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The Longest and Shortest RPGs?

ULTROS!

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
So GAF, what do you think are the longest and shortest JRPGs?

Longest:
1. Persona 5 - 110 hours with skipping a bit of dialogue and doing fast reading. Without those it would easily consume around 120 hours. Mileage may vary but so far this is the longest JRPG on a normal playthrough that I've experienced.
2. Dragon Quest VII (PS1) - Can reach over 100 hours but the 3DS version cuts a lot of time.
3. Persona 4 - 80-90 hours
4. Dragon Quest VIII - 80-90 hours
5. Star Ocean 4 - 60-70 hours, 500 hours for platinum

Shortest:
1. Ys: Oath in Felghana - 7-9 hours
2. Dragon Quest I - 10 hours
3. Final Fantasy I - 10-15 hours
4. Suikoden I - 15 hours
5. Parasite Eve - 10-15 hours
 
I've only been able to play Persona 5 for about an hour every couple of days.

What the hell did I step into
lol.gif


EDIT: As a note, I remember Brave Story on PSP being only about 10-15 or so hours. I recall Golden Sun was also quite short.
 
I always remember Final Fantasy VII being much longer than it really is, though I usually do use some tricks to get powerful enemy skills early on.
 
From memory...

1 - Persona 5 (120 hours)
2 - Trails in the Sky SC (103 hours)
3 - Persona 3 (99 hours)
4 - Ao no Kiseki (95 hours)
5 - Trails of Cold Steel (90 hours)
6 - Trails of Cold Steel II (85 hours)
7 - Etrian Odyssey IV (80 hours)
8 - Persona 4 (75 hours)
 
The longest "traditional" jrpg I think for me was Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together, I put about 150 hours into the game. FF12 also took ME around 110 hours.

Currently I'm about 100 hours into Zelda and only have 1 of the 4 Devine beats. I'm sure this will be a 200 hour game.


As for shortest At the peak of my memorization powers I could beat Suikoden I & II in under 10 hours each.
 
The first Shadow Hearts was a nice 15 hours. I played through it in two sessions before I played Covenant.
 
Witcher 3, BG 2 and BoTW are all 100+ hr experiences

I guess with Zelda you can go straight to the finish so playtime can be hugely different but yeah

Edit. Oh. Jrpg. My bad
 
I think Costume quest was sub-5 hours for most people on their first time through. Persona 3 was probably the longest one I've ever personally played.
 
I don't know the hour count, but Chrono Trigger is the perfect length. Almost no bloat in that game at all.

Long RPGs aren't bad if they don't feel padded. P5 doesn't (outside of maybe the group chat at times) so I enjoyed all of my time with it. DQVII, on the other hand, doesn't respect the player's time at all.

I was honestly surprised how short Suikoden I was when I replayed it recently. The later games are typical JRPG length (50-ish hours for main quest or so) but the first one is very tightly designed, and almost too short. No wonder I beat it with a three day rental.

Edit: Star Ocean 1, especially the SNES version, is fairly short as well, IIRC.
 
A single run of Undertale is probably in the 5-7 hour range, though I would say the ideal playstyle is a normal and then True Ending run so somewhere between 10-15 hours, which still puts it among the shorter entries.

Wither 3 is huge if you do most story content. I didn't do much of the checklist style thing and it's still got my most hours logged on Steam.

Edit: Oh your post asks for JRPGS, but the title said RPG. Well Undertale probably still counts.
 
Persona 5 for longest. Spent 172 hrs on my first playthrough. Shortest I've completed is Suikoden 1, with 19-ish hrs
 
Mattakuevan said:
True ending in undertale takes about 6-7 hours.
Click to expand...

To be fair though, you're meant to replay Undertale, and unlike other games 90% of the dialogue is different on at least 2 playthroughs, probably closer to 40-60% on Neutral vs Pacifist. You can get 2 playthroughs minimum out of it, or as many as like 6-7 if you really want to(though returns diminish the further you go).
 
Ys 1, 2, and a single story in Origin are all shorter than Oath in Felghana. Completing Origin is about twice as long, but most of the content between each story is the same.

Xenoblade is pretty long. First playthroughs often seem to clock in at 70-100+ hours, with faster ones being in the 50-60 range.

Length isn't really something that you can objectively quantify though because even long games can often be completely much quicker on replays. How much side-content is being done, how well does the player know the game, etc. Or in some cases how fast does the player read, or are the even reading at all and just mashing through text.
 
Plumpbiscuit said:
Tyranny is one of the shortest CRPGs to come out. Less than 10 hours.
Click to expand...

I can't imagine there's too many people knocking it out in that short of a time.

Granted, I take my time, but I've already got like 14 clocked in and I barely have scratched the surface.

It definetly does seem like it's shorter than most CRPGs overall though.
 
This is disheartening. I don't have a lot of time to play and among my most anticipated games are:
The Witcher 3
Persona 5
Pillars of Eternity
Breath of the Wild

I should try to go towards some other genre.
 
Ikon said:
This is disheartening. I don't have a lot of time to play and among my most anticipated games are:
The Witcher 3
Persona 5
Pillars of Eternity
Breath of the Wild

I should try to go towards some other genre.
Click to expand...

Get Tyranny if you were interested in Pillars.
 
First playthrough on Persona 5 took me something less than 85 hours. I feel that the Xenoblade games were actually longer.
 
Kinda depends on whether you're interested in the post-game content, traipsing around huge open worlds, dozens of side-quests, optional collecting stuff and DLC that modern games stick in to bump up the play time by an extra 40 hours on the back of the box. Older JRPGs had less of that, modern ones often have additional content that's longer than entire 8-bit/16-bit games. I love the Etrian Odyssey games and tend to finish them in around 50 hours, but ignore the post-game element as that's long enough for me.

Of the shorter ones I've played-
Ys Oath in Felghana ~10 hours. So lean and mean for an ARPG. Great stuff.
Suikoden ~18 hours
Child of Light ~8 hours

Of the longer ones without counting any postgame, mindless fetchquests that I just ignore etc
Trails of Cold Steel 2 (that just keeps going) 70 hours
SMTIV: Apocalypse~ easily 60 hours but would be a better game without the final dungeon.
Star Ocean IV ~60 hours+
All of those suffer from a lengthy, unimaginative final dungeon that's just generic platforms floating in space, one of my great jrpg bugbears. It's like they don't expect players to get that far, feel like they need to add an extra long dungeon anyway, but are happy to just cut-and-paste it and fill it with tough enemies.

DQVII is pretty long too, that took me 60 hours+.
 
Clown_im_OP said:
The first Shadow Hearts was a nice 15 hours. I played through it in two sessions before I played Covenant.
Click to expand...
Oh, really? Only played Covenant and I am planning to play it again this year, maybe I play th first game before that.

@Topic

I also have to go with Persona 5 as longest Rpg I habe experienced. After finishing palace 6 the clock shows 100 hours.
 
Counting MMORPGs is kind of cheating because they have so much filler content and lazy quests. But I am really impressed with The Elder Scrolls Online because it almost feels like a true single-player game with fully voiced quests and lots of dialogue. The quests are all well done and some of them even feature decissions on how to solve them, be good/evil or something in between. It's fantastic.

For single-player - especially when you go for most of the side-stuff - The Witcher 3, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Baldur's Gate 2, Persona games, SMT: Strange Journey, Dragon Quest 7 and Kingdoms of Amalur come to mind.
 
Shortest RPG I know is Metal Saga. You can get an ending 5 minutes after you start the game!
I have played a lot of RPGs but Persona 5 is the last game it took me a lot of time to beat. I beat it in 85 hours.
 
This can be a hard list ti nail sown as some only seemed long because of a lack of clues as tp where to go next or difficult bosses. One such game took me months to beat the first time and now i can do iy in around 3 days knowing where everything is and strategies to use etc..... although my favorite JRPG games (using the amount of time it took me to beat them the first playthrough) of all time are:

Longest
Phantasy Star
Phantasy Star II
Phantasy Star IV
Final Fantasy VII


Shortest

Golvellius
Crystalis
Sword of Vermillion
Kings Quest
Wonder Boy in Monster Wold
Spellcaster
Alex Kidd High Tech World


Games that were good but i cant remember playtime
Parasite Eve
Star Ocean
Dragon Quest
Earthbound
Blue Dragon
Enchanted Arms
Paper Mario
Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem
Dragon Age


Right now im engaged in Lost Odyssey (free games with gold recently and i never played it)
FFXV
Zelda BOTW
I am Setsuna
Child of Light (almost done I think)

I know there are many more I cant remember that are on the tip of my brain.......they just won't come out. Blue "something" for example was def a cd Jrpg but I can't remember at all what it was called
 
What do I think are the longest/shortest or my personal time spent with it?

Edit: Oh, you are talking about jRPGs? I only played like 5 so I doubt my list would be very interesting. Also 3 of them are SNES games so I have no idea how long I spent with them
 
Itsuki said:
Shortest RPG I know is Metal Saga. You can get an ending 5 minutes after you start the game!
I have played a lot of RPGs but Persona 5 is the last game it took me a lot of time to beat. I beat it in 85 hours.
Click to expand...

I just ordered Metal Saga. What do you have to do to get that ending?
 
shmoglish said:
Oh, really? Only played Covenant and I am planning to play it again this year, maybe I play th first game before that.
Click to expand...
Yeah, How Long to Beat says 25h for the main story, but I'm sure I did it below 20. Maybe I rushed to get to the second game, but it's certainly doable in half the time Covenant takes.
 
Are we going with average times, or what I spent playing?

Dragon Quest VII (ps1) and Persona 5 are probably the longest JRPGs going by average play time.

entremet said:
Why are the Persona games so long? I enjoy but I can never finish them since they're so long.
Click to expand...

The full year life sim aspect really pads out the length.
 
The suikoden games are only 10 hours? I hear lots of good things from them but I don't have time to play that many 100 hours rpg, so maybe I should give them a try
 
sibarraz said:
The suikoden games are only 10 hours? I hear lots of good things from them but I don't have time to play that many 100 hours rpg, so maybe I should give them a try
Click to expand...

They are not.

If you don't rush, the first game is 15-20 hours and the second is 35-50 hours. Suikoden 3 is long as hell, as is Suikoden 5.
 
I completed a run as a loremaster in Age of Decadence in 2 Hours

€: Oh, it's about JRPG's exclusively? welp
 
Longest for me personally has been Final Fantasy X (had to get all weapons) Shortest has to be Evolution back on Dreamcast. I remember thinking, "that's it?"

The sequel was pretty short too.

Edited after reading OP
 
Costume Quest
Severed
Child of Light
Deathspank
Stories

All are pretty short. Edit: stuff it going by the title instead.
 
Xenoblade Chronicles was loooong. I played it for over 120 hours and the pure main story was at least 60 hours long.

The shortest RPGs that I played were probably Eternal Sonata (from memory, it is really a long time ago) and recently FFXV. I beat its story in 35 hours. After that I added about 20 more hours in the open world part though.
 
Persona 5 definitely the longest RPG I've ever played. 120 hours in and still possibly one more dungeon left after the one I'm doing.

Persona 3 and 4 were both around that 70-80 hours mark, so those are close as well.

Tale of Vesperia/Xillia and most tales games are around the 40 hour mark.
 
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