A PB by almost a full hour! This run was way less all over the place and it didn't have any excruciatingly painful time losses like last time, thankfully. Still, though, this run had its fair share of poor play in many areas.

The skill issues really started to show in Chapter 4 and onwards. I somehow yet again took a death to Bandits and also didn't pull Boreas this time, so I was forced to salvage. I also wasted what was likely another few minutes pulling numerous extra core crystals to get enough Earth blades for SS Chips (including a Boreas pull in Chapter 5, because why wouldn't that happen).

But those mistakes were minor in comparison to the disaster that was the final four chapters of the game. In Chapter 7, I lost at least 5 minutes to Jalos, which like honestly whatever, GGs, hard fight. In Chapter 8, I lost another 5 minutes to Infernal Guldo. I messed up the fight by missing my fusion combo, relaunched the game to try again, and then missed the chain attack, so bye-bye my XP. Regardless, I said fuck it and continued on. I then lost almost 4 more minutes by the end of the chapter by screwing up Data Room Stealth and then trying to make up my XP deficit by chain attacking the big bird guy. In Chapter 9, I lost a few minutes to Jin 3, and then messed up the Amalthus insta-kill and had to make up strats on the fly. I died to him a few times and lost 7 minutes. And then, on Aion, I barely missed the Insta-Pnuema strat and had to cautiously and tediously drain the last quarter of his health, which cost probably 2-3 more minutes.

I could totally improve on this run, but since sub 6 was my big goal, I'm going to let this sit, at least for now. I might return when I have more time on my hands to try and get a top 10 run.

PS - I must have screwed up my audio channel splitting on OBS, because my mic audio didn't save in the VOD (nice one, Shiz). No matter: Enjoy the sole gameplay of a top 50% Xenoblade 2 Speedrunner! Woooo yeahhhh!