How Castlevania Speedrunners Overcome Impossible Odds

Castlevania Ari of Sorrow is one of the most beloved metroidvanias of all time it was able to fit a fully fledged Castlevania experience with many unique locations enemies and boss fights all into a tiny Game Boy Advance cartridge this game boasts a pretty lengthy casual play time considering the system it was designed for but speedrunners will look at that play time and just laugh the most recent world record for this game's most popular Speed Run category just recently fell under 11 minutes that's right just 11 minutes to conquer the whole game but how exactly do speedrunners achieve such an unbelievable goal what does the game normally expect from the player and how is it that speedrunners beat the impossible odds to destroy Castlevania Arya of sorrow in under 11 minutes oh my God yes I can't believe it I did it to help answer those questions I asked my good friend in one of the greatest Castlevania speedrunners of all time Jupiter climb to help me understand what exactly is going on in the speedrun for Castlevania Aria of Sorrow but first let's take a quick look at exactly what a normal playthrough of Ary of Sorrow is supposed to look like Ari of Sorrow is very similar to most metroidvanias the goal of the game is to defeat bosses collect new abilities that unlock new areas to explore so you could repeat the process until you beat the game however Arya did introduce a brand new way to engage with combat and exploration in a metroidvania Style game the soul system in this game someone can absorb The Souls of defeated enemies and bosses to gain new abilities there are four types of souls that can be found throughout the game red Souls which allow someone to use unique attacks at the cost of Mana blue Souls which allows Soma to do many types of summons attacks and Transformations yellow Souls which are passive abilities that usually give Soma some sort of stat boost and lastly gray Souls which are permanent upgrades to Soma's moveset and exploration abilities in order to defeat the game you are expected to be 8 different bosses as you explore and unlock new abilities before fighting Graham who is attempting to turn himself into the new Dracula except psych killing Graham right away leads to the bad ending and if you want the real ending you have to kill a secret boss find three books absorb three of the Dracula souls and use those souls to defeat Graham and then uh-oh turns out you were the real Dracula all along and this just pisses off the Belmont of the group Julius so you have to fight him learn that the real final boss's chaos itself so you enter the final area fight the real final boss and finally get the good ending also it's really important to point out that besides a few exceptions every soul in this game is randomly dropped by enemies and bosses and these drop rates are quite low oftentimes even lower than one percent and there's pretty much no way to increase those odds and that's because in this game Deluxe stat is completely broken it doesn't increase drop rates or anything like that they just forgot to code it properly I guess so getting some of the most powerful souls and items to drop is incredibly tedious as you farm the same enemies over and over again for a less than one percent chance to get the drop that you want However the fact that this game expects you to grind for some important souls and items doesn't really matter for speedrunners as they have developed strategies to completely ignore the random aspects of the game and turn what would normally be an RNG nightmare into a Showcase of skill and execution they do this by exploiting the random number generator inside the game's code this is to produce the correct numbers in memory as to give the desired random drops that speedrunners need and there's no better way to Showcase this than to watch how speedrunners do a precise RNG manipulation to get the rare Soul drop from the first boss of the game creaking skull alright so Chewie's gonna pause here and suspend we can pause here if you want anytime you suspend and load the game it starts you at a set point in the random number table so if you do the same actions every time you load from a suspend you'll get the same result so resuming this is the this is the RNG minute this is the RNG minutes we've got a couple of back dashes some short hops oh if you want to pause real quick this is a very easy boss but it's got one of the absolute best souls in the game so getting it this early is super helpful for all combat throughout the remainder of the Run however the drop rate is quite low so you got to manipulate it you can't just rely on good luck here all right let's see it [Music] oh that's interesting we didn't even see the uh the soul come out yeah this is some new school stuff you'll notice that the screen kind of glitches up here it's the soul collection and a level up on the same frame oh wow look at that now with the creaking skull Soul acquired the next goal for the speedrun is to head up to the top of the castle Corridor but in the world record speedrun chewy for you was able to do this now okay important moment here very important there's a big trick coming up normally you're supposed to go down after creaking skull it's a pickup flying armor which is a sole that lets you Glide in the air a little bit you don't strictly speaking and need it the downside is you have to rely on a sub Pixel Perfect trick to get across a gap yeah it's Pixel Perfect with a rounding potential so it could round to the wrong pixel and totally throw off the trick so yeah here's the setup from Chewie here you kind of pause you take some damage and that was it wow that jump right there I say let's watch that a second time yeah you got a delay you gotta watch the axis momentum and it's not even just a sub Pixel Perfect it's a sub Pixel Perfect extended back dash jump so speedrunners do a super precise damage boost in order to skip grabbing the flying armor soul and save around 25 seconds but why even come all this way just to get to a room that's a dead end well this room may seem like a dead end at first but actually this chunky boy right here can actually help Runners zip out of bounds and warp them all the way to the chapel so they could fight the next boss of the run and of course do yet another RNG manipulation this is a manipulation that spans two rooms you go down and then this one is again a newer setup but there are like 10 Manticore setups at this point and they're all roughly equivalent but let's watch that again I can point out some things so we're using creaking skull we're going to be seeing this a lot in the future the only thing to keep in mind with Manticore is that you have to time your hits correctly you also have to make sure you're not too close or too far because positioning can influence the attack you get which will burn different random numbers so mantikora why is Manticore so important for the speedrun it's really interesting because if you play this game casually you know that from that Chapel warp you can just go to the left and not even fight man sakoi so we intentionally elect to fight an optional boss at this point because of how good this soul is it saves an insane amount of time for movement saves an insane amount of time for combat one of the very best souls in the whole game after manipulating the Manticore soul to drop the next goal of the run is to go down past the chapel into the study to fight the great armor boss so they can put their newly acquired Manticore soul to the test where they will be rewarded with the next ability soul for the run the malphus soul which gives Soma the ability to double jump this is a great Strat check this out foreign oh wow and just like that can we watch that one more time yeah of course I just wanted to point out at the start of the fight here you'll see two attacks and then it's a back dash canceled by mansacore so you only get a small amount of that back dash distance so you're in the perfect position to dodge the attack and get the triple hits on men's koi yeah and that ate up pretty much the entire MP bar but I mean your goal is to kill the boss as fast as possible so you have like perfect MP management there that's really really cool you know what's interesting uh the next put potential major reroute for this category is Skip all of study don't get double jump the only reason we came all the way down here for double jump is for a single room that we can't get up with single jump only now with the double jump ability unlocked speedrunners then go through the Chapel to a specific room to set up yet another out of bounds zip so what we're going to be doing here is going to this big room The Belfry room and you can zip out of bounds here with Manticore normally you need bats for most Zips but this room is one of the rooms where Manticore can also work yeah the Manticore transformation just a little too big the game gets confused of course that that makes a lot of sense seeing it in action uh it's it's too big there's a there's a solid object above you the game is trying to push you out of that solid object the way it does that is uh just by pushing you out of bounds unfortunately and uh by going out of bounds um can we explain you end up here why you end up here is I um I've played this game a few times and I'm pretty sure the chapel is not connected to the the reservoir you know when it comes to Out of Bounds in this game there is no real Rhyme or Reason to it the castle is of course a creature of chaos and when they're making this game the out of bound connection points don't make any sense sometimes they'll take you to areas that are adjacent ones that you would expect sometimes they'll take you to places that are just totally off the map and sometimes you'll get soft locked because the game doesn't put you anywhere now this pudding room right here is the one reason we need help us that tiny little platform is the one reason we have to go all the way down to study because all these other jumps are possible to perform with just a single single jump it seems to my understanding yeah see if you were to zip up all the way on the left side right underneath Soma then you definitely would not need maleface anymore the reason for zipping all this way is to get to the underground reservoir which leads directly to the arena there's lots of great items and souls that could be found here but speedrunners have to be very careful maneuvering through this area at such a low level this is the arena this is the toughest room in the game this is the gargoyle room uh keep in mind we're super under leveled right now this is towards the end of the game now this room has got many different setups to it and different Runners have different setups uh it's mostly about preference but [Music] wow I do want to watch that again because I all of this damage is like routed out to to help you get through the room I assume you'll notice that Chewie is intentionally getting his HP lower now why is that uh there is a soul in this game called the lubricant Soul this is the enemy whose Soul we want to farm it's a risk reward Soul where the lower your HP the more your stats go up your strength your aunt even your defense although we're in one hit kill range just that part doesn't matter but it's a big offensive boost and it's a yellow Soul so you can equip Manticore plus lubricants or creaking skull plus lubricant at the same time so for the sheer sake of saving a little bit of extra time we're gonna be in one hit kill territory for the remainder of the Run isn't that nice we're actually going to see our first double manipulation in this room because lubricant not only drops its Soul it drops an excellent Katana multigate weapon uh going for two manipulations is doable but these are obviously much tougher than single minutes pause buffer here get the timing perfect wow so both the soul and the the weapon are dropped at the same time with the newly acquired lubricant soul and muramasa in the hands of speedrunners they then use these powerful tools versus the next boss at the run velor but as you're gonna see we've got again some small combat optimizations for this fight Chewie's gonna get the best cycle possible here we go that is a lot of damage numbers you can get double and even triple hits and creaking skull does a lot here yeah so you'll notice if you want to pause velor moved from phase one to phase two this is Nadia the laser beam phase so creaking skull is invaluable to make sure that phase one you can skip a full cycle this is a perfect fight you can't save any more Cycles at least not with current strats over this fight and phase two's also got less defense so yeah it's over pretty quickly wow yeah immediately taking advantage of all the the new weapons and souls and stuff to do crazy damage and all this is for uh I don't know how to read Japanese but I know that that's the bat soul to break the game Soul the break the game Soul indeed the bad soul is normally used to transform Soma into a bat so he can fly around and reach new places however using a specific set of frame perfect inputs Runners can actually slightly clip into walls then use the bat to fully zip out of bounds pretty much anywhere they want no need for cows to turn around or tight spaces to zip with the Manticore and just like the previous Zips Runners abused the arbitrary out of bounds connection points to zip exactly where they need to go what you want to do to zip is first of all you want to get into the wall which requires you back dash and turn into a bat and then crouch in a specific way and the game kind of pushes you in one pixel and sound like a lot but one pixel is all we need here so from here what you want to do is press back dash backs and forward on the same frame and you'll notice that chewy is attacking here this is the new tech I mentioned if you attack you don't have to buffer right so instead of pressing three buttons on the same frame it's only the two shoulder buttons which especially if you're playing on controller like doubles the consistency of minutes like this or as Zips like this one that's one we got a couple more to go yeah so again attack to buffer the right transform and we used to spend here for specific reasons because we want to get pushed up just a little bit and then we're going to do one of those crazy where am I going warps the zip is only possible because of the reloading from um the suspend well about that oh just kidding yeah this is the one real room for improvement and I mean we just this category is impossible you got to get the sub Pixel Perfect back dash boosted flying armor skip you got to get all the nips you got to not get hit you got to get the velor perfect cycle you gotta have a good gargoyle room everything's gonna go right but there is one more trick that would save a good amount of time here and that is instead of suspending here and loading what you can do is go into the wall and hit the lubricant here you manipulate the lubricant so that right as you zip in you get hit by the sphere that'll push you up slightly and then you can just zip automatically into the um claim room that saves like six seconds seven seconds kind of depends on how quick you're going wow so this is what it looks like with the uh with that uh time save [Laughter] just so dumb that is so cool wow oh by the way the timing on this it fluctuates it's either one frame or a two frame oh yeah I bet and then of course we end up here this is the claim so late I know that's not how it's pronounced but it's how it's pronounced within the Castlevania Community it's the claim Soleil this is a holy sword it's a super secret weapon you're supposed to go behind the waterfall and vanilla with a rush soul to find this and even it's a secret within a secret because it's like behind a hidden wall so it's supposed to be overpowered even at a relatively low level this is going to be more than enough to win with so after getting the strongest weapon in the game Runners continue zipping to enter the chaos realm which is the final area of the game skipping the need to fight Graham collect the three books in Dracula souls or fight Julius at all and now Runners can just zip straight to the end of the game and fight one of the hardest bosses in any metroidvania I've ever played this is the chaotic realm hence all of these sepia tones this is the very end of the game it's all black and white uh but we're not going to be here for long so I mean you can lose her on any one uh ZIP if it goes badly can kill the run because not only does it waste time it wastes MP which we're gonna need here for the final fight so these were perfect Zips and oh yeah that zip just lands you into the final fight this this is the final boss it could not be more convenience so chaos here has got two phases phase one you're gonna see the claim in action this is all about trying to get uh multi hits uh the claims only hit once but it has uh enough reach the strike two or even sometimes three statues with one swing that's the goal and Chewie is taking damage on purpose both for the iframes so you can do a little bit more damage quickly and also because we're trying to get that lubricant boost as high as possible these statues they actually seal away your your souls right that's right so you can't use creaking skull and lubricant doesn't come into effect until the yellow Statue is down that little uh Target that's on the screen here uh you don't want to get hit by that no matter what right like that's that's so that'll drain your MP we just talk about how important that was that's why you want the Zips to go well if that hits you uh PB is pretty much dead this is the greatest boss in the history of action Platformers despite the fact that we've played this game for like thousands and thousands of hours bought this boss thousands of times it never gets old you need to be playing on point you have to have great reactions and you're hoping that chaos cooperates because this Bone Dragon Here does what it wants it'll come up from the bottom and just hit you with like five frames to react it's brutal but the main gimmick here is you want to break the eyes the real boss is the core but if the eyes are defeated that'll lower the defense of the court so now Chewie takes one final hit gets down to 12 hp that's maximum lubricant boost this is as high as it goes any hit kills you gotta Dodge the orbs you gotta Dodge the small orbs you got to dodge the thorns and the core has got 3 000 HP so claim doing 48 plus 72 with greeking skull but we only need to go for three eyes here rather than four that way we can get double hits on the core and the bottom right eye it's one of the cool things about chaos like if you're playing the randomizer depending on what your build is sometimes it's optimal to kill two eyes sometimes three sometimes four but yeah no zero HP three eyes is the best and just like that we got Ari of Sorrow no zero HP in under 11 minutes it goes by so fast it's crazy but yeah this run by Chewie is super impressive it's um it's like close to perfect it's really good I really want to put into perspective how unlikely a run like this really is putting aside all the frame perfect tricks performed in this run without any RNG manipulation the odds of a run like this ever happening are insanely low the creaking skull soul is a two percent chance to drop the Manticore Soul 2.5 percent the lubricant Soul one percent the muramasa drop around a 0.25 chance altogether that makes the odds of a run like this ever happening around a 0.0000125 chance or around 1 in 100 million needless to say without RNG minutes a run like this is not really possible but that's the thing about speedrunners they'll always find a way to beat the odds and beat their favorite games in record time thank you so much for watching please don't forget to subscribe and like the video and here's my favorite comment from the last video set my alarm at 4am just to get to see this run live and it was so worth it so glad to see you on the sdgq stage live amazing run and great commentary a huge shout out to Jupiter climb for helping explain the Run shout outs to Chewie for you for achieving such a fantastic speedrun world record and shout outs to my patreon supporters that make videos like this possible if you want to help support future videos then click on the link in the description and join up just like these fine folks like crazy four blades aracato Mr cigar Lieutenant cyx Clint Soma Jean TJ Foster Atomic Dracula suchioto Kenneth chaos Vania joking palm and wjb

Channel: Dr4gonBlitz

Views: 435,558

Keywords: games, twitch, Randomizer, Speedrun, sotn, gameplay, tournament, glitchless, world record, 200.6%, Bloodstained, New, Update, netflix, season 1, season 2, season 3, Sega, Saturn, psx, play station, metroid, vania, metroidvania, playstation, harmony, of, dissonance, circle of the moon, aria, sorrow, dawn, Portrait, ruin, order, ecclesia, 100%, Hollow, Knight, indie, game, kick starter, nes, nintendo, super nintendo, switch, retro

Id: UK4kTayXGIg

Length: 19min 27sec (1167 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023