100% Speedrun Stream: sub-3 hour goal

[Aftermath rar]

Edit: Finished the game with a time of 2h 35m 35s! Everything went really well, even though I tried some risky stuff.

https://www.twitch.tv/aftermathrar/v/105241948

Thought I'd link this here since speedruns of this game aren't very well-known. There are a lot of fun exploits I'll be using to grab 100% of items in the game in very unintended ways. It should be fast paced, involve some crazy routes, and hopefully be fun to watch.

[0laf_.]

wtf did i just saw.... you using some hacks/trainer ?? how the heck you are moving, fighting and flying like that.

[Aftermath rar]

Nope, just using the normal game mechanics, found by various glitch hunters and speedrunners in the 5 years since the original came out. There's a lot of ways to speed up movement, especially when using mouse and keyboard.

From the start, there are several movement options available: the first is that by activating Focus, holding LMB to do the sword uppercut and then mashing dash sideways or backwards will cancel the two actions into each other, allowing you to move quickly along the ground. I use that extensively at the start, one just has to be careful of enemy lockons that will change your camera.

The Meteor Impact (air dash) also has some nice effects. Normally it gives you a quick dash forward and down, but if you hold Focus while using it to the side or backwards, you can cover a large distance completely horizontally. This allows War to make quite a few jumps that would otherwise be slightly out of reach until later.

For attacking, when you swing your sword, you can hit block to cancel it, then let go of block and swing again. It lets you kill stuff way faster than normal.

After getting the boomerang, the real fun starts... When you use a Gear, if you swap to a different gear and jump at the same time, it will give you a normal jump again, allowing you to repeat the process for infinite jumps. On keyboard, I bind jump to 4 and "Next Gear" to 5, so when I'm jumping, I'll use the horn or gun, mash 4/5 three times (to bring it back to the original gear) and then repeat the process to gain height very quickly. By throwing in air dashes as well, I'm able to go just about anywhere in the world as long as I can point myself in the right direction.

Once you get the gun another technique becomes available: Gun dashing. The gun normally makes War very slow, but it has a strange property of preserving momentum from the air. So by cycling jump, dash, shoot one is able to move nearly as quickly as the horse. Doing so allows you to go through the Ashlands without even needing the Chrono ability.

So while it might seem really crazy/full of hacks, I was playing on a normal purchased copy of the game on the latest patch. There's just a lot more available to War than you'd see on a casual playthrough.

[0laf_.]

Never thought you could do something like that with game mechanics thanks for explaining in full details. Might try dash moving and flying just for fun now, surely won't be completing game like that but some back tracking using these tricks will save serious time.