I have an interest in speedrunning this game at some point with a manageable PC, but I noticed we need not only LiveSplit, but a Load Remover script as well. As someone who doesn't like messing with the UI and has had problems with LiveSplit before, would it still be allowed to use a simple timer and time it in RTA fashion? Or is the Load Remover that important even though there are still loading screens present in the run?

So the PC leaderboard is only ranked by the loadless, or IGT, time so the simple answer would be yes, you do need a load remover to have a submittable run. I'm not sure if you could go back into your vod and subtract the load times but perhaps that would be a suitable workaround. I'm not a mod though.