This is the thread to talk about possible time-savers/glitches/routing that we may have found.

This doesn't really save much time, but it does make 100% easier:

Damage +10%, Damage +15%, One Heart Mode and 8 diamonds is enough to get a 1 star rank on Akron. Matt + Holy Swords shreds through most of the patterns without much dodging required.

My approach was to perfect waves 1-7 (with 5 and 7 being trouble spots), bomb wave 8 if a burst goes off near me, capture 9 and bomb 10 if I have any bombs left at this point. Waves 11 and 12 are both doable for me, albeit with some difficulty, so messing up on wave 5 or 7 isn't instantly fatal to the attempt. After a few A ranks from getting 7 diamonds, I finally got the main part of the fight correct and went on to clear wave 11, and wave 12 my first time ever facing it for a 2 star rank and global 14th.

Still tough to star Akron on Heavenly, but that's way easier than needing 7 diamonds with no cheats/handicaps.

i've created a basic guide for anyone interested in getting up to speed with the current runs.

https://www.speedrun.com/bh2/guide/r0roc

that includes most the new strategies i can think of (the important ones at least)

routing for this game is complex, and i will likely be working for quite a while before i'm happy with my routes

if anyone needs help with anything in regards to this game, feel free to contact me

Wait, why is skipping 1-1 with data from a previous save not NG+? I've played other games with cases of data not clearing properly (Spyro 2 with the infinite fireball powerup being possible to get onto a new file, Super Mario 63 can also use a deleted save to skip a boss) and neither of these are allowed in their respective non-NG+ categories.

Put another way- NG+ is anything you can't do from a fresh save. It just so happens that this game has a stronger NG+ in replaying levels on a finished save, but using data from a deleted save is still using data from another save and so NG+, yes?

Also, resetting medals during the run to get their rewards again is brilliant.

ya that makes sense. it's not like skipping 1-1 is super interesting anyways.

i didn't really think about that since intuitively my brain told me resetting progress items and medals counts a a new file, and it's funny cause in NG+ selecting wave 1 is what felt natural lol

i don't think it should be allowed in either category. we can make the rule change now or in a couple days after i update my runs to follow the rule

i think there should probably be a line in the rules mentioning that you also need to select wave 1... do you have an idea on a good way to word that?

This is prolly known, but for IL's when it comes to bosses, it's always best to play with 60 FPS to hopefully get a tickback on the IGT timer

Tested this out on level 1-5 where I can get consistent 0:36 on 60 FPS, but I keep getting stuck on 0:37 on 30 FPS

Don't know if this is because of the Natalie Glitch that benefits from higher FPS, it's kind off hard to test out on the non boss levels if this is purely because of that or not.

Yo I've encountered a bug in the steam version that allows you to immediately win levels upon entering, I thought if anyone here is still active or in the future ever speedruns this it might be something interesting to look into. However I haven't been able to reproduce it so far. I replayed 6-4 wave 13 on heavenly with the 1 heart handicap for the perfect wave 13 achievement with Lance/Titan Wings/Cluster Bombs. I was frequently resetting/going back to menue as I tried that wave a lot, and also tabbing out and doing stuff on my second screen inbetween. At some point when I loaded into the level it immediately gave me the achievement and ended the level. I thought it was just some one-time bug, then I switched to Dry No-legs, put in some handicaps/cheats for a pacifist run on the 7-5 boss I hadn't beaten yet and again I immediately beat the level upon loading in at wave 1 and even got 1 star (as the pacifist loadout allowed me to get that). After returning to the menue from that the game froze/crashed. I suspected at first I somehow preserved/delayed the victory from either winning/dying in a bonus wave by resetting/going back to the menue, but that doesn't seem to be it.

I then searched the steam forum and found that in the Official Technical Problems Thread the newest comment from funnyman describes the same bug: "21. Feb. 2025 um 17:06I tabbed out of the game either while starting or in the middle of a round, and that somehow caused it to enter a broken state where multiple waves started at once. Boss levels also immediately ended, (I was able to finish the first world's superboss immediately with a 3-star rank by turning on pacifist mode in this state, playing as Lance.)

Trying out the survival level, I had a few cheats and pacifist mode still enabled, but Lance still shot his bullets, and most enemies and their bullets vanished immediately. This caused the score to shoot up immensely fast, and I ended up with a score of around 700 million (over 3 times higher than the 2nd place on the leaderboard) in a couple of minutes. The game crashed after it tried submitting my score, but when I relaunched the game and played another round as normal, it still submitted by broken score to the leaderboard.

I have no idea how to recreate this. It happened when I tabbed out of the game in fullscreen, playing as Lance on World 1-6 (Knight of Flowers), mouse control, Heavenly difficulty, with the following cheats and handicaps enabled:

Foes Drop Bombs, Foes Drop Shields, More Items, Attack +10%, Attack +15%, Extra Bomb I, Auto Bomb, Bullet Speed (+5/10/15%), One Heart, No Bullet Clearing

If it also helps, my computer uses Windows 11 and has an Intel 12th Gen i5 CPU. "

That's about all the info I found/have on it, which likely suggests it happens when tabbing out comes into play. Hope it helps to reproduce it.

Also I guess I have the WR in 7-5 on heavenly now with 0 seconds? xD Don't have video of the bug tho, so I guess that will not be verified. xD

This would likely have to be banned. There's no skill expression when everyone can get exactly 0 seconds.