Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos

You are vastly underestimating my levels there Tenka. One party had average level of 15, but the other two parties had levels over 20. I actually barely ran at all for the first three zones (the lower leveled party just found what they needed more quickly). It may have been the perception that I barely prepared at all, but I really just ignored messing around with Espers for a long time, a decision I still defend.

I agree that a race to the switch room (finding all nine shops, I'm assuming?) would be better, but I think that there needs to be more incentive to actually fight and not just run away, since there would be less if we're not going as far, and simply running and hoping for the best might be too good a strategy. Perhaps limit the number of times we are allowed to run from fights (no running would probably be pretty brutal)?

I almost think the difficulty of speedcave shouldn't try to ramp up to endgame difficulty. It does seem to be made for racing, so I think it should be reasonably completed in a race scenario.

The thing about a three hour race is that honestly, nobody was even prepared enough in the four hour race to take on the final segment. Abyss rushed through and made it (maybe he avoided the inescapable encounter that killed me the three times I tried the centre route?), but his characters were not adequately prepared to make it through either, I suspect. I don't see what it would add.