Hello! Depends on which category you want to run. If you want to see where you can improve on the records, make sure to check the description of the videos, some people tell where they made mistakes sometimes (and I do in every record video I personally upload).
Make sure to have the best route possible (looking at the world record VOD helps), know the movements & how the hitboxes work in the game, and learn how to do the stair-clip in chapter 7 (if you want to run Any% or All 8 Survive). If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me on discord; Zo0x_#7526. :)
When I first started to run the game (my first category ever on this game was Any%), it was on PS4 and the record holder was ParaHawkX, so the route was a little bit different than now. But the main thing I did was looking at his video and Mattmatt's one (which was second at that time) to compare if the routes were different in some points. There's a few things I knew that were faster and weren't in their routes so I implemented them to get what I believe is the most optimal route for this game at the moment. So I just needed a solid run without many errors to get first place.
But then PS5 came out and Mattmatt ran Any% again with the new stair clip skip, so I had to re-practice and learn the new skip.
But pretty much what you're looking to do is write some notes on some choices/QTE you want to be sure to not fail in the run (I personally have every choice and QTE in the run with some little indications to be sure to not miss anything, even though I don't read everything). So yeah, the key for starting is watching the record video and writing down notes for your run.
