After yesterday's run i decided to compare my new PB to Dreamboum's 3:09:20 run. The 2 main reasons being that both were done on the same emulator and that this run has the fastest posted in game time. It seemed like a great place to see where I need to improve to close the gap further.

My run is 3 minutes slower both in terms of in-game time and RTA which confirms that the emulator behaves the same in both cases.

So from that I wanted to see where I lost 3mins. I had some ideas already since my run still incorporates some safety strats but not 3mins worth.

After the first 4 days I was 10 secs ahead. We both avoided the possible extra encounters in the police station. I did the safety save before the Micro UZ while Dreamboum got into one extra encounter in the hospital. These two things mostly cancel each other out. So up until this point nothing of note really seperate the two runs.

Day 5

I take the CM Protector from the warehouse which Dreamboum does not. In total this takes approximately 30 secs. This includes getting the armor, equipping it and discarding the CM Vest 2. However I'm not entirely convinced that this is a net 30 secs loss. The CM Protector does make a substantial difference in PE damage taken which removes the need for manual healing when facing some of the more powerful attacks from later bosses. This can help saving a few turns and play more aggressively. It is still a time loss but an educated guess here would be something more along the lines of 15 secs.

In Chinatown, Dreamboum goes for the tool which I no longer do, this saves me 15 secs.

We both get into one extra encounter in the sewers, Dreamboum's being a bit easier than mine (3 bats vs 2 bats and 2 snakes respectively). When entering the subway I am now 39 secs behind which seems right given the longer encounter and getting the CM Protector.

Subway.

Now the route commonly thought to be the fastest through the subway is to go directly up the right tunnel, ignoring the middle platform and left tunnel.

This is wrong for a couple reasons.

You can reach the middle platform faster than entering the right tunnel.

The left tunnel is 3 secs shorter to run through than the right tunnel. This works both ways, so 6 secs faster in total.

Then you have the fight itself which is significantly faster (1 mole compared to 1 mole and 2 bats). This also works both ways, as getting this encounter again on the way out saves time once again compared to getting the right tunnel's encounter again. Depending on luck with the bats this is anywhere from 1 to 3 extra ATBs per fight in the right tunnel.

The time needed to return to the left or right tunnel on the way back from getting the subway key is identical and from exiting either tunnels to reaching the last screen where the subway exit is takes approximately 10 secs in both cases.

Taking the left tunnel is faster and opens the option of grabbing up to 2 extra medicine 3 if needed. My guess is that even if you grab both chests this route is still faster by a few seconds.

Museum

I'll simply say that because of some ridiculously good RNG I had 3 fewer fights in the museum compared to Dreamboum. This allowed me to catch up some of the time I lost in the sewers/subway (because of a slower Centipede fight) but ended up costing me one level and therefore not getting Liberate. Also since the enemy composition in encounters in the museum is largely random it's difficult to directly compare runs without timing each individual fights. At the end of the museum i was back down to 47 secs behind Dreamboum from 1:04 after Centipede.

Eve 4 and Ultimate Being.

You REALLY want Liberate for Eve 4. The idea of not using Liberate in favor of just using the gun and hoping for crits in the 2nd phase is absolutely not viable as lengthy as the Liberate animation is.

First Eve's movement is very erratic and makes hitting her with the short range of the Micro UZ difficult at best, then you have the slow animation when she flies up to shoot her spears and the wait for her to come back down and finally she has a number of attacks that slows you down or simply debuffs your haste status. I lost around 50secs on this phase alone by not having Liberate.

Next use of Liberate comes against the 3rd phase of U.B. which is much less of an issue but still most likely slower in all but the best possible circumstances.

In this phase I lost approximately 17 secs compared to Dreamboum. Two things to note here, Dreamboum goes for 6 ATBs before using Liberate which is probably one more than necessary while I went for one manual healing which was also most likely unnecessary. These two cancel each other out however so the 17 secs time loss is once again the lack of Liberate. It is conceivable that with a lot of luck with U.B. sticking in the same corner multiple times in a row and with enough crits that the phase could have been similar in length but unlikely and certainly a lot less safe.

So there we have it. No liberate means around 1:10 of time lost by itself. Removing this and some of the time lost to safety strats the rest of the time i lost is due to slower fights (2nd phase of U.B was 9 secs slower for example) and possibly faster menuing on Dreamboum's part.

Do you have any footage comparing left and right tunnels without the encounters? The encounters are easily in left tunnel's favor, but I would like to see the lines you compared for Left vs Right. Dreamboum's run lines in his PB are not great.

I do think in the event of a re-encounter left has an edge. Something minor to consider would be experience gained on each path. While rare, it does increase the chances of missing Liberate on time depending on Museum encounters.

Even without encounters, comparing lines kind of sucks since you could end the fights in different places. Still probably the best comparison I think.

I don't have footage but testing with d-pad instead of analog stick makes the movement very consistent and reaching either tunnels on the way back is almost identical (within a few tens of a second) and left tunnel saves around 3 secs each trip.

It's a minor time gain if there's no second encounter and without picking up the chests for extra medicines and just about  even if you pick up the chests. The time you save on the encounter makes up for the time it takes to cross the middle platform on the way in.

 If there's a second encounter then left tunnel is always faster.

As for XP consideration that i don't know. I suppose it's not impossible but I doubt it's what prevented me from having liberate. Having only 1 of the 7 possible extra encounters if the museum was a bigger issue.