If you needed any other incentive to run PS4, holding the L1 button allows rush to sprint in the overworld (!). Should bring any% runs down below 5 hours.

Also requesting NG+ category - I'm thinking that growth items have the potential to reduce the grind to almost watchable/entertaining levels (especially double ragna-rocks, double especially if they fixed some of the bugs associated with it, which they seem to have done in other parts of the game).

Also hi, I'm Cynas. I'm in love with this game - and I'm finally going to dedicate some time to learning this run (and potentially new routing - NG+ growth items might let you abuse cachexia instead of blackout, which is probably slower, but less RNG).

If you're running on ps4 you don't need blackout to begin with (for the grind, and for lots of weaker fights), since caustic blast targets the entire battlefield in that version for whatever reason.

The grind is unlikely to change immensely with growth items because arts are secondary to the fact you need enough HP to survive H+H/Young -> Conqueror, and you need enough AP to cast blackout on turn 1 to go fast.

The extra movement speed on ps4 actually also somewhat gets cancelled out by obscene load times, but idk what they'd look like if you had like an SSD in it or something.

Otherwise, great to hear you're interested, the game is still great, even if parts of the speedrun are kinda questionable.

I'd be happy to add a category for it if there has been a run of it. Wish we had some PS4 any% runs though.