So I was thinking about routing the game with no codes (Yeah all 20 hours or so) and was here to see if anybody had any thoughts on what in game decisions may be the best directions to go in. While only playing this a couple times and taking the evil path every time, it may not be fastest way for completing the game. With the different major paths and lots of minor paths within the game, it's hard to tell which is better without going through ALL of them. For starters, everything will be a rough estimate, but maybe somebody has some better guesses at what paths to choose or not choose in this case?

You might have already figured some stuff out, but have you tried Heal grinding? I routed the heck out of the Saturn version, and that seemed to be the best option overall. You lose a lot of time early on, but then breeze through most of the game once you're set up.

Not sure how applicable it is to the SNES version (haven't played in years), but it seems like it might balance out. Saving enemy phases is probably a lot more effective on the SNES version, since AI movement is slower.

Essentially, you trap Morgan as the sole survivor in Scenario 3. Block Liana in safely, and then grind Elwin to Sage until he learns Again. Grab the Runestone in Scenario 5. From there, you either grind Liana or Hein depending on what route you've chosen. Liana for Light route, and Hein for all others. (I don't remember if SNES has a Light route that lets you keep Liana, so it might be Hein for all in that version.)

If you grind Liana, use Morgan again in Scenario 4. If you grind Hein, use the top-left mage in Imperial 9. If you choose Hein, you need to keep that Runestone to use on him there. If you choose Liana, the Runestone is just there for funding Elwin's ballistae.

For Liana routes, you start breezing through the game starting at Scenario 5. For Hein routes, it starts at Imperial 10. The grinding itself takes like 45+ minutes (?) on Saturn, so keep that in mind. If you're doing an all endings run, the grind REALLY pays off.

But yeah, that's the basic idea. My route notes are on the Dramatic Edition page, so take a look if you want to see what might apply here as well.

Oh wow. Didn't realize someone had gone through and checked some things. Thanks for the feedback. Didn't even think about grinding Hein off of Cherie in Imperial 9, which I think is probably the best route...maybe? Losing Liana for the few battles after light 13 is rough. Dark Princess in 15 more than anything. I would imagine trading that off for a slow scenario 6 would be more than fine. 7 and 8 go plenty smoothly and then it just kinda depends on how fast it takes to grind Hein in 9. Might not be too bad though. I haven't gone through the battles after that though. Any recommendation on which paths for the later half?

It's possible that the SNES version is different, but I don't recall being able to use Imperial 9 Cherie to grind because she refused to cast Fireball. She had a really nasty habit of attacking anybody caging her in even when it was an incredibly bad idea for her. Going to assume that has something to do with her not being a mage class.

I tested my route on Bizhawk today though, and I noticed that the last few enemies in Imperial 10 don't behave the same way between SNES and Saturn. The enemies start moving after a while, and the usual Fireball mage is obsessed with casting Thunder instead until MP limitations force Fireball. Perhaps Cherie also behaves differently? Worth noting that I was using J 1.0, and I don't know what 1.1 changed.

The run itself was somewhere in the 5:15 range for the Chaos route. I knew the Saturn version would be faster overall, but I honestly expected it to be a smaller gap (certainly not around two hours).

Honestly, I'm really doubting the Hein grind for Any% SNES after this. Teleport is great, and being able to remove all damage roll nonsense for Bernhardt is certainly a plus, but the grind takes SO long. An Elwin grind early + a good support team following him everywhere is probably the better way.

[Edit]: Yeah, I was super wrong on this Elwin grind only thing. Just did some casual testing and I was basically only seven minutes ahead at Scenario 15. Unfortunate that the second grind is probably here to stay (optimally), but at least it makes some of these scenarios far less frustrating?

That's an interesting idea about Light 9 grinding though, assuming I'm understanding you correctly. You're saying to feed Hein to Paladin in Scenario 6, and then use Imelda in Light 9, right? Are you sure that Imelda uses Fireball though? I seem to recall her being Thunder-happy there. Getting Hein any experience early on sounds kind of rough because Elwin is busy breaking everything in half, but perhaps Turn Undead would be a huge deal for him there?

But yeah, when it comes to Light path recommendations, I honestly don't know. I initially worked on a Light route and hit the brick wall of Liana being taken away. Rather than figure out a proper way to deal with that, I chose to just bypass the problem entirely with New Legend (since you keep her there). Obviously not an option for SNES. :(

If I had to guess, it would probably be the Bozel branch in Light 13 and pursuing Sonia in Light 19. Bernhardt is probably too much of a pain in the butt to kill without Blast combos, and chasing Sonia skips dealing with Chaos at all. Not that Chaos is particularly strong, but one less boss to fight sounds good.

Whoops. I forgot that the idea was to get Hein grinded in scenario 10, not 9. Although I figured that with Cherie using fireball that she may continue to use it like other characters, but I'll trust your judgement that she chooses to do some weird attacks here and there. Scenario 10 is the Aaron fight with a couple mages, no? I suppose it doesn't matter which one you are grinding with? I also can't remember if that is a victory condition to kill Aaron or kill all. I thought it was to defeat Aaron, but if that were the case, then I would think he would get in the way of grinding Hein there? I thought he was quite aggressive.

I think with doing the Liana grind I was able to get roughly on a 5:30 pace with the light route, but fumbled it a couple battles after losing Liana. Those battles are quite a pain there. It is probably better to get Hein to teleport us throughout the game for simplicity sake. Seemed like going away from the light route was the right choice, I am just going to need to go through all those imperial battles again.

I do envy the New Legend route being able to keep Liana though. I will probably look to getting into a run or 2 of those sometime in the near future. That cursor movement and other time save is just too nice.