Hippaul Racing

Well, I think I've had a long enough break. This part is mostly long scenes with a bit of treasure hunting and racing thrown in. With the initial scenes out of the way, the first thing on the agenda is racing Hippaul to get the Athlete Queen. For me, skipping levels up to 50 is easy, 55 is somewhat of a challenge, and 60 is difficult. The way I did this was to race 11 times to get Hippaul up to level 55, then going to save, viewing the Artemicion ATE along the way, stealing Hippaul's treasure, and reading the letters. I then went back and mashed those buttons for all I was worth to skip to level 60. It took several tries, but I succeeded. With that done I coasted through the rest of the races one level at a time.

Now, Athlete Queen in hand, I went to Ruby's theater and sat through the scenes until I got control of Zidane. Then I was able to collect the rest of the treasure in Alexandria, including the gil in Ruby's theater. I skipped saving again with Kupo to save some extra time. Reaching the castle triggered some more long scenes until the party arrives in Treno. There, I watched the two ATEs to get the Chimera Armlet, then registered and entered the card tournament. I lost my first card game because of a fluke card battle at the end (this is why I hate Tetra Master). I guess I should have saved after all. Oh well. I won the two games after that without much difficulty. I then ran to Mogrich, read the letter, then skipped town. I ran some of the distance to South Gate and saved with a time of 06:25:20. I beat the target time for this section by a few minutes even with the lost card game, so I'm keeping it.

EDIT: I've since learned that there's a faster way to do this. Upon arriving at Treno, you can watch 'Memories by the Water" and then leave Treno immediately. When you get back, you can read the letter with Mogrich, then watch 'City People' and play all three rounds of the tournament. I don't feel like going back and doing it over, though, so I'll leave this as an opportunity for anyone following in my footsteps to gain some time back on me.