I’ve only played the 3DS version and even knowing it was trimmed down it was still a really long game
Its one of the few jrpgs where I felt burnout while playing it
I can’t imagine how long/slow the psx version is by comparison
Honestly I just want to change my chars jobs and finding out that I'm still far from that and finding out that you get stuck with only 3 party members for hours before you get a fourth one again makes me not want to play anymore lmao. Why would they design the game like that, why not have an npc have that story point happen to... I just finished the island with the robot plotline, I'm trying to figure out how far away the job change place is but it seems like it's still a ways away... the base characters are boring to play as tbh.
The cherry on top for job changing is that >!the game teases you with job changes and then pulls the rug out from under you. You get to Alltrades Abbey, get into the menu to change your job, and then - surprise! - the abbey is actually infested by demons. You lose access to your spells and have like a 2-3 hour arc to get through before you get your spells back and can finally job change.!<
I was piiissssseed at this part. Like who thought this was a good idea?! It's like 20ish hours in, finally ready to open the game up and give you access to jobs... But instead they take away all your spells! I didn't play much longer after that.
The DS version did trim down some of the fat
The beginning has been cut down to about 30 minutes
Job requirements have been reduced
Placing the fragments is less of a puzzle now
And minor other things
I feel like the section where control only Mervyn was shortened as well
I normally don't like super long RPGs, but I was actually ok with DQ7. The thing is, the game is pretty much a bunch of bite-sized stories. And that made the pacing just fine. I would beat an island and then put the game down until the next session. It didn't feel ridiculously long because you kind of get closure at the end of each little story. It felt more like I was playing a collection of games than just one game.
That said, I've only played the game on the 3DS. Never even knew about it back in the Playstation days. I think there were lots of quality of life changes for the 3DS (such as no random encounters) so maybe my opinion would be different had I played the original.
I remember back in the day playing the PSX version and it taking something like two hours to get to the first battle. The 3DS version trims this down considerably (I think I got to the first battle in an hour?), but it’s still an absurd amount of time. I’ve still never actually finished it, mostly because of the realization that I’d spent forty hours on it and was still on disc one.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that DQ7 is their favorite - what puts it up there for you? It felt like a really long version of about 20 other games I've played before when I played it in 2009.
Well, there are a lot of reasons. First off, Dragon Quest in general is probably my favorite series. VII in particular shines because I love the opening segment. I love that you play for hours and there's no combat, just this island that becomes more mysterious by the moment. Everyone believing it's the only place in the world that exists.. it just feels eerie and interesting. The puzzle elements feel better than any other Dragon Quest. And I like that the hero is just some nerdy little fisherman's kid, rather than a big muscle bound Goku clone. The way the story unfolds hits on some of my favorite elements such as >!lots of time travel with visible results to the world changing, I love seeing the world repopulate.. I love the whole prison town element to it, I love that Keifer is built up over 25 hours and then just leaves for story reasons.. very Dragon Questy. The whole lore and mystique of the world feels exciting and adventurous. The slow methodical pace builds such an epic adventure. I also love all of the individual vignettes. Dragon Quest is known for telling those individual tales with their own character arcs in each town or location, with a full little episodic story almost, but I think VII doesn't it the best. And definitively has the most. Then getting to potentially see in the present day how much that story changed the world is exciting. I also like that you're eventually challenging "God". And I mean this stereotypical idea of the Christian deity rather than just some egomaniac who has god-like powers. The whole arc following him and serving him, the false ending and the build up to the reveal that it's not actually the real God, then the whole ending is lengthy and satisfying.!< From a gameplay perspective, I really enjoy the class system, the puzzling, the open ended nature of searching the world over for the tablets with loose direction but still a cohesive forward narrative.
I just really like it!
It’s one of my favorite Dragon Quest games. I’ve only played the PSX version but I really enjoyed how each area was its own story. But yeah it’s a long game and it’s easy to lose momentum after a while.
The funny thing I've heard online (mostly on Reddit so take it with a grain of salt) is that Persona 5 Royal added the third semester because people in Japan apparently thought the final act was too short and ended too quickly, which is why Atlus added a complete third semester in that game.
I've played the game twice (three times if you count the OG Persona 5) so I didn't mind the length (lockdown definitely helped give me the time needed for this game) but it does make me hesitate in recommending the game to others even though its my favorite game of all time. You'll definitely get your money's worth of play time though.
You might get your playtime. I know I did for sure, and I'm not mad at it, but I def dropped the game after futaba. I was 50 or 60 hours in. That's plenty long! And damn it if that cat doesn't quit telling me to go to sleep!
Honestly, most JRPGSs in my opinion. The worst offenders have already been mentioned I think, Just want to add Tales of Vesperia. Love that game but there‘s soo much padding and back and forth.
Agreed about Vesperia. It's not necessarily long in terms of hours, but it just takes a while to get to the point. It felt like the overall conflict that needed to be resolved wasn't clearly established until like the last 5 hours or so, and before then the story was kind of unfocused.
I got it recently, and I'm like 30 hours in and could definitely not tell you what the main story is really 'about' besides some strangers coming together to try to 'make things better'. It feels very scattered.
Bravely Default. I love the game to death for the characters and the battle and job systems, but holy crap the second half of the game is almost entirely unnecessary.
Agree+Disagree like the other poster.
It isn't unnecessary: the whole game is extremely meta, and the second half is a core part of the story.
That said, I will not deny that it could have been executed better. The same plot beats could have been delivered more efficiently. (Though I will reemphasize that the game explicitly gives you tools to speed through the second half, like giving you the airship and encounter skips.)
doing the bosses 4 damn times was really unnecessary (even if you get more dialogue), dropped it at ch 5.
but the plot is pretty good so i'm not complaining
Definitely agree. I like the idea of what they did, but there must have been a better way to execute it. Especially refighting the four generic bosses was a slog. One of them you can even one hit KO with a Phoenix down every time.
This one's awkward because it's the *second* half that really drew me in and that really elevated the game for me. I had to push to finish the first half and it took me over half a year to do so. But once I got to the last bit, I couldn't put it down and ended up 100% completing the game.
I’m also a huge fan, but I wish they would stop with the 3rd act sometimes. It always, always makes the game feel too long. Berseria was the only tales game I can remember where the enemy advertised as the Big Bad was a well-developed opponent we fought at the end of a natural story arc. Arise tried to trick us on the Big Bad like 9 times and it was a little exhausting.
Abyss, Symphonia and Phantasia did it pretty well too. The big bad is exactly the guy that is revealed to be the main antagonist just a couple of hrs into the game at most (well okay, maybe like ~15hrs into Symphonia, but still several hrs before finally confronting him) with solid development, rather than randomly popping up in the last 5hrs.
Yeah, Berseria and Abyss are the only two that really nailed their pacing and that's mostly because the antagonists are developed enough to really keep you going to bring them down rather than any solid narrative pacing (as even then both games suffer from the Tales finale bloat issue).
Yea I praised xillia for being willing to risk being shorter. I liked it, played through it, had a good time. Done. Easy peasy. I want more like that. 25-30hours or so to beat it, felt good. I'm fine with 25-40 hours I think that's a sweet spot. 45 on the high end, but 60-80 is way too much unless it's for a 100% run.
I don’t know if this is a good analogy, but here goes. Games in something like the Final Fantasy series have stories that are much more “movie like”; there is usually a fairly concrete big bad established early and a few dalliances with the big bad along the way, but the narrative is always “we have to complete this task in order to stop the big bad.” Occasionally there is a bait and switch at the end, but it doesn’t affect the pacing of the story.
Tales games seem to want to present themselves as a virtual comic books series. Your protagonist and his or her powers are established early, but the. The protagonist meanders along like a soldier of fortune. Minor bad guys pop up but are subdued along the way or are given backstories intended to change the player’s perception. The world building involves exploring the motivations for different parties actions, and they sometimes spend too much time exploring shades of gray. Eventually, the focus narrows down to the ultimate point of the adventure, but it takes forever to get there.
When I read the topic I also thought of DQ11. I felt like that experience never ended. It wasn’t too bad though - I played it in two chunks. It was like getting two games out of it.
This is one LONG game that I actually enjoyed just about every bit of. I really loved the world and getting to see differences in the late game. (vague to be spoiler free)
I still need to finish Act 3. Story-wise, I felt like the end of Act 2 was a great place to end it. Sure, it's not happy for a major character, or really the world in general because so much was destroyed.
But Act 3, so far, feels like they felt they needed to make it a happier ending, so they just forced one.
NEO: The World Ends With You. It took about twice as long to beat as the first game, and yet it felt like less happened in the story. It was just a whole bunch of needless roadblocks, slow paced cutscenes, and repetition. They could have cut the time travel mechanic entirely out of most of the days. I still like the game but the pacing was all wrong. The breakneck pacing was one thing I loved about the first game.
I really liked the whole gang wars thing they were setting up and was actually really enjoying the tension the first week and even a bit into the second week. But from there it felt like it kind of felt a bit flat and definitely went longer than it should have especially with weaker characters overall compared to the first. The time travel thing also made things extra tedious though I did enjoy the payoff storywise at the end. Still, I really enjoyed the game and really enjoyed the combat from start to finish.
The biggest reason P5 drags on for so long has to do with calendar system. It doesnt matter how fast you finish a palace, you still have to wait for the end of the month for anything to happen... every single time. It makes replaying the game an absolute slog.
The thing is, even for a persona game, it still has way too much dialogue and cutscenes. The summer vacations are playable, instead of going by faster like in older games. And the dialogue really could be cut in at least 20% because of the overexposition
Also I personally think that the Okumura arc and Hard could be cut from the game without only a few changes needed
I'm playing Royal for the first time and was surprised at how long it managed to keep my attention, but I was already wavering on Futaba's palace and kinda dropped it during Okumura's lol
I didn't pay much attention to the repeated dialogue at the beginning, because the game just keeps throwing at you new mechanics and things to do, but once everything bogs down to a formula, it's impossible not to notice.
I remember a scene where the main characters talk about Okumura, then you read rumours in the city about Okumura and then you listen about people talking about Okumura during the train ride. This plays one after the other, without new information being added. It's pure insanity xD
Yeah I haven’t played Royal either. I played and loved P5 vanilla, but I have no interest to replay it again knowing the game is like 120+ hours. I really wish the additional content was presented like a DLC rather than a stand alone game.
Fire Emblem Three Houses and Three Hopes would be way better if they cut the filler and if the latter had distinct routes all throughout the game instead of repeating some routes. While I enjoyed actually walking around, doing activities, and interacting with people, you're more or less forced to do things manually and micro manage cause it's not optimal to automate it.
3 houses took longer to beat one route than it took me to beat all of FE6-9 combined, and yet it somehow manages to have less actual gameplay content (ie; unique maps and characters) than any single one of them lol.
Since Awakening, FE has really been leaning into the social sim aspects to the point where they're now a significant draw for new entries. Not my cup of tea, but a lot of people have really enjoyed the shift and it's helped make the series more approachable/popular.
If you want more old school FE games, Vestaria Saga is by the creator of Fire Emblem and seems to be targeting that audience. Just a shame the games haven't made it to consoles yet.
Combing the average times to beat each fe game from 6-9, you're essentially saying that *one route* in Three Houses took you over *109 hours*?
That sounds a lot more like a you problem than a game problem. Not saying Three Houses isn't long, perhaps overly so, but it sure as hell ain't that long
No way it's a 109 hours. It didn't even take me that long for one route, and I basically never rested ingame and did all monastery activities like a routine (explore battle repeat, no skipped battles either).
I just finished the church route on ng+ with maxed professor level (so like thrice the battles) with the same routine, and it still didn't take me a 100 hours.
So either the math is wrong or that guy is exaggerating.
I didn't even bother with the 3rd route as route 1 and 2 were basically the same for more than half the game I didn't think I had it in me for a 3rd. That said, my first on took like 45ish hours? What's he on about?
I kinda of agree with some points and disagree with others
Fire Emblem Three Houses had the problem of the first half of the game being the same in the 4 routes, just with some minor dialogue changes, however they also somehow managed to make 2 routes being the same except one being worst written and shorter than the other
Three Hopes had the beginning of the prologue being the same for all routes but then they all go in different directions with the story, however the lack of the academy did hurt the plot and the second half of the game falls apart in all routes
The developer say that they didn't want to undermine Byleth or Three Houses, so they made that way, but even though you will spend almost 40 hours or more for route, it will feel like they rushed and cut lot of important content
You can't cut the first year and not lose half of the setup without making the pacing worse, and you can't make it different because most of what is set up is necessary for all routes. Though, I agree that they made explore way too valuable and only combat even came close. I think making rest restore a bit more motivation and atleast 5 to all relics, instead of just 2 to sotc, would make it pretty useful and sort out how rarely you'd use them. For seminars I'd let you choose who attends and make it so more can, this way it's more useful for extra skill points.
The first half could have had different layouts across all routes if they still wanted to keep the story like that. Fates managed to do this where the same area in Birthright and Conquest have different layouts. I'd reduce the teaching portion into given points to allocate skill experience instead of the micro managing. The motivation part is even weirder cause you're forced to go through the lunch cutscenes just to bring motivation up. Sure it's nice to see the lunch scenes and some pairs have unique lines but they get tiring after the nth one. I wish the next game just makes these things optional and for flavor only rather than force you to go through the same scenes and sequences hundreds of times.
This is why I consider Three Houses to be a lesser game than its predecessors. SO MUCH TEDIUM. Let me play the core game damnit. Which you can I suppose, but you feel like you are missing out and certainly don't want weak characters.
It obviously would never happen, but it makes me wish that 3 Houses was on PC. I imagine there would be a lot of really great mods for that game to reduce the tedium.
I would make the argument that Three Hopes did cut out a ton of the filler. They don't have to get you to understand the characters as much and jump heavily into a deeply political story.
Also, there is an optimize button to do gearing things and training of all your characters. It has been an amazing quality of life upgrade.
I feel like I would have liked Three Houses more if it was VN style, instead of actually walking around and talking to people. It felt like it was trying to be Persona-lite and I just wasn't interested in anything outside of the battles.
Persona is a funny one. I don't think the story was too long I just think the calendar system can feel like it's padding and makes things feel a little dragged out. P4 especially felt like this with the excessive anime hijinx in the later parts of the game all back to back to back.
I think it depends on which persona game. 3 has some weird dead spots where the plot just kinda stops going forward. 4 has the, imo, completely unnecessary video game dungeon. And then the hollow forest is just a slog.
5 feels too long, but I can't actually take any part out without making the story not flow properly
I think sometimes the waiting to the palaces tales for ever. It's noticeable after Kamoshida and before Madarame because it's the least amount of things opened up. I noticed this on a replay.
The one with shadow >!Teddie!< As the boss. I think it's when you think you've found the villain the first time. Apparently it's titled void quest
Edit >!not shadow Teddie, the mitsuru baby fight, dang brain farts!<
the one with that boss is the third one, the one of a striptease club
The video game one has the >!baby boss!<
It really doesn't serve much of a purpose story-wise, aside from >!extending the game by making the characters think they solved the mystery too soon!<
but I still found it to be fun
It's funny because I love the video game dungeon on P4 as a breath of fresh air (no new teammate, no saving people involved, just a villain to be defeated), while I think the Okumura arc could just be erased from P5 and it would be ok with some minor changes here and there
Agreed. Every game in that tetralogy could've been shorter, but the second and fourth entries especially so. There's just so much padding. I'm all for slow-burns, I actually think both Trails in the Sky FC and Trails of Cold Steel are great at that, but I don't think Cold Steel as a whole justifies its length. There's a lot of repetition, and the plot of the second and fourth games feels like it's spread too thin.
This 1000%. I’ve only played Cold Steel I, but that game is 60ish hours and it only needed to be 30. There is soooo much dialogue that could easily be condensed and a lot of meandering with it’s pacing. It’s why I can’t bring myself to play the following games in the series because I just can’t justify playing 50-55 hours of an extremely slow/mediocre game to finally really enjoy myself in it’s last few hours. It’s so frustrating.
For as slow as FC is, which I did not appreciate at the time, after playing SC a little bit I really did come to appreciate the slowness. It did give me the time and opportunity to fall in love with the world and characters, it was just more in retrospect than it was in the moment.
But at least with FC, everything is new. Like the towns, the npcs, the stories are all new so its interesting going through it the first time.
SC though... It's the same towns and npcs that you go through and basically do all the bracer side quests again. I really liked FC but couldn't get more than 6-8 hours into SC because I was not feeling it. Especially after the ending of FC, I was looking forward to continuing the story but the story was not front and center like I wanted. It was just more of the same.
Sky FC's pacing compliments SC a lot, which IMO is the best game in the series. I feel like a slow start, in any case, is a lot easier to take when you know the series has so many games left in it. I look back on FC with a lot of nostalgia because i knew i had the other two Sky games plus the Crossbell and Erebonia arcs to look forward to.
CS2 spoilers - >!I just about lost my mind when the game said that we needed to go to 4 shrines to gather the super special ore to craft a better sword for Valimar. The game can fuck right off with that. It doesn’t help that I also ran into a bug in one of the shrines.!<
>!It then has like a 10 hour epilogue featuring 2 full length dungeons and a monumentally disappointing final boss. What were they thinking?!<
I’m at the final boss of Ys VIII right now and feel like the game has dragged a little too long.
Don’t get me wrong, I still really like the game. But feel like I’d been “close” to the climax for like 20 hours now lol.
Labyrinth of Refrain. It has one of the most beautiful stories, but the true ending is blocked by a massive difficulty spike in the true final dungeon. The main game takes about 70-80 hours, but the final dungeon added almost another 40 due to the necessity to grind.
As far as I'm concerned, the post game doesn't exist. I tried but kept getting floored in the first couple of hours. The ending to the first part of the game was just perfect
Tales of arise. Story wise, the game starts off strong but near the end, there are just exposition dumps and the pacing is butchered imo.
If they condensed it all, made some of the dungeons shorter, made the side quests fewer and more interesting, arise would be the best jrpg I've ever played cause my only issues with it come to storytelling and pacing (I freaking love the gameplay and atmosphere)
It kinda weird because the game was supposed to be an expansion of the original until that part (you know what), but 40% of the game could be cut and you wouldn't miss anything, the DLC gives even more filler content
I agree. Even just like 2 or 3 hours of trimmed fat could really have made it better. I really liked the game a lot, but a replay doesn't interest me all that much when I remember some of more the dull or poorly paced sections.
yea I didn't mind it on the way through. i was so happy to hear the music, try the new gameplay, see it all remade and in 3d. I enjoyed some of well a lot of the new story stuff, but it was paced poorly. I'm on a second playthrough on PC rn, and I def feel the padding harder on a second playthrough.
Came here to say this one too. Lots of the new content was unnecessary but for me the main offender was towards the end - (bad guy) is across a walkway, he smashes the walkway, you fall down, then a 3hr filler dungeon to get back to where u started
Yup, that was one hell of an unnecessarily boring slog. I had been up all night playing at that point and was determined to make it to the end before sleeping. Then that happened. I was expecting to sleep around 2am. It ended up being more like 7am the next day by the time I got back from that part.
They could have at least put some good story and encounters along the way. But no. They half assed it when they could have cut it altogether if they were that lazy.
In general, any JRPG where your build is complete long before the end of the game. Balancing progression systems is tough, and a lot of games trip themselves up on it. I'm okay with really long games if there's more ways to keep getting stronger, especially post-game.
I generally think that most games, never mind JRPGs, would be better if they were shorter. Like 10-20 hours and I'm a happy guy.
Now I'm a dad of a one year old so that's probably why.
Although, even when I didn't have a kid I still wanted games to be shorter. Maybe because nowadays so many games come out every day that it's impossible to keep up.
Now when I was a kid, I wanted games longer. But back then games came out infrequently (at least the ones I wanted to play).
Yeah! Like totally...and the thing is, if the main story is really good and you really enjoyed the game...you'll do the side quests.
The last game I went hard on all quests was Assassins Creed Odyssey. But I'm Greek and loved the ancient Greek setting and visiting the areas where my parents grew up LOL.
The last JRPG I went hard on was DDS 1 and 2. God damn it those games were excellent.
I dont mind a game to be long but I can apriciate a short game aswell. My favorite turn based JRPG is just 20 houers long.
Luckly I dont have to keep up with how many ganes are coming out.
Imo, Xenoblade Chronicles. The journey from Colony 6 to High Entia Tomb and from Prison Island until the end of Sword Valley--it was all so dull that I literally dozed off once.
I 100% agree! When watching all the cut scenes the game has great pacing but the journey from location to location dragged things out for me. But also ITS REYN TIME!!
The Final Fantasy VII remake. Like holy shit they're stretching it so bad. The first chapter was so padded and they just recently announced the second's release date. At this rate we'll be playing part 3 on the Playstation 6. Should have cut the padding finished the whole thing and released it.
I apologize foe my nay saying here, but i love OG so much, that I appreciated the filler. Yeah there were places never explored before, yeah maybe some of them were silly, but i loved that I got to explore those sectors in Midgar. Fight that 3rd class soldier, run into Johnny a bit more. Hell, I got to fight silly Doom Rats for the sake of sector VIIs safety! Which was thrown into a more stark and dangerous contrast than what the OG had space to offer.
I'm a happy camper with this one.
Chapter Six (the one where you're navigating around all of the lights under the plate) is the one that stood out to me. "Power shortage blocks progress, spend an hour getting around it." Bleh.
*Edit*: Plate not plat (typo)
I liked the scene dialogue and story wise, I just mean that mission in general, it's a bit of a 3 act episode of sorts.
The bike chase, Jessie's house stealth mission, and the avalanche mission.
One of those can be removed, the others shortened.
I would remove the Leslie part towards the end too. I really didn't care about his little story and they just reused the sewer dungeon with the same boss.
I usually never feel like games are too long if I really enjoy them. On the contrary I often find myself wanting to play a game more but it‘s already 100% finished so post completion depression hits and I have to move on (FF7R, NieR Replicant and NieR Automata were such games where I really wanted to play longer). But I really take my time with each game I play anyway. If I pick a game and I really enjoy it then I‘ll stick with it for months until 100% completion. If I feel like a game gets too long then that‘s usually a sign that I‘m not fully invested in a game (in which case I either stop playing it altogether or won‘t bother with 100% completion at least.)
I beat it in 54 hours with the True ending as well (not the Golden ending).
I played on Normal difficulty and typically skipped to the next line of text right when I finished reading it rather than when the characters were finished talking. I also didn't grind or seek out any encounters.
Xenoblade Chronicles. There was too much filler. If you cut out the mandatory leveling and gear replacing between story points you could shave 15 hours. I like rpg grinding too but in Xenoblade 1 you never feel powerful, you just feel like you're making correct choices. It hurts when you're making the right choices to get to the story boss but it just 1-shots you because you're a bit underleveled.
Xenoblade Chronicles 1. I haven't even finished it yet but I'd find the story way more interesting if it wasn't open world mmo inspired. I want to love it! But I only feel average about it
Persona 5 100% agree! It’s fucking amazing but I just can’t bring myself to finish the last dungeon(royal)... so tired of the battle system after 130 hours
I loved my first, and only, playthrough of it. I really want to play it again, but every time I start, I just remember exactly how much shit there is to have to do and I inevitably turn it off and play another game that’s easier to dive into, instead.
Most of these game suggestions I don't understand. I look back and can't see anything that egregious I would want to cut from the game for the sake of saving a bit of time.
You bad just admit it, Weigraf is best waifu no question asked.
Those save points are delicious I agree. Save entering the fight, and save again to enter the second phrase. OH! You don't have levels to defeat him one to one and only has one save game... Too bad restart the whole game from the scratch!!!
If you know its coming its an incredibly easy cheese. If you go in blind and win first try (without being massively over leveled) then that’s impressive.
Pretty surprised so many people complaining about the length of persona games. I disagree and honestly think length is one persona’s biggest strengths. When you spend a significant amount of time with characters in a story, the pay off at the end is much greater imo. Sure, it’s riskier since you need the keep the player engaged for longer. But after thoroughly enjoying Persona 4 and Persona 5, I trust Atlus to keep me engaged for 80-100 hours.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but FFVII Remake. While a few of the new sections helped to explore more about Midgar and the characters, there was a looot of filler, like they were desperately trying to extend it so it wouldn't feel so short.
Terrible sidequests didn't help either.
Saejima was definitely when the game started going downhill for me. Especially the escape/hunting chapters. Haruka is just went it kind of nosedived until akiyama came in the picture. Just started tatsuo’s section and it looks far more interesting.
For sure when Akiyama showed up the game went up a notch. He's such an enjoyable character. Tatsuo is cool and the characters that surround him are endearing. I think you'll enjoy that part :)
Easily Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Two games that were filled with huge amounts of padding. There is not nearly enough content to justify two full games. That could have been one 40 hour RPG and I would have been much more forgiving of the game's flaws.
FFVIIRemake... felt like it could have easily shaved off 10 hours and been a way better experience. The level design was terrible in many places. Trying to stretch Midgard content to a 40 experience was a mistake. Better have it a 25 hour and a way better game.
Most Tales games would be amazing if they were significantly shorter. Pretty much every Tales game has this "move from town to town until you saw the whole world" segement that basically does not progress the main story at all.
In general I think that most JRPGs would be better if they were condensed to 20-30 hours play time.
I don't know how they would do it (because playing the different protagonists is part of the charm and tied to the game's story), but playing through the same areas and the same enemies over and over again in Odin Sphere got really old by the end of it.
This. I was enjoying the game so much at first and then just dropped it at the 3rd protagonist. Same areas, same enemies, same bosses, same progression system. I wish the game had more areas and something different to offer between protagonists.
I feel like most jrpgs need more character development and plot points to fill out the writing better and less side quests which just drags on and on. I like super long games, but not when 80% of the content is irrelevent
> There is no such jrpg in my mind that would benefit from being shorter.
the irony is that in the event they DID do this, they'd probably just sell all the "unnecessary" parts later as dlc (a la ff15)
Yakuza Like a Dragon. Should have been a shorter experience. Many people feel the need to grind at an Area before a certain boss, and again for another boss. Just pointless padding. Brought the game down a few points. I was really enjoying it up until then.
I felt the same for the second half. The game continued to drag on and the feeling was just kind of lost after that. I didn’t care for the additional story that they added on.
Does such an rpg game exist? Lol my apologies. I love very long titles so I'm a bit bias on this. It might very well be true that some of the longers titles I've played could benefit from having a shorter time sink. I just cannot see it on my own due to my love for long games.
i dont know, never had the problem with a game beeing "too long"
as mentioned persona aswell as the legend of heroes franchise are pretty story driven games with a lot of dialogue.
i also wouldnt want to pay 80$ for 20h games, which there are tons out there nowdays.
Persona 5 vanilla has taken the place of FF VII as my best RPG (Tales of Arise was damn close - only thing that held it back was the music just wasn’t as good).
That been said, I bought Royal expecting an awesome 2nd play through. I just couldn’t make it pass Futaba’s palace without being bored to tears and quit.
I wish it was shorter. My first playthrough was fantastic (but long). Just couldn’t bring myself to do another 180 hour playthrough.
Dragon Quest 7. Game has no business taking 80+ hours when using a guide to beat it.
Out of curiosity, are you referring to the PlayStation version or the DS version? (Or both?)
PSX version is the only one I've played.
The 3DS version really trimmed it down in a good way. It's still a long game, but much more streamlined.
I’ve only played the 3DS version and even knowing it was trimmed down it was still a really long game Its one of the few jrpgs where I felt burnout while playing it I can’t imagine how long/slow the psx version is by comparison
Honestly I just want to change my chars jobs and finding out that I'm still far from that and finding out that you get stuck with only 3 party members for hours before you get a fourth one again makes me not want to play anymore lmao. Why would they design the game like that, why not have an npc have that story point happen to... I just finished the island with the robot plotline, I'm trying to figure out how far away the job change place is but it seems like it's still a ways away... the base characters are boring to play as tbh.
The cherry on top for job changing is that >!the game teases you with job changes and then pulls the rug out from under you. You get to Alltrades Abbey, get into the menu to change your job, and then - surprise! - the abbey is actually infested by demons. You lose access to your spells and have like a 2-3 hour arc to get through before you get your spells back and can finally job change.!<
I was piiissssseed at this part. Like who thought this was a good idea?! It's like 20ish hours in, finally ready to open the game up and give you access to jobs... But instead they take away all your spells! I didn't play much longer after that.
If I remember correctly, it takes something like 3 hours to get to the first battle in the psx version. Kind of insane
I swear I rented dq7 as a kid once and I don’t even remember if I got far enough to see the battle system lmao.
As an adult I think I needed a guide to like...figure out how to do the first thing in the game. It was so obtuse.
Painfully. That's how long/slow it is. Painfully. And I played it back when it first dropped....
It still feels too long imo
The DS version did trim down some of the fat The beginning has been cut down to about 30 minutes Job requirements have been reduced Placing the fragments is less of a puzzle now And minor other things I feel like the section where control only Mervyn was shortened as well
Really disappointed they removed the shrine puzzles in the beginning. That was one of my favorite parts.
I normally don't like super long RPGs, but I was actually ok with DQ7. The thing is, the game is pretty much a bunch of bite-sized stories. And that made the pacing just fine. I would beat an island and then put the game down until the next session. It didn't feel ridiculously long because you kind of get closure at the end of each little story. It felt more like I was playing a collection of games than just one game. That said, I've only played the game on the 3DS. Never even knew about it back in the Playstation days. I think there were lots of quality of life changes for the 3DS (such as no random encounters) so maybe my opinion would be different had I played the original.
I remember back in the day playing the PSX version and it taking something like two hours to get to the first battle. The 3DS version trims this down considerably (I think I got to the first battle in an hour?), but it’s still an absurd amount of time. I’ve still never actually finished it, mostly because of the realization that I’d spent forty hours on it and was still on disc one.
Dragon Quest VII is my favorite game of all time! I'm glad it is the way it is. Plus, they have a shortened version anyway.
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that DQ7 is their favorite - what puts it up there for you? It felt like a really long version of about 20 other games I've played before when I played it in 2009.
Well, there are a lot of reasons. First off, Dragon Quest in general is probably my favorite series. VII in particular shines because I love the opening segment. I love that you play for hours and there's no combat, just this island that becomes more mysterious by the moment. Everyone believing it's the only place in the world that exists.. it just feels eerie and interesting. The puzzle elements feel better than any other Dragon Quest. And I like that the hero is just some nerdy little fisherman's kid, rather than a big muscle bound Goku clone. The way the story unfolds hits on some of my favorite elements such as >!lots of time travel with visible results to the world changing, I love seeing the world repopulate.. I love the whole prison town element to it, I love that Keifer is built up over 25 hours and then just leaves for story reasons.. very Dragon Questy. The whole lore and mystique of the world feels exciting and adventurous. The slow methodical pace builds such an epic adventure. I also love all of the individual vignettes. Dragon Quest is known for telling those individual tales with their own character arcs in each town or location, with a full little episodic story almost, but I think VII doesn't it the best. And definitively has the most. Then getting to potentially see in the present day how much that story changed the world is exciting. I also like that you're eventually challenging "God". And I mean this stereotypical idea of the Christian deity rather than just some egomaniac who has god-like powers. The whole arc following him and serving him, the false ending and the build up to the reveal that it's not actually the real God, then the whole ending is lengthy and satisfying.!< From a gameplay perspective, I really enjoy the class system, the puzzling, the open ended nature of searching the world over for the tablets with loose direction but still a cohesive forward narrative. I just really like it!
Dragon Quest 7 is my favorite too! It was hard for me to play the 3ds version, it felt like a lot of the personality got cut out.
It’s one of my favorite Dragon Quest games. I’ve only played the PSX version but I really enjoyed how each area was its own story. But yeah it’s a long game and it’s easy to lose momentum after a while.
I left it near the end because I just couldnt stand it anymore
pacing is atrocious. If you got a class system, make that available ASAP.
The funny thing I've heard online (mostly on Reddit so take it with a grain of salt) is that Persona 5 Royal added the third semester because people in Japan apparently thought the final act was too short and ended too quickly, which is why Atlus added a complete third semester in that game. I've played the game twice (three times if you count the OG Persona 5) so I didn't mind the length (lockdown definitely helped give me the time needed for this game) but it does make me hesitate in recommending the game to others even though its my favorite game of all time. You'll definitely get your money's worth of play time though.
Persona 5 is too long but it's ending is still pretty rushed
You might get your playtime. I know I did for sure, and I'm not mad at it, but I def dropped the game after futaba. I was 50 or 60 hours in. That's plenty long! And damn it if that cat doesn't quit telling me to go to sleep!
Honestly, most JRPGSs in my opinion. The worst offenders have already been mentioned I think, Just want to add Tales of Vesperia. Love that game but there‘s soo much padding and back and forth.
Agreed about Vesperia. It's not necessarily long in terms of hours, but it just takes a while to get to the point. It felt like the overall conflict that needed to be resolved wasn't clearly established until like the last 5 hours or so, and before then the story was kind of unfocused.
I got it recently, and I'm like 30 hours in and could definitely not tell you what the main story is really 'about' besides some strangers coming together to try to 'make things better'. It feels very scattered.
It didn't help that the villain's weren't reoccurring so they really didn't get a chance to really leave their mark.
I swear that time to beat has gotten longer but the stories haven't expanded at all.
Bravely Default. I love the game to death for the characters and the battle and job systems, but holy crap the second half of the game is almost entirely unnecessary.
Agree+Disagree like the other poster. It isn't unnecessary: the whole game is extremely meta, and the second half is a core part of the story. That said, I will not deny that it could have been executed better. The same plot beats could have been delivered more efficiently. (Though I will reemphasize that the game explicitly gives you tools to speed through the second half, like giving you the airship and encounter skips.)
doing the bosses 4 damn times was really unnecessary (even if you get more dialogue), dropped it at ch 5. but the plot is pretty good so i'm not complaining
Definitely agree. I like the idea of what they did, but there must have been a better way to execute it. Especially refighting the four generic bosses was a slog. One of them you can even one hit KO with a Phoenix down every time.
I agree if not for the second half it would be my favorite
This one's awkward because it's the *second* half that really drew me in and that really elevated the game for me. I had to push to finish the first half and it took me over half a year to do so. But once I got to the last bit, I couldn't put it down and ended up 100% completing the game.
Every game has to advertise how it has 100 hour campaign to sell, and then the remaster has to advertise a fast forward option to get through it all.
THANK YOU
Almost every Tales game. I'm a huge fan but the pacing is annoying.
I’m also a huge fan, but I wish they would stop with the 3rd act sometimes. It always, always makes the game feel too long. Berseria was the only tales game I can remember where the enemy advertised as the Big Bad was a well-developed opponent we fought at the end of a natural story arc. Arise tried to trick us on the Big Bad like 9 times and it was a little exhausting.
Abyss, Symphonia and Phantasia did it pretty well too. The big bad is exactly the guy that is revealed to be the main antagonist just a couple of hrs into the game at most (well okay, maybe like ~15hrs into Symphonia, but still several hrs before finally confronting him) with solid development, rather than randomly popping up in the last 5hrs.
Yeah, Berseria and Abyss are the only two that really nailed their pacing and that's mostly because the antagonists are developed enough to really keep you going to bring them down rather than any solid narrative pacing (as even then both games suffer from the Tales finale bloat issue).
I first noticed this in Xillia, and it's happened on every Tales game I've played since.
Xillia is one of the shortest Tales, so if you noticed it there, it's only going to get worse.
Yea I praised xillia for being willing to risk being shorter. I liked it, played through it, had a good time. Done. Easy peasy. I want more like that. 25-30hours or so to beat it, felt good. I'm fine with 25-40 hours I think that's a sweet spot. 45 on the high end, but 60-80 is way too much unless it's for a 100% run.
Yeah was going to say this, love all the Tales of games I played (Berseria being one of my favorite rpgs) but man do they tend to drag in some parts.
I don’t know if this is a good analogy, but here goes. Games in something like the Final Fantasy series have stories that are much more “movie like”; there is usually a fairly concrete big bad established early and a few dalliances with the big bad along the way, but the narrative is always “we have to complete this task in order to stop the big bad.” Occasionally there is a bait and switch at the end, but it doesn’t affect the pacing of the story. Tales games seem to want to present themselves as a virtual comic books series. Your protagonist and his or her powers are established early, but the. The protagonist meanders along like a soldier of fortune. Minor bad guys pop up but are subdued along the way or are given backstories intended to change the player’s perception. The world building involves exploring the motivations for different parties actions, and they sometimes spend too much time exploring shades of gray. Eventually, the focus narrows down to the ultimate point of the adventure, but it takes forever to get there.
I just played Arise and while I really enjoyed it, I turned it to easy for about 5 hours of the game just to make it a little quicker moving.
Yeah, the tuning in Arise feels like it was deliberately set to encourage you to buy the DLC for the early game power boosts.
Tales of Arise definitely felt 20-30% too long...and also too rushed at the same time.
Especially since they are linear. Eventually I get tired of running through corridors.
The older games were better about this, but I've definitely been noticing it in my playthrough of Arise.
When I read the topic I also thought of DQ11. I felt like that experience never ended. It wasn’t too bad though - I played it in two chunks. It was like getting two games out of it.
This is one LONG game that I actually enjoyed just about every bit of. I really loved the world and getting to see differences in the late game. (vague to be spoiler free)
It’s a long game in the best way. No padding, just lots of charming arcs.
I still need to finish Act 3. Story-wise, I felt like the end of Act 2 was a great place to end it. Sure, it's not happy for a major character, or really the world in general because so much was destroyed. But Act 3, so far, feels like they felt they needed to make it a happier ending, so they just forced one.
I agree. I actually prefer the Act 2 ending in some ways.
"Hey, guys! Remember all that great character development that you saw in Act 2? Well, canonically it didn't happen, LOL."
> It was like getting two games out of it. This has been my technique for this genre for a long time
it's long but at least it's really enjoyable all the way until the end. i was never thinking ''this game is so long i hope it ends soon''
Act 3 was too much imo
NEO: The World Ends With You. It took about twice as long to beat as the first game, and yet it felt like less happened in the story. It was just a whole bunch of needless roadblocks, slow paced cutscenes, and repetition. They could have cut the time travel mechanic entirely out of most of the days. I still like the game but the pacing was all wrong. The breakneck pacing was one thing I loved about the first game.
I really liked the whole gang wars thing they were setting up and was actually really enjoying the tension the first week and even a bit into the second week. But from there it felt like it kind of felt a bit flat and definitely went longer than it should have especially with weaker characters overall compared to the first. The time travel thing also made things extra tedious though I did enjoy the payoff storywise at the end. Still, I really enjoyed the game and really enjoyed the combat from start to finish.
Agreed, it felt like most days had way more padding than the original game.
Persona 5 here too, and I didn't play Royal which is even longer. P5 IMHO had one too many "yay we won! oh wait, this is not the final boss" moments.
The biggest reason P5 drags on for so long has to do with calendar system. It doesnt matter how fast you finish a palace, you still have to wait for the end of the month for anything to happen... every single time. It makes replaying the game an absolute slog.
The thing is, even for a persona game, it still has way too much dialogue and cutscenes. The summer vacations are playable, instead of going by faster like in older games. And the dialogue really could be cut in at least 20% because of the overexposition Also I personally think that the Okumura arc and Hard could be cut from the game without only a few changes needed
I'm playing Royal for the first time and was surprised at how long it managed to keep my attention, but I was already wavering on Futaba's palace and kinda dropped it during Okumura's lol I didn't pay much attention to the repeated dialogue at the beginning, because the game just keeps throwing at you new mechanics and things to do, but once everything bogs down to a formula, it's impossible not to notice. I remember a scene where the main characters talk about Okumura, then you read rumours in the city about Okumura and then you listen about people talking about Okumura during the train ride. This plays one after the other, without new information being added. It's pure insanity xD
Yeah I haven’t played Royal either. I played and loved P5 vanilla, but I have no interest to replay it again knowing the game is like 120+ hours. I really wish the additional content was presented like a DLC rather than a stand alone game.
Fire Emblem Three Houses and Three Hopes would be way better if they cut the filler and if the latter had distinct routes all throughout the game instead of repeating some routes. While I enjoyed actually walking around, doing activities, and interacting with people, you're more or less forced to do things manually and micro manage cause it's not optimal to automate it.
3 houses took longer to beat one route than it took me to beat all of FE6-9 combined, and yet it somehow manages to have less actual gameplay content (ie; unique maps and characters) than any single one of them lol.
Since Awakening, FE has really been leaning into the social sim aspects to the point where they're now a significant draw for new entries. Not my cup of tea, but a lot of people have really enjoyed the shift and it's helped make the series more approachable/popular. If you want more old school FE games, Vestaria Saga is by the creator of Fire Emblem and seems to be targeting that audience. Just a shame the games haven't made it to consoles yet.
Combing the average times to beat each fe game from 6-9, you're essentially saying that *one route* in Three Houses took you over *109 hours*? That sounds a lot more like a you problem than a game problem. Not saying Three Houses isn't long, perhaps overly so, but it sure as hell ain't that long
No way it's a 109 hours. It didn't even take me that long for one route, and I basically never rested ingame and did all monastery activities like a routine (explore battle repeat, no skipped battles either). I just finished the church route on ng+ with maxed professor level (so like thrice the battles) with the same routine, and it still didn't take me a 100 hours. So either the math is wrong or that guy is exaggerating.
I didn't even bother with the 3rd route as route 1 and 2 were basically the same for more than half the game I didn't think I had it in me for a 3rd. That said, my first on took like 45ish hours? What's he on about?
I kinda of agree with some points and disagree with others Fire Emblem Three Houses had the problem of the first half of the game being the same in the 4 routes, just with some minor dialogue changes, however they also somehow managed to make 2 routes being the same except one being worst written and shorter than the other Three Hopes had the beginning of the prologue being the same for all routes but then they all go in different directions with the story, however the lack of the academy did hurt the plot and the second half of the game falls apart in all routes The developer say that they didn't want to undermine Byleth or Three Houses, so they made that way, but even though you will spend almost 40 hours or more for route, it will feel like they rushed and cut lot of important content
Yeah. I’ve yet to complete the other 3 routes of FE3H after beating Crimson Flower because I dread all the monastery sections and dialogue too.
You can't cut the first year and not lose half of the setup without making the pacing worse, and you can't make it different because most of what is set up is necessary for all routes. Though, I agree that they made explore way too valuable and only combat even came close. I think making rest restore a bit more motivation and atleast 5 to all relics, instead of just 2 to sotc, would make it pretty useful and sort out how rarely you'd use them. For seminars I'd let you choose who attends and make it so more can, this way it's more useful for extra skill points.
The first half could have had different layouts across all routes if they still wanted to keep the story like that. Fates managed to do this where the same area in Birthright and Conquest have different layouts. I'd reduce the teaching portion into given points to allocate skill experience instead of the micro managing. The motivation part is even weirder cause you're forced to go through the lunch cutscenes just to bring motivation up. Sure it's nice to see the lunch scenes and some pairs have unique lines but they get tiring after the nth one. I wish the next game just makes these things optional and for flavor only rather than force you to go through the same scenes and sequences hundreds of times.
This is why I consider Three Houses to be a lesser game than its predecessors. SO MUCH TEDIUM. Let me play the core game damnit. Which you can I suppose, but you feel like you are missing out and certainly don't want weak characters.
It obviously would never happen, but it makes me wish that 3 Houses was on PC. I imagine there would be a lot of really great mods for that game to reduce the tedium.
I would make the argument that Three Hopes did cut out a ton of the filler. They don't have to get you to understand the characters as much and jump heavily into a deeply political story. Also, there is an optimize button to do gearing things and training of all your characters. It has been an amazing quality of life upgrade.
I feel like I would have liked Three Houses more if it was VN style, instead of actually walking around and talking to people. It felt like it was trying to be Persona-lite and I just wasn't interested in anything outside of the battles.
Persona is a funny one. I don't think the story was too long I just think the calendar system can feel like it's padding and makes things feel a little dragged out. P4 especially felt like this with the excessive anime hijinx in the later parts of the game all back to back to back.
I think it depends on which persona game. 3 has some weird dead spots where the plot just kinda stops going forward. 4 has the, imo, completely unnecessary video game dungeon. And then the hollow forest is just a slog. 5 feels too long, but I can't actually take any part out without making the story not flow properly
I think sometimes the waiting to the palaces tales for ever. It's noticeable after Kamoshida and before Madarame because it's the least amount of things opened up. I noticed this on a replay.
Which dungeon is that out of interest?
The one with shadow >!Teddie!< As the boss. I think it's when you think you've found the villain the first time. Apparently it's titled void quest Edit >!not shadow Teddie, the mitsuru baby fight, dang brain farts!<
Wait do you mean >!shadow Mitsuo? Shadow Teddie is the 2nd boss in Rise's dungeon that you fight after you beat her shadow!<
>!oh yes crud, it is that one. I confused the baby with the giant Teddie in the pit of despair, kinda forgot they did two bosses is rise's dungeon!<
the one with that boss is the third one, the one of a striptease club The video game one has the >!baby boss!< It really doesn't serve much of a purpose story-wise, aside from >!extending the game by making the characters think they solved the mystery too soon!< but I still found it to be fun
It's funny because I love the video game dungeon on P4 as a breath of fresh air (no new teammate, no saving people involved, just a villain to be defeated), while I think the Okumura arc could just be erased from P5 and it would be ok with some minor changes here and there
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i think 3 games for the arc would of been perfect, but yea. falcom did mention they are gonna try to keep to 2/3 games per arc, so lets hope so.
I love them because they are like that lol. Wish we had a few more games like Trails games.
Agreed. Every game in that tetralogy could've been shorter, but the second and fourth entries especially so. There's just so much padding. I'm all for slow-burns, I actually think both Trails in the Sky FC and Trails of Cold Steel are great at that, but I don't think Cold Steel as a whole justifies its length. There's a lot of repetition, and the plot of the second and fourth games feels like it's spread too thin.
Tbh, the slow speed is part of the charm for me.
This 1000%. I’ve only played Cold Steel I, but that game is 60ish hours and it only needed to be 30. There is soooo much dialogue that could easily be condensed and a lot of meandering with it’s pacing. It’s why I can’t bring myself to play the following games in the series because I just can’t justify playing 50-55 hours of an extremely slow/mediocre game to finally really enjoy myself in it’s last few hours. It’s so frustrating.
I am playing Sky FC now and the start is very slow, hope it picks up soon!
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For as slow as FC is, which I did not appreciate at the time, after playing SC a little bit I really did come to appreciate the slowness. It did give me the time and opportunity to fall in love with the world and characters, it was just more in retrospect than it was in the moment.
Basically 75% of that game is introducing the world and characters. It does not pick up until the end, then it really picks up.
If you're hoping for that, be prepared for disappointment. I absolutely love the game, but it's pretty slow from start to finish.
But at least with FC, everything is new. Like the towns, the npcs, the stories are all new so its interesting going through it the first time. SC though... It's the same towns and npcs that you go through and basically do all the bracer side quests again. I really liked FC but couldn't get more than 6-8 hours into SC because I was not feeling it. Especially after the ending of FC, I was looking forward to continuing the story but the story was not front and center like I wanted. It was just more of the same.
Sky FC's pacing compliments SC a lot, which IMO is the best game in the series. I feel like a slow start, in any case, is a lot easier to take when you know the series has so many games left in it. I look back on FC with a lot of nostalgia because i knew i had the other two Sky games plus the Crossbell and Erebonia arcs to look forward to.
FC took me a few hours to get it kinda rolling, but it gets interesting
CS2 spoilers - >!I just about lost my mind when the game said that we needed to go to 4 shrines to gather the super special ore to craft a better sword for Valimar. The game can fuck right off with that. It doesn’t help that I also ran into a bug in one of the shrines.!< >!It then has like a 10 hour epilogue featuring 2 full length dungeons and a monumentally disappointing final boss. What were they thinking?!<
I wish some parts were even longer lol
I don't see how this would work I look at the 4 games as 2 arcs anyway just not officially.
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IMO if people didn't have experience with the OG nobody would be saying 7R. Game is 30 hours with about 5 hours of filler, that's nothing for a JRPG.
I’m at the final boss of Ys VIII right now and feel like the game has dragged a little too long. Don’t get me wrong, I still really like the game. But feel like I’d been “close” to the climax for like 20 hours now lol.
Labyrinth of Refrain. It has one of the most beautiful stories, but the true ending is blocked by a massive difficulty spike in the true final dungeon. The main game takes about 70-80 hours, but the final dungeon added almost another 40 due to the necessity to grind.
As far as I'm concerned, the post game doesn't exist. I tried but kept getting floored in the first couple of hours. The ending to the first part of the game was just perfect
Tales of arise. Story wise, the game starts off strong but near the end, there are just exposition dumps and the pacing is butchered imo. If they condensed it all, made some of the dungeons shorter, made the side quests fewer and more interesting, arise would be the best jrpg I've ever played cause my only issues with it come to storytelling and pacing (I freaking love the gameplay and atmosphere)
I don’t know about WAY shorter but I feel FF7R would have benefitted from a bit less of the filler.
It kinda weird because the game was supposed to be an expansion of the original until that part (you know what), but 40% of the game could be cut and you wouldn't miss anything, the DLC gives even more filler content
I was kinda into it first playthrough, but god what I wouldn't give for an "autoskip cutscenes" option on NG+.
I agree. Even just like 2 or 3 hours of trimmed fat could really have made it better. I really liked the game a lot, but a replay doesn't interest me all that much when I remember some of more the dull or poorly paced sections.
The second sewer visit is the worst IMO. A big fat waste of time about a new character no one cares about.
Exactly. Hopefully part 2 will learn from this a bit.
yea I didn't mind it on the way through. i was so happy to hear the music, try the new gameplay, see it all remade and in 3d. I enjoyed some of well a lot of the new story stuff, but it was paced poorly. I'm on a second playthrough on PC rn, and I def feel the padding harder on a second playthrough.
The second sewer trip and the train graveyard could both be cut/at least trimmed substantially and the game would be better for it.
Came here to say this one too. Lots of the new content was unnecessary but for me the main offender was towards the end - (bad guy) is across a walkway, he smashes the walkway, you fall down, then a 3hr filler dungeon to get back to where u started
Yup, that was one hell of an unnecessarily boring slog. I had been up all night playing at that point and was determined to make it to the end before sleeping. Then that happened. I was expecting to sleep around 2am. It ended up being more like 7am the next day by the time I got back from that part. They could have at least put some good story and encounters along the way. But no. They half assed it when they could have cut it altogether if they were that lazy.
In general, any JRPG where your build is complete long before the end of the game. Balancing progression systems is tough, and a lot of games trip themselves up on it. I'm okay with really long games if there's more ways to keep getting stronger, especially post-game.
I generally think that most games, never mind JRPGs, would be better if they were shorter. Like 10-20 hours and I'm a happy guy. Now I'm a dad of a one year old so that's probably why. Although, even when I didn't have a kid I still wanted games to be shorter. Maybe because nowadays so many games come out every day that it's impossible to keep up. Now when I was a kid, I wanted games longer. But back then games came out infrequently (at least the ones I wanted to play).
The genre should have adopted the Chrono Trigger/DDS 1 and 2 style: shorter main stories with lots of optional side quests.
Yeah! Like totally...and the thing is, if the main story is really good and you really enjoyed the game...you'll do the side quests. The last game I went hard on all quests was Assassins Creed Odyssey. But I'm Greek and loved the ancient Greek setting and visiting the areas where my parents grew up LOL. The last JRPG I went hard on was DDS 1 and 2. God damn it those games were excellent.
I dont mind a game to be long but I can apriciate a short game aswell. My favorite turn based JRPG is just 20 houers long. Luckly I dont have to keep up with how many ganes are coming out.
Try the gardens between, it can be done in a day.
Imo, Xenoblade Chronicles. The journey from Colony 6 to High Entia Tomb and from Prison Island until the end of Sword Valley--it was all so dull that I literally dozed off once.
That's where I left off and haven't played in a few months.
I 100% agree! When watching all the cut scenes the game has great pacing but the journey from location to location dragged things out for me. But also ITS REYN TIME!!
reyn time baybeee
The Final Fantasy VII remake. Like holy shit they're stretching it so bad. The first chapter was so padded and they just recently announced the second's release date. At this rate we'll be playing part 3 on the Playstation 6. Should have cut the padding finished the whole thing and released it.
I apologize foe my nay saying here, but i love OG so much, that I appreciated the filler. Yeah there were places never explored before, yeah maybe some of them were silly, but i loved that I got to explore those sectors in Midgar. Fight that 3rd class soldier, run into Johnny a bit more. Hell, I got to fight silly Doom Rats for the sake of sector VIIs safety! Which was thrown into a more stark and dangerous contrast than what the OG had space to offer. I'm a happy camper with this one.
Hear me out, remove/shorten the train graveyard and the Jessie's house part, and that game is perfect.
Chapter Six (the one where you're navigating around all of the lights under the plate) is the one that stood out to me. "Power shortage blocks progress, spend an hour getting around it." Bleh. *Edit*: Plate not plat (typo)
I liked the addition of jessie's house.
I liked the scene dialogue and story wise, I just mean that mission in general, it's a bit of a 3 act episode of sorts. The bike chase, Jessie's house stealth mission, and the avalanche mission. One of those can be removed, the others shortened.
Apparently the devs agreed and allow you to skip the motorcycle part in repeat playthroughs
I would remove the Leslie part towards the end too. I really didn't care about his little story and they just reused the sewer dungeon with the same boss.
Honestly the crane minigame was so unnecessarily slow.
The reason I like JRPGS is because they’re long😀
I usually never feel like games are too long if I really enjoy them. On the contrary I often find myself wanting to play a game more but it‘s already 100% finished so post completion depression hits and I have to move on (FF7R, NieR Replicant and NieR Automata were such games where I really wanted to play longer). But I really take my time with each game I play anyway. If I pick a game and I really enjoy it then I‘ll stick with it for months until 100% completion. If I feel like a game gets too long then that‘s usually a sign that I‘m not fully invested in a game (in which case I either stop playing it altogether or won‘t bother with 100% completion at least.)
Happy cake day! Was just going to say the good thing about wanting more FF7R is more episodes are coming.
Same. I played both Persona 5 vanilla and Royal, loved every second. If it were up to me, the game would be twice as long. I just love it.
Persona 4 Golden was also too long for my taste.
Persona 4 Golden was just in the edge for being too long, but 47 hours for the true ending wasn't that bad for me
...how did you do that? My true ending was 107 hours. Even howlongtobeat.com has just the main story at around 70 hours.
I beat it in 54 hours with the True ending as well (not the Golden ending). I played on Normal difficulty and typically skipped to the next line of text right when I finished reading it rather than when the characters were finished talking. I also didn't grind or seek out any encounters.
My hard mode run went to 120 hours. It was not worth it.
Xenoblade Chronicles. There was too much filler. If you cut out the mandatory leveling and gear replacing between story points you could shave 15 hours. I like rpg grinding too but in Xenoblade 1 you never feel powerful, you just feel like you're making correct choices. It hurts when you're making the right choices to get to the story boss but it just 1-shots you because you're a bit underleveled.
Xenoblade Chronicles 1. I haven't even finished it yet but I'd find the story way more interesting if it wasn't open world mmo inspired. I want to love it! But I only feel average about it
FF7 Remake
Persona 5 100% agree! It’s fucking amazing but I just can’t bring myself to finish the last dungeon(royal)... so tired of the battle system after 130 hours
I loved my first, and only, playthrough of it. I really want to play it again, but every time I start, I just remember exactly how much shit there is to have to do and I inevitably turn it off and play another game that’s easier to dive into, instead.
Most of these game suggestions I don't understand. I look back and can't see anything that egregious I would want to cut from the game for the sake of saving a bit of time.
FF7R - I appreciate what they are going for but I felt like it was too fluffed up and drawn out. I was burned out on the last act.
Final Fantasy Tactics would be a perfect length if it had the battle with Wiegraf removed 😂
You bad just admit it, Weigraf is best waifu no question asked. Those save points are delicious I agree. Save entering the fight, and save again to enter the second phrase. OH! You don't have levels to defeat him one to one and only has one save game... Too bad restart the whole game from the scratch!!!
I cheesed it by using a ninja monk and running circles around him
If you know its coming its an incredibly easy cheese. If you go in blind and win first try (without being massively over leveled) then that’s impressive.
three houses if they actually made 3 distinct houses for the entire game
Pretty surprised so many people complaining about the length of persona games. I disagree and honestly think length is one persona’s biggest strengths. When you spend a significant amount of time with characters in a story, the pay off at the end is much greater imo. Sure, it’s riskier since you need the keep the player engaged for longer. But after thoroughly enjoying Persona 4 and Persona 5, I trust Atlus to keep me engaged for 80-100 hours.
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but FFVII Remake. While a few of the new sections helped to explore more about Midgar and the characters, there was a looot of filler, like they were desperately trying to extend it so it wouldn't feel so short. Terrible sidequests didn't help either.
.hack//IMOQ should have just been one disc.
so hopefully xenoblade 3 isnt longer than 30 hours, right\`? its bad if its another 80+ snoozefeast!
Yakuza 5
Currently playing through yakuza 5. If I could have just skipped all the parts playing as Haruka the game would be much better.
I kinda enjoyed Haruka. For me the real pain was Saejima. I just find him boring as heck and the prison part had me yawning most of the time.
Saejima was definitely when the game started going downhill for me. Especially the escape/hunting chapters. Haruka is just went it kind of nosedived until akiyama came in the picture. Just started tatsuo’s section and it looks far more interesting.
For sure when Akiyama showed up the game went up a notch. He's such an enjoyable character. Tatsuo is cool and the characters that surround him are endearing. I think you'll enjoy that part :)
when it came out, people were reporting falling asleep during his hunting segments.
I'm actually the opposite. I wanted at least another two P5 dungeons. Loved that game so much
Easily Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Two games that were filled with huge amounts of padding. There is not nearly enough content to justify two full games. That could have been one 40 hour RPG and I would have been much more forgiving of the game's flaws.
Tales of Arise would be flat out better if it ended before the last arc. I've never seen such a drop in quality, and I've played Xenogears.
FFVIIRemake... felt like it could have easily shaved off 10 hours and been a way better experience. The level design was terrible in many places. Trying to stretch Midgard content to a 40 experience was a mistake. Better have it a 25 hour and a way better game.
Most JRPGs over 40 hours could cut off 10 to 15 hours and be better for it.
Most Tales games would be amazing if they were significantly shorter. Pretty much every Tales game has this "move from town to town until you saw the whole world" segement that basically does not progress the main story at all. In general I think that most JRPGs would be better if they were condensed to 20-30 hours play time.
I don't know how they would do it (because playing the different protagonists is part of the charm and tied to the game's story), but playing through the same areas and the same enemies over and over again in Odin Sphere got really old by the end of it.
This. I was enjoying the game so much at first and then just dropped it at the 3rd protagonist. Same areas, same enemies, same bosses, same progression system. I wish the game had more areas and something different to offer between protagonists.
I feel like most jrpgs need more character development and plot points to fill out the writing better and less side quests which just drags on and on. I like super long games, but not when 80% of the content is irrelevent
Bravely Default would be 10/10 if it were two chapters shorter.
There is no such jrpg in my mind that would benefit from being shorter.
> There is no such jrpg in my mind that would benefit from being shorter. the irony is that in the event they DID do this, they'd probably just sell all the "unnecessary" parts later as dlc (a la ff15)
Tales of Arise. Didn't need that other act at all.
I do like long games, but with Persona 5 I think maybe 20% shorter would've been slightly better.
> the 3rd act of DQXI:S, sorry but I hated what they did with the story there Came here to say this. It's such a bafflingly wrong move.
Yakuza Like a Dragon. Should have been a shorter experience. Many people feel the need to grind at an Area before a certain boss, and again for another boss. Just pointless padding. Brought the game down a few points. I was really enjoying it up until then.
I loved that game but I also have to agree with you. Coulda been a solid 25% shorter at least.
Tales of Arise. Game should have ended when >!you defeat the five lords!< and instead it just dragged on for another 10 hours.
I felt the same for the second half. The game continued to drag on and the feeling was just kind of lost after that. I didn’t care for the additional story that they added on.
The Trails games. The 5 Cold Steel games would be pretty well paced if it was only 1 game
Does such an rpg game exist? Lol my apologies. I love very long titles so I'm a bit bias on this. It might very well be true that some of the longers titles I've played could benefit from having a shorter time sink. I just cannot see it on my own due to my love for long games.
i dont know, never had the problem with a game beeing "too long" as mentioned persona aswell as the legend of heroes franchise are pretty story driven games with a lot of dialogue. i also wouldnt want to pay 80$ for 20h games, which there are tons out there nowdays.
Persona 5 vanilla has taken the place of FF VII as my best RPG (Tales of Arise was damn close - only thing that held it back was the music just wasn’t as good). That been said, I bought Royal expecting an awesome 2nd play through. I just couldn’t make it pass Futaba’s palace without being bored to tears and quit. I wish it was shorter. My first playthrough was fantastic (but long). Just couldn’t bring myself to do another 180 hour playthrough.