgot about the HORRENDOUS sword fight right in the beggining and I gotta get 100. I have absolutely zero rhytm sense and not good eye/hand coordination so I will be probably stuck here for weeks...

EDIT: OH MY GOD! I GOT IT! I can't believe it, I totally suck at this but I tried playing it with online metronome (http://www.metronomeonline.com/) and I did it on second try! Let this be an advice for anyone trying to do this but being bad at rhythm! I am now actually a little behind schedule (a minute) but I sure as hell am not retrying this. I will just have to cut one extra thing to make up for it.

I've always been good at the sword fight. Years of DDR have served me well. :D

You can't skip FMVs on the Vita can you?

Moved this to FFIX where it would be better placed. :)

(I know we have a LP forum for this sort of thing, but we like to promote activity in the FF subforums where possible)

Hah good for you, as I said I myself suck at anything that needs rhythm, but the metronome REALLY helped.

And nope I can't skip FMVs but according to hardoce people it still should be doable :D

EDIT: Oh okay, no problem :)

PROGRESS EDIT: Okay so far I am in the middle of the forest before the Plant Brain at time 54:53, rlouisw time here is 51:57, I think I should still be okay considering his time before Lich is 11:27 and I will be cutting alot of the stuff on CD 2/3. Still I wonder if I am just that much slower than him every segment or the PAL time is finally starting to show up.

I will try to get to Ice Cavern today, I will later today update if I managed to.

Okay final update for today.

I managed to get to the Ice Cavern in 1:05:16 which I am actually not very happy with. It's 5:59 slower than rlouisw save in this segment and 3:39 slower than my last year run (though I didn't bother with 100 nobles there, left few more things behind and it was NTSC on the emulator).

I guess it's still within possible boundaries as rlouisw on the save before Lich has still 33 minutes till 12 and I had 45 minutes left on the last save.

On the other side, I was pretty lucky so far with things like stealing and zero encounters so hopefully I will stay as lucky for the rest of the challenge. We will know tomorrow anyway since getting through Ice Cavern without any encounters and with decently fast boss fight while picking up everything except one Potion is definitely one of the harder segments of the challenge and will probably take me whole day to get through in decent time.

As I said, I can't even take screenies so here is bad quality phone photo of the save:

http://s24.postimg.org/obyv1e1z5/IMAG0233.jpg


EDIT: Okay luck was defiitely left behind in Evil Forest. The Ice Cavern is TOTAL HELL. Hell I tell you. I tried today 100 times and only on four occasions I got to third screen, not once I managed to even save yet. I am giving up for today.

Also there is one thing that I noticed during today... The heavy button smashing required is quite heavy on the Vita, I don't like the sound X and square buttons are making during it. If I don't find some solution to this, I may be forced to stop aiming for Excalibur II since I don't want to damage the console just over one item.

However if that ends up being the case, I will be very sad, not that much for missing the Excalibur II but because I actually really enjoy practicing my runs and seeing how perfectly some things can be done with a little of patience and luck.

Another fruitless day. Even with ignoring the Ether on second screen I can't get to fourth screen in less than 20 tries and then everything fails anyway since the way to Leather Wrist and finally to the save is goddamn long. I'll keep trying few more days and if there is still no success I will just do level 1 game so I can max the stats for pre-Ozma save so I can rebattle him on the go with Vita everytime I feel like. The button smashing is really hard on the poor small Vita buttons.

Okay combined with other day tries, I just hit around 300 tries just to get to the moogle and I am not going to ruin my Vita buttons anymore. Sorry to dissapoint, I will continue the game as a lvl 1 game to maximize stats and get all skills/abilities tho.

If any mod reads this, please could you be so kind and change the name of topic to Let's get ripped! ? Thanks.

If you want anything changed in future, PM/VM a mod. It'll be faster than hoping someone comes across it in a reasonable amount of time. x}

Oh man, not skipping FMVs is gonna wreck your time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shauna

If you want anything changed in future, PM/VM a mod. It'll be faster than hoping someone comes across it in a reasonable amount of time. x}

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Yeah thanks. Well it wasn't really anything that needed ASAP solution so...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Freya

Oh man, not skipping FMVs is gonna wreck your time.

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Well to be honest even if I did continue the excalibur II route, FMVs aren't really that much of a problem. IIRC all the FMVs take around 35:06 (around 42 min in PAL).

It's the PAL version of the game that really makes the biggest difference (around 10 vs 12 hours (without FMVs))

Curse that 10hz Difference! It ruined the Mario Kart run I was previously doing.

It's just really stupid though. I can understand that they didn't think about the clock time on the original release (or they were just lazy), but there is seriously zero reasons to give Europe PSN the PAL version of the game considering the consoles and TVs don't even use that format (or well TVs do but all TVs nowadays can use both PAL and NTSC...).

And when compared next to each other, PAL version really plays pretty sloppy.

Since I dropped the Excalibur II challenge and just aim for lvl 1 game, I got through the Ice Cavern and killed Black Waltz No. 1.

I stole both Ether and Mythril Dagger from the Sealion since i had to wait for the Trance bar to fill anyway. Saved just before the Dali.

Fun stuff? I got through the area after the boss fight and all the way to the village without an encounter which is REALLY low chance. Gotta love irony.