Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to the Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja 4 TAS in 41 minutes and 45 seconds.

I am l555444333222. I was the author of this TAS,

and I'll be commentating on the strategies I used on this.

In order for this run to be as fast as it is, you need to have

a save file from one of the previous Ultimate Ninja games,

so you can get the save file bonus.

I'm going to be using that to buy some special items that boost my

attack power and allow me to use Rasengan as many times as I want.

In the beginning, there's not much you can do to save time other than

just cutting these corners as sharply as possible.

Using Rasengan from a distance here saves time, because you move faster

when using Rasengan than you do by normal walking.

Normally, when you go across this bridge, it falls down right before you get to the end of it,

but if you position yourself on the very edge of the bridge,

you can actually avoid that happening.

So taking the optimal path, going as close to the edges as possible, is

actually even faster than it already would have been.

Also, when you do a jump from the ground, you waste one frame because Naruto stands still

for one frame before a jump.

The early fights in this game are all 3D fights.

The best strategy to use for them is to just gather all the enemies into one spot

and use Rasengan on all of them at once.

Whenever you finish a fight in under 15 seconds, you get a huge experience bonus.

This game scales the amount of experience and money you get from a

fight based on how long it took to beat it.

This run gets so much extra experience that I was able to skip one of the fights in the cave.

Using a shadow clone jump saves ten frames over walking normally.

Remember how I said jumping is slower than walking?

That only applies to jumps from the ground.

So you'll notice I actually walk off all of these platforms

and then do a double jump.

Doing a double jump doesn't lose one frame.

So it's actually faster to just walk off the edge.

The loading zones between each of these rooms are all rounded a little bit.

They don't follow along where the dotted line is.

So if you aim towards the center of them, it actually saves time over

going to the closest corner of them.

This fight is a lot harder to optimize than the first one, because all the enemies start

off on opposite ends of the room,

and so it takes longer to gather them all into one spot.

Now we unlocked dashing and shadow blurring.

This is the fastest form of movement in the game, and is also incredibly

difficult to control in real time.

This is the reason I wanted to make the TAS.

The difference in the level of control you get from a TAS compared

to real time is enormous, especially for a move like this,

which feels incredibly clunky in real time.

Did you see how Naruto glowed for a second there?

That happens whenever you do an attack at the same frame that the fight ends.

That's the glow that he normally gets when you teleport behind an enemy.

Whenever a jump is too far to be made by shadow blurring across the gap,

It's always faster to just use the shadow clone jump instead of using a jump and a double jump,

because shadow clone jumps allow you to move faster.

And it even makes up for the fact that it has a startup animation.

It's just that fast.

At the very end of a fight, when the battle report starts showing up,

You can actually make it show up faster by pressing circle at the perfect time,

shortly after naruto starts celebrating.

You can also get rid of it faster by the pressing circle after it's

completely shown up on the screen.

When I go through loading zones, you'll notice how I stop using shadow blur

the instant I touch the zone.

This actually saves time on the loading screen,

because whenever you leave a room, you get a letterbox effect on the screen

And that effect only takes place when Naruto lands on the ground.

So if you're shadow blurring, that letter boxing effect takes longer to

start showing up.

And it can actually extend the loading screen. I think that's because it behaves like a cutscene.

So the point is, you have to land on the ground as fast as possible

when you touch a loading zone, or else the loading screen will be longer.

Picking up this experience is unnecessary,

but it's faster than going around it.

So I picked it up.

The text box is really quick, so it's fine.

All of the fights in this game can be skipped by going around the very edge of the room.

However,

if you time your shadow blur properly, you can actually go right

through the fight trigger and disable it.

So even if you stop using shadow blur and go back to where

the fight trigger was, it will no longer be there.

I use a different route than the RTA route in this TAS.

For this part, specifically,

it's faster to go back towards the entrance of the cave first,

and then talk to all the people in the village.

This is where I buy all the items with the money I got from the save file bonus.

I ended up not needing two of those

because I found strategies that help me save time and therefore save items.

This new route is quite difficult to do in real time, but it is much faster than what RTA runners do.

We skip over a large portion of the canyon by doing this precise double jump,

instead of going around.

I also took a shortcut on the way back to the village,

but this one is much, much harder, and it's probably not worth going for

in real time.

This jump right here is incredibly precise,

but if you manage to do it, it saves a lot of time.

I also found a glitch when doing this TAS

where I actually clipped through this canyon over here,

and it's actually faster to do that than landing on it.

RTA runners would take a shortcut from this room.

They would go up that elevator and then wait for their chakra to recover,

and then go up the next elevator and then go through the door and break some boulders

and finally, they would end up further into the cave.

But if you can move perfectly, like a TAS, it's actually faster to go the long way around

instead of having to wait for your chakra to recover multiple times.

You normally end up in this room if you took the shortcut.

If you want to be able to control the direction of shadow blur immediately after doing a triangle jump,

you're going to have to let go of shadow blur for at least one frame,

to reset yourself and then start another shadow blur.

This fight is where I put those items that I bought to good use.

I also found out that you can do more damage to this enemy by hitting it on its legs

than you can hitting it from the front or behind.

The teleport attack and dash attack are equally as fast, down to the frame,

so I did it one way, one time, and the other way, the other time,

just for variety.

From what I can tell, these capture sequences are deterministic and don't use any RNG.

So kakashi will always go to the same spot every time,

and itachi is the same way.

The position they choose to go to is based on your position.

For all of these fights, I always RNG-manipulate some kind of helpful item.

In this case, I got an armor break seal.

RNG manipulation is a lot more powerful in this game than it is in the previous Ultimate Ninja games.

In Ultimate Ninja 2, charging up your Ultimate Jutsu doesn't manipulate the RNG.

And in Ultimate Ninja 3, it does manipulate the RNG, but the frame on which you do it doesn't matter.

So you can only choose between two different options.

Either you get the RNG that doesn't charge Ultimate Jutsu, or the RNG that does.

However, in Ultimate Ninja 4, the RNG is going to be different depending on which frame

you decide to charge the Ultimate Jutsu.

So you have many more options for what item you want to get.

And oftentimes, RNG manipulation doesn't even cost time in this game

like it does in the other games.

When figuring out what I wanted to do with these fights, I did a mix of

watching the RTA run and experimenting with the combat strategies myself.

And this is the strategy that I found that's easily applicable to RTA runs as well.

When you get a combo of 20, you get Show Mode with Kankuro.

It increases his attack speed and his power,

and it allows him to use his second level Ultimate Jutsu.

I found that using a teleport attack to close the distance is faster than using Rasengan from a distance.

However, in this flight, it's actually faster to use Rasengan to go the

distance, because you want to hit him towards the wall so that you won't

have to travel any distance anymore.

For some reason, this fight trigger couldn't be skipped by just shadow blurring Straight through the zone.

I actually had to go around.

That's probably because it had a cutscene associated with it, too.

Guy's Night Phoenix can be cancelled by using a ninja tool halfway through it.

I used that to get a little bit of extra chip damage.

And I also picked up energy pills from that dummy, just so I could use it infinitely.

Neji has a similar strategy.

They both have really strong jutsus, so I make sure to abuse them as much as possible.

They're also very fast, so they're perfect for this.

Tenten, on the other hand, isn't very good.

Her ninjutsu is bad, her taijutsu sucks, and the only

way to make it a little bit better is by throwing 40 projectiles at the enemy to activate Ninja Tool Mode.

which boosts your speed and attack power, and allows you to use your second-level Ultimate Jutsu.

If you hit a falling enemy on the same frame he touches the ground, the game will make him stand up and take the hits instead of hitting the ground.

I've been doing that on almost every fight but this fight is where I do that the most.

Lee has a really good throw.

It's very easy to combo with it, so I use it a lot.

I use a different strategy with Guy in his second fight,

because he can buff himself with the 8 gates using his taunt.

It's equally as fast as his other strategy.

That jank you saw at the end happens when you kill your opponent by making him hit a wall very close to the ground.

He instantly touches the ground, instead of

freeze framing and then slowly dropping to it.

It doesn't save any time over a regular ending, though.

It just looks funny.

Sakura has a move that can lower the enemy's defense.

It's her neutral back ground attack.

If you do the inputs for a jutsu immediately after the inputs for an attack, you can do it even after the enemy has died.

Itachi moves to a position based on your position,

so I make sure to stand as close as possible to that spawn point,

and then wait for him to teleport, then continue moving to his spawn point as soon as possible.

Itachi's AI is incredibly hard to deal with as a TASer.

He uses substitutions and blocking a lot.

It is really difficult to get the RNG I needed to combo him while also doing RNG manipulation for item drops.

Doing both of those at the same time was absolutely agonizing.

And it took hundreds of attempts for both kakashi and Naruto.

And that's the run! ^o^

This TAS took about 3 months to make, and I think it turned out pretty well.

It could probably be about 10 seconds faster if I had done more experimenting with it and fixed a couple of its imperfections, but that's not such a big deal.

I hope you enjoyed it anyway.