I'd only add that I'm checking the same four bytes in memory that DrT found in order to determine loads. The only thing changing is that it's being accessed consistently. The old pointer would sometimes be overwritten (at the 0xA38 offset, specifically) at random intervals (it's part of a collection of 30 pointers in that particular region, all of which can change during any given load). The new pointer hasn't been overwritten once in the many hours we've looked at it.

Here's the VOD.

In summary:

• The timer stops during fight intros and story objectives, any time there's big text on screen. After a continue during a fight, the timer does run during the fight intro, which is an interesting quirk.
• The timer continues to count at any moment that the player is in control, including during cutscenes since they can be skipped.
• The timer continues to run during the credits. I think maybe they can be skipped in NG+, so that could be why the timer runs there?
• The timer continues to run during the results screen and all the way up until you make a completion save, which is why there's always a discrepancy between the two numbers.
• On a continue from a game over, the timer resets to exactly the start of the fight or chase segment that you game overed on. Annoying! Of course, we don't ever want to die in a speedrun anyway, and in a deathless run the IGT is exactly what you would expect it to be, but all the same that's an unfortunate thing for speedrunning specifically.

Overall, in-game time (in Y3 at least) seems to be a solid metric of actual playtime in the game. It's different than what we typically count in a speedrun, because it excludes fight intros and the like. There are also a couple of quirks around continuing from a game over. (It's possible that other games in the series handle those quirks differently than in 3.) For deathless runs, and only deathless runs, IGT seems to be an effective comparison between runs in Yakuza 3.

It's consistent, as in it counts exactly when the player is in control of the game. But RGG doesn't count some things that we do count. For example, the in-game timer pauses during fight intros, which we traditionally count, and unpauses the moment that Kiryu can be controlled by the player. (Of course, that's not necessarily a problem.)

One hurdle for using the in-game time is actually that results screen itself, the one you're talking about. The in-game timer continues to count up while that results screen is being shown (the player is in control, after all), so the play time it shows on that screen will always differ from the save file you make immediately after that screen. (But again, we could all agree on how to handle that.)

I'll do an "IGT%" stream soon where I link the Livesplit timer to the IGT to show when it's running and when it's paused. The results are very predictable, they're just not what we've traditionally done.

The end of Flash has caused this game to no longer run. If you own Temple of the Dragon, take Flash.ocx from that game's distro folder and copy it into this game's distro folder. (Use the Steam Library's option for Local Files if you're not sure how to find these otherwise.)

If you don't have Temple, PM me. I'll see about hosting the file somewhere.

I'd vote not to. You can skip cutscenes in this and the base game with a complete file, yeah, but it feels inauthentic somehow? It's worth commenting, we intentionally don't do it in Monster Slayer.

I think that rolling around in midair, like the new skip of the fight atop the tree, is just fun to perform and to watch, and cuts out on a boring fight that we were skipping anyway. It's when you use it to cut across the map that it's ridiculous and not too fun to watch, and that really only applies to the start of the game because the end-game areas are located physically below it and relatively nearby.

At the tree, you can start to roll off-camera if you go too far, but the farthest you can land is just past the yellow guys that spawn at the base of the tree. (Or into the water, causing you to reach death.) The game will sometimes get confused there on the way down, and load you in and out of the area if you roll in a direction it doesn't like. But you're just losing time if you hit those loads, rather than getting anywhere new.

Alright, so me and StackyMcBears have both done some stupidly quick runs using the new trick, void rolling.

This should be isolated in its own category, we both agree. Prior runs in Any% Easy Mode should move to a second category that specifically excludes this trick in the rules: "No usage of infinite air rolling where the camera locks in place and Garshasp rolls off-screen to enter a new loading zone."

tl;dr Any% (No Void Rolling) should exist as a second category, because it's more fun, and worth preserving as its own thing.

This game is optimized really poorly, and loads whenever it likes. An SSD seems to perform better, as you might expect.

If we were to count times with and without loads (specifically when the mace spins in the bottom-right) everyone's time would improve, and the gaps between times would decrease as well.

Of course, this is Garshasp we're talking about. It's not that important in the grand scheme of things.