So, basically, it is about a much better heuristics, not a general algorithm. Of course, with a specialized heuristics one could get a lot of pruning, but gene

So, basically, it is about a much better heuristics, not a general algorithm. Of course, with a specialized heuristics one could get a lot of pruning, but generally, if there is no way to come with a specialized heuristic when there is no way to have a jumping heuristic (one have to take one step at a time) and there is no way to look ahead for a specialized nodes, the A* is still the king. But in AI almost everything is about finding a good-enough heuristic.