I love speedrunning this game but I do so with something I like to call the "wall climb exploit". It allows you to climb a wall of the gateway islands at the end of each chapter by turning off vsync on PC and repeatedly jumping, thus skipping having to reach all 3 towers and fight any bosses.

But we should not ignore the skills necessary to speedrun the game as it was originally intended, finding all of the towers and fighting the bosses. And with the exploit you save a lot of time. Based on estimates of current runs of both categories and my personal knowledge of the game, this single exploit could save anywhere from 45 minutes to at least an hour against more intended play on any category.

Because of the extent to which the exploit can save time compared to more normal methods, I suggest the idea that we split the categories depending on whether or not we use exploits like these. We could call it NME (No Major Exploits), All Towers And Bosses (could be more self explanatory), or something else.

Should we agree to split the leaderboards, it would not disrupt any current rankings, as all of the NG+ runs don't use this exploit and all the any% runs do, allowing for easy changes. It could also possibly make introductions to speedrunning this game easier.

I agree.

I make an edit to the NG+ category and called it NME NG+ (we can change that if the name is not clear). I'm alse open to have a category with exploits and NG+ if someone wants a better boat and the wall climbing. But having a category where you should find the towers and fight the bosses should at least exist.