Escaping Evil Forest

I took a few seconds to heal up at the spring before heading off. It seemed like I had a rather large percentage of attempts fail from getting a random encounter, but I finally made it to Plant Brain.

I started off the fight by having Vivi attack Zidane. This brought him to critical HP, causing Blank to appear. One attack from Blank and a Fire Sword from Steiner were all it took to kill the boss. It did manage to get an attack in, but it was a quick physical attack and didn't knock anyone out, so I let it slide.

In the forced encounter with the 2 Plant Spiders Vivi's turn came up immediately, so a multi-target Fire ended the battle as soon as it began. I unequpped Blank after the battle, giving him a Broadsword instead of his Iron Sword.

I got a bit turned around on the world map, so I wasn't quite at the entrance to the Ice Cavern when the nameplate disappeared. I just saved outside since I'm not too bothered by having to watch the scene each time I try to go in. I can just remember how I save some extra time by doing it this way. :) My time is now 00:48:50.

Quitting Tantalus

This part opens with marching into the forest and battling the Prison Cage. The starting ATB positions are scripted, so there's nothing you can do about them. Prison Cage will always go before you and will always use the same attacks. In the second battle, I stole the Broadsword before finishing it off with Steiner. (I forgot to mention it until now, but I messed up when naming Steiner. I didn't want to waste my excellent King Leo battle and first try sword fight, so I kept it. On my file, Steiner's name is Steine.)

I ransacked the Prima Vista and went to fight Baku. In this fight, I deliberately dragged the fight out an extra turn so I could get Zidane's trance gauge to fill a little more. As a bonus, I managed to steal the Iron Sword in that extra turn. I'll definitely be putting that to good use.

I read Ruby's letter and saved with Mosco, then headed out to search for Garnet. Luck must be on my side right now because I made it to Monty on my first try! I optimized Steiner and Zidane, read the two letters, and saved. My time is now 00:42:51. Zidane's equipment is the same as before except that he now is wearing a Silk Shirt. Steiner is equipped as follows:

Iron Sword
Bronze Helm
Bronze Gloves
Bronze Armor

Absconding with the Princess

This part was pretty easy. I got through on it on my first try once I managed to fix the disc reading problem. Rounding up all the knights was a piece of cake. When I got control of Zidane I optimized him. He now has the Mage Masher, Leather Hat, Wrist, Leather Shirt, and Moonstone equipped.

In the first fight with Steiner Zidane got the first turn and attacked. Blank and Cinna stole the Leather Hat and Silk Shirt, and Zidane then finished Steiner with one more attack.

The other fights with Steiner are as simple as they get. Just knock out everyone except Garnet to get through them quickly.  Steiner and the Pluto Knights never even got a turn.  After a few FMVs, I'm now saved in the Evil Forest with a time of 00:31:21.

I Want To Be Your Canary

This one wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't keep having to deal with the PS2 not reading the disc right after swapping in order to skip the FMV. I'll have to look into ways to fix that.

The King Leo battle I had was very close to perfect. I took out the small fries immediately and then focused my attention on the king. Surprisingly, it took 7 attacks to take him down, so he got 2 attacks in, but thankfully I didn't have to see any of the SFX "attacks".

The sword fight was no problem.  I impressed all 100 nobles on my first try.  That, along with my excellent battle gave me a finishing time of 00:17:42 for this part. I have 10,814 gil.

Finally getting started!

Hard to believe it took me so long to get everything straightened out, but now that's all taken care of and I'm ready to start for real! Here's how my first circuit went:

As soon as I gained control of Zidane, I changed the cursor position to 'Memory', the movement speed to 'Run', the battle speed and message speed to maximum, and the target window to 'Always'. The other settings are already how I want them, so I left them alone.

The Masked Man battle was excellent! I started out with Zidane stealing the Wrist. Cinna then stole the Mage Masher. After that, the boss attacked Cinna, KOing him, and the others knocked themselves out. I couldn't have asked for a better battle.

I looted Alexandria with Vivi. I made a slight mistake with the little girl running back to her house. She was running back to the house as I approached, but I thought I could loot the house if I got in before her. Turned out not to be true. As I was leaving the house, she went out again, so I turned around and went back in to loot the place. My time at the end of this circuit is 00:08:33, which I think is pretty good, especially with that screw up, so I'm keeping it.

I had a previous attempt where I clocked in at 00:08:41, but I decided that wasn't good enough, so I did it over.