Sonic Frontiers Speedrun Info

Howdy! This isn't actually a Sonic Frontiers FAQ as people don't actually ask about this info frequently, but it's some information I'd like viewers to be able to find about the speedrun of this game :)

- Console/PC Leaderboard Split
Since PC has easy access to a great loadless timer, it is split off from the rest of the platforms in order to use that as the main timing method. Due to the way the game is constructed, it doesn't really seem feasible to make a loadless times for console runs, so for the forseeable future they are tracked on their own board with Real Time as the main timing method.

- Load time differences
PS5 loads by far the fastest for this game console-wise, being on par with, if not faster than a good PC. I personally play on Xbox Series X which loads about 1 minute and 45 seconds slower in the current Any% route, with 10 to 15 seconds of additional timeloss to route differences. This totals to just under 2 minutes worth of a disadvantage. The latest load comparison can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZxWLrISi0U and if you're interested in more details regarding loads, read the video description of this initial load comparison video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkJJDGumS-Q

The differences for other categories are larger as every extra Cyberspace stage adds additional load screens. These aren't timed out as precisely, but the estimated extra timeloss is about 30-40 seconds in No Major Glitches and 20-30 seconds in Extreme Mode.

- Normal/True Ending
This game has a subcategory split for the Normal Ending (Easy & Normal difficulty) where all you do is the 3 QTE's and True Ending (Hard difficulty) where you actually fight The End. I don't really care for the Ikaruga-like gameplay, so I doubt I'll ever bother running True Ending unless it's as a donation incentive for a marathon.

- DLC/Updates
Alright so this game is super messy and has like three types of additional content. For starters there's some DLC, most of which is cosmetic, but one actually adds a Monster Hunter style cooking minigame as an alternative to Fishing. Expecting more DLC like this in the future, the boards used to be split for DLC, but no further DLC came and the cooking minigame ended up slower so the boards just got merged. Then there's the bonusses that come with pre-orders and digital deluxe editions, which basically just give you a ton of free experience allowing you to do the first island slightly faster. Used to be split as a subcategory, little interest developed and now it's just tucked away as a misc category. Then there's the 3 big update waves. These function more like large patches and are basically forced onto you on many platforms and as such are considered part of the base game and fair play for any category, with a variable showing which update your run was on. Since no speedtech seems to be getting patched with these, there's very little reason to not include the updates anyway. All that said there's still 2 major update waves coming so who knows I might be rewriting this in a few months I hate modern gaming so much!

- Timer start
It takes roughly 0.3 seconds for the game to trigger the first load after selecting your speedstyle and this is where timing is supposed to start (this was done in order to make the timing match the PC autosplitter). Making my timer start at -0.3 means I don't have to try and manually start my timer at this point and makes it less likely my run will have to be retimed by the mods later.