It's no secret that Sonny 2 speedrunning isn't nearly as active as Sonny speedrunning. There are probably multiple reasons for this, but speaking for myself personally, the sheer length of a run, the complex item management, the RNG and the amount of practice required all serve to dissuade me from attempting to speedrun Sonny 2, and I doubt I'm alone in that. With that being said, on a discussion regarding new categories for the original Sonny game, I discussed the possibility of IL categories:

'On a related note, would IL categories be viable? Instead of worrying about beating the entire game as quickly as possible, you could choose just to focus on one zone. This might open up new possibilities in Sonny speedrunning as well as be a less 'grindy' category overall. From a feasibility standpoint, you could simply just turn off autosave and save at the beginning of a particular zone in order to attempt multiple runs on the same savefile.

Of course, the question then becomes what limits should be placed on Zones Two, Three and Four. Zone One is fine as everyone starts on equal ground, but that won't be the case for later zones. Even a rule such as 'sell all your items' won't work as RNG means that different players will have different amounts of money. I suppose you could discard all your items instead, but that doesn't change the fact that the amount of money you get from each battle varies slightly.

Honestly, now that I think about it, IL categories would only really work for Zone One, and that'd probably be the most boring zone to attempt to speedrun on its own as it's already pretty optimised. Interestingly enough, it might actually be a great idea for Sonny 2 as I believe the amount of money you gain from each fight is fixed in that game, and perhaps I should give these ruminations on that game's forums. Given how time-consuming Sonny 2 speedruns are, IL categories are almost necessary to get people involved.'

Thinking about it, however, I feel as if IL categories would make more sense in Sonny 2 than in Sonny 1. For one, if I'm not mistaken, the amount of gold you have at the start of each zone should be the same for each run provided that you discard items rather than selling them and provided that you don't train. The same will of course go for skills and attributes, which should remain the same for each run barring any training fights (or respeccing in some runs and not in others). This will hopefully ensure that no-one has an unfair advantage for a particular zone.

Secondly, an IL category for Sonny 2 would obviously be far quicker to speedrun than Any% (No Major Glitches). Thirdly, since you don't have to consider reaching a particular zone at a particular pace or consider how quickly you'll be able to complete subsequent zones, new strategies might end up being viable (for example, perhaps the psychological or hydraulic classes are more suitable for finishing a particular zone quickly than the biological class is?).

What do you guys think about this idea? I personally feel that it could be quite exciting, but perhaps there are issues with IL categories that I've overlooked.

I have to say, I do like the idea of that. So for IL (or generally shorter) categories, the following would come to my mind:

• beat zone X individually
• beat zone 1+2 (because it's an achievement)
• beate zone 6+7 (so basically "heroic postgame")

I'd say, during preperation of the run, no training may be used. Whether, whether not and which teammates are used, is up to the player. During preperation, it is obviously allowed to reset for items, it is allowed to respec in advance (for the bonus stats you get when respeccing the first time). And all the inventory/shop/etc. management stuff is obviously also allowed during preperation.

So, the category that I consider the most promising here, would be "beat zone 6+7". I have been interested in doing/routing this for some time and I already tried a few things with psychological. But the reason, why I never started seriously routing this is, because it would involve playing through heroic competitively and I don't think I WANT to do that (insert blood hound flashbacks here).

Of course, before those can become categories, the rules have to be discussed and geninune interest to actually run those categories should exist (and to be honest, while discussing that, we could also get rid of some of the existing categories that nobody uses). But yeah, zone runs in general definitely sound interesting - maybe not all zones, but expecially zone 6+7 is something I would personally like to runy myself someday.

Oh ... and yes, the amount of gold is always the same when not factoring in selling stuff.