It’s been just over a week since the release of Psychonauts 2, and speedrunners are already getting the measure of Double Fine’s latest masterpiece. Completion times have been steadily falling since players have begun posting their times to Speedrun.com, and now the fastest time has fallen below two hours for an any% run.
ItzBytez currently has the top spot with his run of 1h 54m 41s. It's hardly a perfect run, as ItzBytez dies a few times, but it's still minutes ahead of the nearest competition.
To put this into perspective, How Long To Beat lists Psychonauts 2 as requiring between 13-18 hours for most players to complete. If you're a completionist going for everything, it'll be around 25.5 hours, unless you're George, in which case it'll be a few more hours trying to find that last banana fragment.
Related: Psychonauts 2 Complete Guide And Walkthrough
From watching ItzBytez's run, you really get a sense of just how much dialog is in this game. Quickly skipping through every conversation cuts the game in half all on its own. That's not a bad thing–most would agree that the witty and amusing dialog of Psychonauts 2 is one of the game's stronger points.
It does, however, cut down on replayability as there's not a lot of interaction when a game is mostly dialog. Psychonauts 2 makes up for this a bit with its boss fights, but speedrunners are somewhat at odds with some of Psychonauts 2's bosses. The Compton Cookoff boss fight, besides being super gross, features some randomness that can make speedrunning it more a matter of luck than skill.
ItzBytez's luck holds for this run, but there's definitely still room for improvement. Give it another week and Psychonauts 2 speedrunners might have this game down to just an hour and a half.
Given a few decades, Psychonauts 2 players may even match Ocarina of Time in getting the game down to just a few minutes.
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