While I will say being able to pay attention to your notes and running the game without someone reading to you is just a skill that speedrunning in general will demand, don't sell yourself short in that regard, there is no reason to not allow such a thing, so go right ahead.

As far as using the built in co-op, it doesn't allow any inherent advantage over someone playing the game by themselves so I see no reason not to allow it, however coordinating between 3 people is likely going to only be a hindrance given how turns in this game work that I also wouldn't recommend it unless you're just kinda wanting to do this to mess around with some friends and not planning to shoot for more optimized times.

Just posted what we have so far in Guides if anyone wants to use that to work from, I'll be making changes directly to this Google Doc if/when I get around to chipping away at it more

I should dig up our old work in progress route and post it in here, gonna do that right now

It won't be misc as soon as someone runs it. It's just there so it's out of the way since the boards for it have been empty for years. Routes have been started and never finished on several occassions.

1. Not really, just safety save before any fight you think you might actually die on (which is pretty difficult to do honestly).
2. I think so, lots of randomness to deal with when your time gets lower though. Really easy to lose minutes just because a boss decides to not behave.
3. Watch a run and you'll see :^)
4. If you actually take time to learn the run before just jumping in, sub 4 should be super easy on a first go even if it's a trainwreck.

I'm an awful human being and always forget to check forums so this answer is SUPER late. For that I'm super super sorry. Overall I would estimate that the PS3 version is about an hour+ slower than 360. There are several reasons for this:

-enemies on PS3 start on the same stats they have in 360's Encore Mode (50% extra everything) -PS3 has a couple extra areas and tweaked boss fights that would add time -PS3 photos sell for about 10% of what they do on 360, so you need a LOT more photos -PS3 EXP is extremely nerfed with many bosses/enemies giving 50% or less of what they do on 360

There may be a thing or two I'm forgetting to mention, but for these reasons alone, nobody has really routed the PS3 version yet and it would be substantially longer and more difficult.