Settings

These settings highly alter gameplay and are basically necessary for the run to work as expected:

Easy difficulty adds a bunch of extra balloons and springs in the platforming sections for the towers in Rhea Island and Another Story.

These balloons are convenient for LTS / Glitchless, and Another Story (both Any% and LTS).
However, in normal Any%, they tend to get in the way and make certain slingshots a lot harder, so normal difficulty is preferred.

There is also an Extreme Mode category in category extensions, where as the name implies, you must play on extreme difficulty.

Note that the difficulty you choose will not affect how much health enemies have, or how much damage you'll deal to them.

Therefore, to summarize:

• For Any%, use Normal difficulty.

• For LTS, Glitchless, and Another Story (both Any% and LTS), use Easy difficulty.

• For Extreme Mode, use Extreme difficulty.

Frame rate affects several different glitches and mechanics in the game. Namely:

• General gameplay is faster at 60fps, though it isn't currently known why.

• The timing for slingshots is different depending on what frame rate you're in, with 60fps usually being preferred.

• Gear duplication only works on 30fps.

• Bridge skip only works on 30fps.

It's also worth noting that dying during a cutscene will automatically set the frame rate to 30fps until you either save your settings or enter cyber space.

For the first reason, you generally want to keep your game at 60fps unless you're doing something that requires 30fps.
Refer to the routes and other speedruns if you aren't sure where to switch.

Unfortunately, the Sonic Frontiers releases for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are locked to 30fps.
Additionally, playing on Xbox Series S makes loads significantly slower on 60fps than 30fps, and as such, playing on 30fps is faster in that console.

Choosing Action style or High speed style at the start of the game will affect several of the settings listed below.

High speed style is needed for this reason.

This setting is pretty self explanatory.

This setting changes how fast Sonic will move when you start holding the stick.

Setting it to 100 is generally better, since it leads to faster speeds.

However, it is worth noting that changing this setting will prevent portal launches from working on 30fps.
Portal launches can be used in runs, but there are always faster methods in places where you would use them.
Keep this in mind if you play on a platform that requires you to use 30fps.

This setting affects how high you get launched from boosting on uneven terrain.

Setting it to 100 is necessary for many different trick launches in the run.

This setting affects how quickly you will stop after letting go of the stick.

People generally prefer to have this as high as possible, so they set it to 100 for most categories.

However, in categories that use spindash, setting it to 99 or lower allows for a glitch known as Airdashing.

This setting affects how quickly you will lose speed while jumping.

Setting it to 0 allows you to jump further and faster.

Having this setting enabled will make training minigames play while the game is loading, or when you die, which is slower.

Having this setting enabled will play a cutscene when you reach max rings, and Power Boost activates.

This scene can be used to skip a cutscene in Chaos Island, but it requires doing a significantly slower route, so it isn't worth it.

Other than that, the scene just wastes time.

This setting enables Power Boost, the mechanic that normally increases your speed when you have maximum rings, in cyber space.

This will happen regardless of how many rings you have.

This setting needs to be unlocked, which is done by getting S rank on each island and All Islands in Cyber Space Challenge.
Note that you don't need to S rank every level, just the island as a whole.

These settings are still relevant to save time in the run, but won't affect gameplay in a major way.

This setting affects how fast you will go when starting a boost. Having it high will help you go faster.

Another self explanatory one.

This setting will make Sonic stop moving whenever you hit one of the triggers that make him comment on his surroundings (such as "More Eggman tech" in Ares Island, or "Ruins and treasures" in Ouranos Island).

You're not supposed to hit any of these, so in an ideal run it wouldn't make a difference, but it should allow you to lose less time if you accidentally touch them.

This setting toggles the skill point counter at the bottom right of the screen.

If it's on screen, you will have to watch it slowly count up until it reaches the amount of skill points you should have whenever you collect them, and you can't use any of the skill points you have collected until it finishes counting.

Disabling this allows you to unlock skills right away, with no need to wait.

Enabling this setting allows you to keep boosting when you jump during a boost.

Stopping your boost isn't actually any slower if your jump deceleration is set to 0, as it will for most categories.

However, on restricted Cyber Space ILs, where jump deceleration needs to be set to 100, you will quickly lose speed if you do that.

These settings don't necessarily save time, but they can inconvenience you during your run, so it's good to know that they exist and what they do:

When this setting is enabled, you will get a notification on the top right corner every time you come across any place where the game wants to teach you something, which happens to be quite often.

You can disable it if you'd prefer not to be annoyed.

This setting affects how sharp your turns can be while moving slowly.

Increasing it can help you do cyloops more easily.

By default, the game has a motion blur effect that shows while you're boosting.

Some people like it, while others prefer to disable it.

By default, the music in Cyber Space becomes distorted while you're boosting.

Some people don't like this, and as it turns out, you can also disable it.