That’s what I thought as well until I got further. You definitely can not just hold L2 and R2 and be fine. You end up sacrificing speed. Your cargo gets damaged by time fall so walking slowly everywhere isn’t an option. You have to plan your routes carefully and make it to your destination as efficiently as possible or you’ll end up destroying half your cargo before you even get to drop it off.
i'm just getting to the point where this is becoming more obvious. like i said earlier, most of my cargo got wrecked in the lost woods because i tried to crawl through the whole thing avoiding BTs, got turned around, then climbed up the mountain and crawled AROUND the mountain ledge, avoiding the woods, through the rain.
even when you're not sprinting, the difference in speed when you let go of the buttons and just use L2/R2 for balance is HUGE. your first run-in with the MULE's is like light prep for it, but i didn't realize it at first because my loadout was light, i ran up a mountain to avoid them and a good breh had dropped a rope up there that let me scale down the side while they were running up the other side to get me. i was so busy trying not to get caught i didnt realize i wasn't focused on not falling.
same thing happened when i came back out the other side of the lost woods. i took that heavy ass order back to the station with the broken bike. but because i had everything balanced perfectly, and i was terrified of getting caught in the middle of the forest when it started raining again, i was dancing through that motherfukker... as long as i avoided rocks, hills and major dips. then i just used L2/R2 to make sure i didn't take a tumble, or used a ladder/rope to keep moving up the cliffsides.
that taught me the L2/R2 is really meant to be a brace/emergency brake. you're supposed to alternate on them like steering pedals to keep your character moving without tipping over. it's easy when he's balanced up properly, but i'm assuming balance will be compromised down the road.
do they eventually reward/penalize you for route efficiency? i've been racking up S-ranks like nothing, but i also just got my first timed delivery (the cryptobiotes).
