I found a way to skip pretty much all the encounters apart from a few which are possible to skip but is very difficult to pull off. If you pull this off everything that happens in the battles is always the same if you do the exact same thing.

It requires you to play perfect and not take a wrong step. It is possible because you can buffer inputs while moving. It would take a long time to route something like this but I just thought I'd post this just in case anyone was interested.

I can post a video showcasing it at some point...

I'd be interested in checking into that. I've been poking around at Arcana the last few months and would certainly love to do some runs at some point.

Sorry for the late reply. I am now following the game, so I'll be sure to check this out more often.

This information has actually already been heavily discussed here: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/arcana_snes.html

You can find out a lot more information there. There's also been a few speedruns of the game already available on Youtube, with an official TAS being planned.

If you're just learning the game, I have a few route changes you can consider. Chapter 1: Grab the two extra 500G chests Chapter 2: Long Sword for Rooks, 36 Water Cards, 36 Wind Cards, 9 herbs, 3 medicines Chapter 3: Ice Blade/Breast Plate/Iron Shield for Rooks, Scimitar/Seam Mail/Iron Shield for Axs, 72 Wind Cards, 9 medicines After that, I'm pretty sure you can proceed to the rest of the run like normal. Chapter 4, you can probably grab the honeys on the path that you would normally skip for a bit of safety for Chapter 5, but you'll also run the risk of running into more run ending enemies like Medusa.

Hope this helps.

Totally forgot about this as well. It seems like what I discovered was already mentioned in the SDA forum so no need for me to go over it. What I will say is that I was able to make it so I can skip almost every encounter in the first dungeon but it isn't easy.

Also to mention, a TAS already exists for this game (Not sure if this is known as well):

Wow! I had no idea. Thank you for posting this. I've waited a very long time to finally see a TAS of this game and it did not disappoint.

I've been learning more about the game myself and I'd like to point out that battles can be manipulated too and it doesn't require any frame precision whatsoever. Battles are pretty much predetermined at the start but actions can be changed if an enemy takes damage or you call a different spirit.

With that being said, you're only saving about 5 minutes and you're going to be making the zerel fight even more of a gamble than it already is unless you're also able to manipulate call amulets for that fight. It sounds quite possible though.