Part 15: Reshef of Destruction part 10

Reshef of Destruction part 10



I've had enough. I mean I've REALLY had enough. To beat both Pegasus and Reshef in the same run I'd have to draw Phoenix Ra twice. My luck is not nearly up to that.

So, in the finale to this LP, we're going to take luck out of the equation. That's right, it's time to learn RNG Manipulation.

The speedruns of the various Yugioh games naturally use luck manipulation wherever they can get it. Manipulating Reshef (and by extension, Sacred Cards) is very easy to understand, but highly difficult in practice.

The first thing to note is that the RNG always has the same starting seed when you begin a new game, and the RNG only advances when it needs to roll dice for shuffling your deck, or when it needs to randomly determine a roaming NPC's movement. If you save, the RNG seed's position is also saved, but note that the title screen's graphical effects also advance the RNG.

This allows speedrunners to route a path through the game where they get the best possible outcomes of every duel on every run. How does that help us? Well you may have noticed, if you've played this game, that anytime you get into a cycle of losing a duel, shutting the game off in rage, reloading and then rushing back to whatever duel you lost, as quick as you can, results in the same opening hands on both sides a good chunk of the time. This is because you made the same movements with the same timing (unintentionally no doubt) between reloading and restarting the duel.

So now you kinda know how the RNG works, assuming my explanation is good. When editing your deck, though the game displays your deck sorted by card number (or whatever you sort it by) internally the order of the cards is the same as you put them in. If you take a card out, that card is removed and everything after it is shifted up. Imagine a stack of real cards, basically. When a duel starts, it writes the numbers 1 to 40 in a random order, each number being a card's position in your deck, and that's the order the cards are drawn.

Put all that together, and you can manipulate any duel by editing your deck and remembering the order of the cards, saving, resetting, rushing to whatever duel you're dealing with, noting the cards of the opening hand, resetting, reloading, editing the deck so the cards you want in the opening hand are in the positions the game rolled, then entering whatever duel you want while making sure the NPC movements are the same, then boom, one manipulated duel ready to go.

Hopefully that doesn't sound like TOO much more effort than it's ultimately worth.



Now, if there's a moving NPC between your house and the duel you want to manipulate, you obviously have to account for NPC movement. Depending on where you are in the game, there could be either Ishizu (who doesn't move) or Espa's brothers (who do move) on this screen.



So, I note what cards in my deck appeared in my hand, and I then edit my deck to make sure the cards I want are in the same positions as these.

It is, of course, much easier to just save state before the duel, but whatever.



Here's the same duel, post-manipulation. The cards are Revival Jam, Catapult Turtle, Phoenix Ra, Soul of the Pure, and Dian Keto the (no longer freaky) Cure Master. The latter two are recovery cards that bring my LP up to 15,000.

Phoenix Ra then deals that amount as damage through Battle Mode Ra's effect. That unfortunately leaves 5,000 LP since Pegasus starts with 20,000 and I'm limited to a single Dian Keto. So I summon Revival Jam and duplicate it, then on the next turn I tribute one for Catapult Turtle, whose effect is to tribute all your other monsters and deal damage equal to the total ATK of every last one of them.

You might be wondering, then, what I'm going to do against Reshef because I only have 1 LP left after Ra's effect.



Simple: I did not only manipulate one duel, I manipulated TWO.



ZERO-TURN KILL.



Pegasus comes to his senses and orders us to seal him along with Reshef inside the giant Goemon robot.

Speaking of whom. Did you know that Pegasus's alias in Japan is "Taiyoh Tenma", meaning "Solar Pegasus"?

Well, there was also that spinoff manga, Yu-Gi-Oh! R, that introduced us to Pegasus's adopted sons...the TENMA brothers.

Why. Why do they keep referencing back to this game. They can't POSSIBLY be proud of their work here. I had to make so many edits to the game code to make the game as enjoyable as Sacred Cards was. Of course, in the best case scenario, we shouldn't need ANY external edits to make a game good.



So we seal away Reshef, and naturally the castle has to crumble because that's just how all video games are meant to end, with the final boss's lair collapsing. The player character takes one look back before leaving.



Mokuba did something USEFUL?!



Cut to the Kaibaman show running as usual.



Then cut to every other character gathering in the city, worrying about whether we'll return or not.



Whether they want to show it or not.



There's gotta be a double meaning there.



These scenes occur regardless of whether you completed the robot monkey sidequest.



By raft? Why by raft?!



Meanwhile, business is booming. Better not tell the kids about how irrationally inflated the prices are!



Good to know Espa and his brothers have faith in us.



Are you for fucking real?



RECOGNITION AT LAST!



Everyone gathers in a familiar location and hails the victorious.



He...he said "thank you"!



Oh, sure! You did so much important shit, after all.



...okay, fine. You win this one.



NO NO NO NO DON'T YOU DARE TAKE THEM AWAY AGAIN.



sigh Well, we have no choice, I guess. Sorry Atem, looks like you're stuck on Earth in this continuity!



Then they show a bunch of shots of the destroyed castle because...uh...I don't know?



So are they trying to say Pegasus is alive? There's no sequel to this so I can't imagine what they're going for.



The credits roll.

It's over.



THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! YOU DIDN'T DO YOUR STINKING JOB!



Who the heck is Rachel Ryan?!


What the FUCK?! (Disclaimer: The credits probably refer to someone else.)



Wait, no, it's not the end quite yet. What did you expect? The fun never ends with this crap.



Reload your save and you'll find a new area on the map. (Oh, and the God cards aren't actually taken away, by the way)



Welcome to the last stand for this nonsense: The Hall of Eternity. Nine more duelists are ready for a challenge any time.



Well, eight of them, anyways. Dark Marik is unlocked after putting in the Phoenix Ra code.



Shadi and Dark Bakura are here because we had to make use of those sprites somehow.



For reasons I can't figure out, they use "Possessed Joey" here instead of the real Joey. Some of the duels here also have recycled music from Sacred Cards.



The last thing of note is Noah Kaiba, a filler villain and the last person I wanted to see here, but whatever.

Now, I'd like to say upfront that this post-game is interesting and worth showing. But I couldn't really figure out a way to make it interesting, because after I describe what's going on here to you, you can use your imagination and imagine me resetting until I get a Phoenix Ra draw. Because that's basically what it is.

To start, all nine of these jerks get MASSIVE amounts of starting Life Points. Shadi, Simon, Pegasus and Joey all begin with Thirty thousand. Dark Yugi, Dark Bakura, Dark Marik, Seto Kaiba, and Noah Kaiba all begin with SIXTY THOUSAND! What the FUCK. You know, I actually came up with some speed-kill strategies, but they're all THWARTED by how many Life Points these shits get.

And that's not the end of it either. All nine of them start on the Yami field and have three copies of seven of the most broken cards in the game:

Change of Heart - Steals one of your monsters, usually so they can tribute it for one of theirs
Monster Reborn - Revives a monster in your graveyard on their side
Megamorph - +500 attack points to any monster, any at all
Pot of Greed - Draw 2 cards for free, so they can get even more broken cards out
Harpie's Feather Duster - Wipes out all your trap cards
Swords of Revealing Light - Stops you from attacking for 3 turns and why the hell was this card invented again?!
Torrential Tribute - Triggered by attacking and it destroys all of your monsters! Hooray!

Yes. This area is, in fact, worse than the final boss. There isn't even a point to this area, either. The only reward for any duel here is a LOT of money, Deck Capacity, and sometimes a good card. So if you're not interested in the multiplayer (even with my modifications and taking into account the possibility that link cable emulation is highly flawed, good lord was it slow) you probably won't even bother with this.

Only Phoenix Ra can hard counter everything I've just described, and even then, Yugi, Marik and Kaiba all have God cards. The only good thing I can think of is that those broken spells and traps constitute 50% of their decks, leaving not a lot of space for their monsters. Not that this matters much with as much as 60,000 LP to get through. Since I don't really want to show all nine duels in full, just imagine monsters constantly being stolen (Especially by Pegasus, NINE of his cards can do it) and Ra getting a new disciple in the form of yours truly. So here's a speedrun with RNG manipulation instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m45RX8tQ9iU

So that is all. The final boss thoroughly humiliated, and the post-game's bullshit revealed.

If you're not satisfied with this closing the LP, maybe you'd like to try the game yourself. In that case, I have just the patch for you.

Reshef of Destruction "It's actually tolerable this time" patch

Download IPS Patch Here!

Apply to the US version of Reshef of Destruction.

Changes:
-Selling a card gives you 50% of the card's price
-Cards can be sold even at 1 copy
-Card prices never change
-Life points always start at 8000 for the player
-Life points always start at 8000 for all opponents outside the Hall of Eternity
-Duelist level no longer does anything
-Permanent effects show text only once per card
-The permanent effect cursor no longer has to take 2 seconds of your time to scan the board
-New Deck Cost formula implemented with adjustments

-Dark-Eys Illusionist, Nightmare Penguin, Barox, Dark Chimera, King of Yamimakai, Castle of Dark Illusions, Reaper of the Cards, and Metal Guardian now have accurate TCG stats
-Exodia and the Petit Moth cards now have orange card colors
-Fire Reaper, Ooguchi, Rainbow Flower, Jinzo #7, and Queen's Double can now attack directly
-Infinite Dismissal was given Negate Attack's graphic
-Torrential Tribute was given Mirror Force's graphic
-Former Ritual Monsters are no longer Divine attribute
-Ritual Summoning no longer possible. The Ritual spells were replaced with three brand new cards:
-Weather Report: His effect negates the effect of Swords of Revealing Light
-Maiden With Eyes of Blue: Her effect summons Blue-Eyes White Dragon
-Kaibaman: His effect sacrifices himself to summon any Dragon monster from your hand, including Slifer. Irony?

Anyways, with that out of the way, that will in fact conclude this double-feature Yu-Gi-Oh mess! Holy crap I'm gonna play a GOOD card game. Where are my Digimon cards...