Year of Alvin

The 2016 Redemption Arc: 「Tales of Xillia: Alvin Solo」
► • 「Tales of Xillia: Alvi...
↳ My magnum opus. Back in the day my first solo run was with Alvin (although an absolute travesty of one which I'd rather not look back at), followed with a couple of re-runs which were not much better.
These along with the endless amount of Musee redos made my channel a joke, but in 2016 I had a promising start for another Alvin run which also fell flat very early on receiving one video yearly until canceled completely.
After entirely burning myself out with optimizing Musee in X2, there was a breakthrough with hacking which allowed playing as bosses in both games, which motivated me to give this game a try with her.
Throughout that run I realized how drastically my knowledge about the game had increased over the years which sparked me to give Alvin one last try.
As expected, after almost exclusively playing a 'bad' character for so long, switching back to Alvin, a character that actually works, made the game dare I say.. easy.
Of course Xillia is still tough to optimize, especially under the no damage restriction, but that's just what made this run so.. extremely fun! Playing as aggressive as possible, optimizing critical chains, manipulating the AI and implementing flashy dodges.. it's all just so engaging and fun!
While the run was mostly pleasant, Xillia inevitably always comes through with its bs.. surprisingly enough the first offender was not the Aquadragons like I expected, but shortly after, Gilland's nearly flawless duo dynamic with Celsius against Alvin's lacking tools of crowd control was a tough one, but nothing tops the pinnacle of bs that's Ivar & Wyvern.. I won't go into detail about that here but if you're somehow unaware of that garbage boss design and wish to be enlightened, I direct you to the playlist above.
I believe mentioning the final boss isn't necessary. Never again.
Though of course even after I finished the run, as I always find something to do better or nitpick on I went back to several fights to redo them, which I ultimately don't regret as I'm very satisfied with the outcome of the full run now.
Even the Devil Beasts, which I just consider extra content are optimized with AI manip strats crafted against each one.
There are still a handful of optional fights that I may or may not tackle in the future, however they are most definitely not a priority;
Golden Mage Knight
Crimson & Azure Servants
Gandala Defense Golems
Arena Chimeriad
Grand Master Arena
3rd Time's the Charm: 「Tales of Xillia 2: Alvin Solo」
► • 「Tales of Xillia 2: Al...
↳ The bonus round no one (not even me) asked for. I suppose it was inevitable, but after finishing with X1, I felt like upgrading this one to a proper run as well. This was an absolute BREEZE, especially considering that I already had a solid foundation for most bosses with my previous run.
Even though I don't think much of this run compared to the X1 one, I'm satisfied with the results as I did actually put in real work this time (unlike the previous attempts at a "fun run") and I managed to implement tons of new resets and further optimized combos!
I consider this run "finished" as well, I originally intended to only do the main story, but ended up tackling the first batch of character episodes as monster bosses are the pinnacle of fun in this game and those let me go truly 'All Out' as Alvin.
I'm not saying I won't ever pick up from where I left at, but I have no plans for that at least in the foreseeable future, as I very rarely boot this game up anymore, only if I come up with some idea specifically.
I've unfortunately grown to find soloing this game extremely boring, as optimal play keeps the enemy locked down for the entire duration of the fight.
However that's not even the gripe I have with the game, it's the fact that so, so many things rely on RNG, resulting in hours of doing the exact same inputs until the stars align and the game finally decides to let you have it (should've played Milla she has no rng grrrr).
I don't mind putting in hours for a video when it's up to execution, but spending an extensive amount of time in a single fight solely because of rng irritates me to no end.
I personally don't get the satisfaction of success from this game anymore, I still enjoy watching this game especially optimized play, but these days I find myself avoiding playing it myself.
I said this last year (and probably the one prior to that as well) but don't expect much activity from now on, some may have already noticed how the channel is in life support with some random one offs once the Alvin content ran out.
And no I'm not secretly working on some other project this time so aside from occasional one offs or redos this is likely it unless I get another motivation spark for a compilation or such. However I can confidently say there won't be any more full runs.