Here's a game probably none of you have ever heard of! Artifact Adventure Gaiden is an open-world retro RPG, with some really strange mechanics that make it a very fast speedrun. You're tasked to prepare the kingdom for the upcoming cataclysm, then 3 years later, defeat the evil boss guy. At the start of the game you get to pick one of three main followers. I pick the one that unlocks every fast-travel location on the entire map. He's a couple minutes faster than the one that gives you 1 million gold to spend, and the one who increases your combat prowess isn't even worth considering. The second strange mechanic is that encounters aren't all random. Every spiderweb in an area is an encounter. And you can burn them all away using kindling, so I don't have to fight a single one of them anyway. Completing quests in the present opens up powerful rewards in the future, and every quest can be completed in at least two different ways, so there are a lot of build options. But the fastest route only gets two: A lifesteal item from the venom fiend, and a powerful ice spell from the gigainsect. Then I just need money, and the easiest way to get enough is to murder a bunch of innocent beasts for their hides. I buy the best equipment I can afford and set out to kill the guardians and the cataclysm itself. I lost 30 seconds dying to the Darkness guardian when he gave me a pattern I'd never seen before, but after that the bossfights all went super well, much faster than any other run, so it's worth it.
