I disagree, I think the social links in Persona games is tremendous fun, maybe they are not your thing, don't force yourself to play it, just because you have a gaming channel, play the JRPGs you favour, I largely avoid strategy JRPGs.
Yeah I’m not really into strategy RPG’s either. I play JRPG’s for the sense of adventure and discovery and fun combat. strategy RPG’s focus too much on politickey type storylines which I usually find boring.
I don't think he was specifically talking about the social links here, but more so the social stats, and how they are levelled for the most part - which is definitely far less interesting than the social links.
The social links are great, but being locked out of continuing a social link because you need to study for 10 days in a row to level up your intelligence is kinda bulshit
Sadly MANY people online have this mentality how much gameplay your getting per dollar spent, which is crazy. I do love 100hrs+ games, jrpgs with complex stories or character development can’t really be short. Now, it’s different when a game feels long, persona games have never felt long to me. I enjoy the ride. Micromanaging everything is my jam. Something like Final Fantasy XII though… I couldn’t wait for the game to be over.
As a full time worker and dad of two I adore these styles of game, getting home from work at 10pm I can just chill and relax in these worlds. I’ve managed to jump from one new jrpg to the next this year and there lengths have been a helpful part of that
Sorry bro, the day they shorten Megaten games are the day I stop preordering and start waiting on deep discounts. If it’s too long for you then it’s not your type of game.
@@Jack-nj9pino matter how you cut it lmao. I love these absolute declarations. Your needs are not the needs of everyone else. Some people really love to immerse themselves in a game, and min max them. They purchase the soundtrack, merchandise, and rebuy it on different platforms. These games are made for those people. The real realization is that people’s attention spans have gotten shorter. If you can’t commit to an experience then you’re not the target audience here.
@@ForTheViolence and neither are yours lmao thats what makes it absolute! you can write all that and it still doesn't change the fact that a 200 hr game is long asf. Saying people have a short attention span because 300 hours of an rpg is a mission and a half is such a typical internet comment. Everything you litteral wrote can be used in reverse. People do the exact same thing for shorter games and replay ability wih merch ost and more. Jrpgs now are much longer then they used to be had nothing to do with the target audience as we all grew up with jrpgs.
Ah yes, the Persona problem. I fell in love with Atlus in the PS2 era, and it's definitely something I struggle with sometimes. For me, the initial experience is almost always worth it. It's when I go back for a replay that it gets unpleasant. Having to sit through the same story events again just to see the alternate social links, or fight the optional super bosses, is miserable. I think a lot of this would be helped by taking some ideas from VNs, and allowing players to choose if they want to auto-fast forward or auto-skip through events that they've already seen. The sweet spot for me is Chrono Trigger. You can do a full NG playthrough in 20-30 hours, and then NG+ runs are generally 2-10 hours after that. It's truly phenomenal!
When I played Persona 5 Royal after beating the OG Persona 5 a year prior, I still had a good time with it. But that's probably because a number of strategies for bosses were changed, and I was focusing on being able to acquire the additional content. Chrono Trigger is the GOAT for a reason! Though I hate that when I replay it from the beginning, I get to the end in about 10-12 hours. Man I just cruise through that thing!
@@TrevRockOne I just finished that one yesterday and I agree. There were some pacing issues. I still look back on chapter 2 and wonder how I got through that.
Hard agree. If a game is great and 30 hours, I’d replay it. Meanwhile my wall is full of 100+ hour games I got bored of 60hours in. And since they use length as a selling point so often, length often means it’s 30hrs of content stretched out over 100hrs. You can make 2secs of gameplay last 100hrs. Does that mean you think it’s better because it’s made longer?
@drowningin of course not. But i like having short games and long games. Ya’ll arguing all games should have some arbitrary fixed length, let devs make whatever they want
I honestly feel like no RPG should be shorter than 50 hours. i LOVE tales of Bersaria, its 45 hours long and it still feels too short, I’ve beaten that game more times than i can count- wishing it was longer
I respect your opinion, and it also depends on the game, but seriously complaining about the length of games while making a lengthy video about that, which could have been easily reduced to like 2 minutes, it's very counterproductive
Longer games are a better value for gamers on a budget. If you're 10 years old with lots of free time and limited money, longer is better. If you're 40 and have a good job and 100 games in your backlog but barely find time for 10 hours of gaming a week, shorter is better.
I work full-time and I'm a part-time grad student, so for me the argument about games being too long is not as much based on quality but more so practical constraints, lol. I DO enjoy long RPGs, it's just almost impossible for me to actually finish them. I've always been a mood-based gamer, and this actually becomes a pretty big issue when you stretch games over months of real time (which is what happens when I play super long games). It's really hard for me to maintain interest and keep coming back, and if I stop returning to a game, there's an extremely small chance I'll ever get back to it because I would just have to restart at that point to get into the game's atmosphere/flow.
Man this video hit me hard. I love JRPGs since I was a kid, and by the time I had other hobbies like music, soccer and, really, I don't remember being a struggle to play these games. Today I am almost 40 yo, a full time worker, father of 1 and I keep on thinking that there are so many really good games in other genres that I can have the full experience in one week! Or I will have to play the same awesome story for 2 months. I don't know... I would like to read more books, mangas, watch anime but there is always this game I am playing to finish... Right now I am playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3 on Switch, loving it, but I am 30+ hours in and still on act 3 of 7. At some point I know I will get sick and drop it. Metroid, Bayonetta, Mario Wonder, Mario RPG, Zelda Echoes, Older Ys, Dragon's Crown, Chrono Trigger... All below 30 hours.
No question that Metaphor is a long game but I found it be to more respectful of my time than Persona. I love that a lot of the activities provide interactions with party members or a bit of world building. The pacing of the stat levelling is also better, with no need the do the equivalent of eating burgers every day.
Yeah, this is just how you play games, and this is all you and how you play. You're a story guy, and the game exists to push you through to the next narrative. The pressure to "finish" a game comes with that, and I think this is all about how you experience games. I'm not really like you, so I dont feel particularly pressured by how long or short the game is. I honestly am not burdened by any of that stream of consciousness you relate here, which is more "I like trails more than Persona because I was bored and the silent protag bothers me" than anything objective.
I Played Elden Ring, then finished Persona 4, _then_ jumped directly into Persona 5 this year. I'm exhausted, and I'm still not done with P5. Don't get me wrong, I think these games are masterpieces, but *man.* Before I tackled the 3 games I listed I started out the year playing games that were still pretty long like Yakuza 0, NieR Replicant, NieR Automata, and even FFVII Remake but my time with those seemed to breeze by when compared to the time I put into the former. I am really interested in Metaphor, but I just _can't_ anytime soon. At least I don't feel the need to rush into it because Atlus will inevitably put out a definitive edition of Metaphor at some point. I wanted to add: When I was a kid I remember playing FFVII and thinking "Wow! That game was 80 hours long! That was amazing!" Now I'm Spending 200+ hours in some games and I'm definitely not praising the length anymore. I like _dense_ experiences, not _drawn-out_ experiences.
Metaphor Refantazio took me 107 hours, so yeah, very lengthy indeed. Metaphor was the first atlus game where I genuinely felt it was too long. I loved Persona 3,4 and 5 but Metaphor was just too long. They could easily have trimmed away like 20-25 hours
I think Persona 5 is honestly also not a game that has 100 hours of content, it just takes 100 hours to play. Like, sorry, but if you're gonna ask philosophical questions and set up big plot twists, actually engage with those questions and make the plot twists at least as interesting as you've set them up to be. (Sorry, I'm tired today, but I had issues with Persona 5's story)
The thing I always find funny is that everyone always says a game is too long or too short, but nobody ever talks about when a game is the right length and I’m assuming a developer would rather people say a game is too long rather than too short.
When something's exactly the right length, you don't really notice haha. But, uh, Chrono Trigger is a perfect length, for example. Short, sure, but exactly short enough for you to do another quick new game+ and check out some of the other endings :P
I completely agree with your logic. Also, you should divide by max of 12 hours instead of 24, since you must sleep, eat, drink water, toilet stuff like that (will not mention study and work I put you in mission mode lol), as logically you will not spend a 100 consecutive days without those. So for example trails series, it's gonna be 200 days with the usage of the whole time used playing as long as you are awake. Yeah, feel the sadness...
I don't agree. Persona is popular because most JRPG fans found the gameplay engaging. The characters are awesome and you want to spend time with them. While Daybreak, Zero and Azure are great all around, Cold Steel spends to much time in boring story beats with boring characters that you don't buy for a second that are military soldiers. I love all 4 Cold Steel games, but i would never replay them because tons of story bits feel like real chores.
I'm in the exact opposite camp; I played Persona 3 Reload earlier this year, and I did all the Arcana boosting side-events and all the points boosting stuff too. If I had to play Persona 3 Reload again from scratch, I'd skip all the side content and just focus on building a party that could kill reapers. It's why I have doubts about trying Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal - I liked Persona 3 Reload, but I don't want to play a game only to get to the end and find out that I could have achieved the same results with far less effort. That's discouraging. It kills my sense of progression; I don't feel like I improved at Persona 3 Reload when I got to the end, I just feel like I did it the stupid way.
@SuperSupersoda Fair enough, that's a matter of taste and i understand that. But Persona is probably the most popular JRPG franchise right now for a reason. Tons of people prefere Cold Steel, but overall i think Persona is more apealling. If you didn't enjoy Reload don't try Golden or Royal, they are very long games with similar premisses.
@@shinseijuurou6229 I actually really did like Persona 3 Reload, I found the combat system to be fun and engaging as all hell. I'm probably going to give Persona 5 Royal a try sometime in 2025, but I'm also going to not go into the game blind: I'm going to google the game's exploits before I try it. I only had two real problems with Reload, the issue with the progression that I mentioned, and the fact that I didn't find any of the female party members to be likable. Both of those are a personal taste thing, everyone's mileage will vary. Persona is, right now, the biggest JRPG franchise around. Just because I think there was an easier way to get the rewards from the side activities doesn't mean I found them to be a chore to get through, many of the bonding events were really very good and were worth doing for the sake of the story. I also liked that these events were generally much shorter than a similar thing in Trails would be. Even though Trails is my current favorite JRPG franchise, I will admit that trails can be a lot, and that I do need breaks from time to time.
I don't really mind a game's length as long as I'm having fun with it. Do I feel like some parts of games are too long? Absolutely. Personally, I think Elden Ring was *waaaaaay* too long and it could've had parts of it reduced in scope. But I still enjoyed my time with it. As long as a game isn't boring or making me wish I was doing something else, I'm fine.
Yup, I agree with you here. Just because a game is long, doesn't mean that it's good. If it's padded with mandatory world exploration where said world is desolate and empty, it feels cheap. But games, like the Trails series, that allow options such as scene skip and fast-forward, are respectful of our time. I've played all of the Trails series facilitating the fast forward feature in all the battles and much of the world exploration and that's trimmed down the time for me to complete these games to 40 hours each, usually. Exception being Trails of Cold Steel IV - that game was looooong!
@@Brand-pn5yz Are you talking about the Trails series? Because I've played the first nine games in the series; each of them took me ~40 hours to complete with Trails of Cold Steel IV being the exception at 70 hours. And that's with ALL of the sidequests being completed too. ...have you played the Trails series?
@@Brand-pn5yz Gotcha - because yes, those are *absolutely* ~80-110 hour experiences. I've found the only skippable things there are the scenes. It's okay to skip or fast forward the same dialogue when working the part time jobs, but I hate to do anything like that for the story and character-driven dialogue. But admittedly I've only played Persona 3 Reload, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5, and Persona 5 Royal just once each.
I agree. So here's my thing: I used to love long games, but I developed a mitochondrial/neurological disease about 8 years ago and it got worse after I got covid in 2020. My body actually doesn't make energy now the way it's supposed to, so I can't play games for long periods the way I used to. I'm lucky if I can play for an hour or two a day, many days I feel too sick to play at all. If there's a game that takes 80-100+ hours, that could actually take me several months to play a single game. In the meantime, there are other things I would like to try. So I've pivoted to shorter experiences, and also games that are easier on my brain. I'm much happier with gaming since doing that! 😊
I'll be 100% honest. When I hear a game is 100 hours long it totally kills my motivation to play it. I'm an adult, I don't have time to play a 80-100 hour long game. I'd much rather play a 3 or 4 20-30 hour games as opposed to one 100 hour game. Its the exact reason why I haven't played Metaphor, Persona 3 Reload, or Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, they're just too long. Especially with how many games we get these days. I can't spend 3-4 weeks on one game where there's several games coming out in that time frame. Yeah it's a first world problem but it is what it is I guess
Even JRPGs that were once 10-40 hours are now increasing. Xenoblade went from 50 hours from the Wii to now 100+ hours from Xenoblade 3. Mario & Luigi RPGs went from 20 hours to 40 hours. Fire emblem went from 20 to 60 hours.
I don’t like equating time and money as some kind of linear relationship, so I definitely agree with you there. It’s about the quality of the time spent, not the amount of time spent regardless. The two things I’ve noticed in a lot of the genre are conversations that are repetitive or have lots of “agreement/reaction” beats and dungeons that are long just to be long. The ship in P5 is a NIGHTMARE. Descending to the bottom of whatever that thing was called took forever. These are the things that need to be truncated.
This is true for those games that create content by having you do endless collections. Basically anything Ubisoft releases, for example, has about 50% filler content. Persona games are not that. The games are packed with actual content and it never feels stale or repetitive. The daily life is part of the gameplay, and very much enjoyable. Thinking persona is about "the big events" is missing the point. But even if you wanted to skip the daily life for some reason, you can, so your complaints are just not valid
I have the same issue. I want to play all these JRPGs but they overstay their welcome so many times. You could cut some of these games in half and have an arguably better game. For the long game andies out there, you can always replay a game. Most of these games have NG+ other incentives to play a game.
Social links are actually my favorite part of Persona, I like learning more about the world I'm playing, so big side stories that use the themes of the game in different ways is perfect for me and I'm pretty sure for many others. That's why I'm so excited for Persona 5 phantom x because for every new playable character the game gets we get a new social link and by the end of the games lifespan we'll have something like 100+ social links
I prefer RPGs that respect my time. A long game is okay from time to time, but I so rarely have the time for a 100 hour game anymore. I remember when a 'long' game was FF5 or 6, at 40-50 hours. Long games with good and engaging stories definitely can be fun, but sometimes I wonder if it really needed to be that long for the same story.
I absolutely agree with this video. Way too much padding in modern games. Consider just how much time in Persona, for example, watching the calendar system move, each day loading, all that repetitiveness you mention. Characters move slow. A dialogue that could be a few lines becomes a whole scene. One thing I hated with Persona was how you have to creep through a dungeon, you can't just speed run because oh no! the monsters will see you!! JRPGs these days feel more like some SIMs-life chores. I really wish modern JRPGs could be more like older games but with modern graphics, would really prefer a nice-looking 50 hour game that is constantly progressing than what we usually get. On the other hand, though, and you can see this in some comments- some people might REALLY like any one of these games for whatever personal reasons, it's really all subjective. Me I don't like Persona but I love Trails and especially Cold Steel 1 and 2, while I see others love Persona and possibly Trails but maybe not those two entries so much.... so I guess it turns into "yes you can beat these games within 40-50 hours if you do the bare minimum, and if you really love the game here's more stuff in it that you'll probably enjoy". Me, I like to 100% games, so once I start I'm in it for the long haul and maybe that's the problem, feeling like I somehow HAVE TO do everything in these games even if I don't like them to the point where I just want them done and over with. Lots to think on.
I rally like this video actually. You bring up some really valid points. The whole Persona thing gets me from the UI, I have to see the numbers go up haha.
I somewhat agree with you Brandon. With the persona games specifically, I love the gameplay and calendar system however you have a point that there comes a point when the things you are doing every day become uninteresting and you are just trying to get the most social points. It would be a hard problem to fix but I think part of it is they tell you that you can spend your time however you want but we all know there is the optimal way to play to get the most social points and to spend your time the most effectively. If they were able to kind of take that away to encourage you to try different things go down different paths and maybe do some side questy type stuff in those activities it might make it more interesting. Another thing is the social links. This is been a problem with persona for a long time but if the side stories they had with the social links were a bit more interesting and written a little tighter, it would at least give you some sort of payoff. Don’t get me wrong I really enjoy some of the silly side stories but sometimes some of those social links lack depth and it just feels like a game mechanic to make stronger personas. I think if Atlus was able to improve some of these things it would take their games from 8/10 or 9/10 to 10/10.
what's left out of the equation in determining the value proposition for a long game is that it's depriving you of other experiences in favor of having many helpings of the same experience the game you bought is offering
I had to stop playing trails. I would read every NPC available dialogue every single time they updated. Just running around talking to every npc before advancing the main story every day so I could follow every single story. It just got to be too much after the Sky trilogy and Crossbell I’ve taken a few year break from the series
when i get totally sucked into one of these super long games, by the end of it I want it to keep going since I love it so much >_< when it comes to metaphor, a lot of the grinding you do (if you decide to do it) just happens in the overworld, so you dont need to play out full battles, which makes it so much faster. i also felt that each thing I decided to do really mattered, since if I want to become king...I really do need to increase my eloquence, imagination, etc. also, in the rare instance I spend time increasing those stats, usually its paired with great worldbuilding! the "social links" are only 8 ranks here instead of 10 as well, so it feels like each rank up is a big step up (for most of the characters, anyway...) however, i can admit I may be a bit addicted to the game as you mentioned in the video..which is probably not the best for my health.. but.. just wanted to point out some differences I noticed between metaphor and persona :P
As is the case for many adult gamers, I think, the dynamic has definitely shifted for me with age. When I was younger and could only get a couple new games a year around the holidays and my birthday, I absolutely do remember genuinely thinking that games advertised as being really long increased their value to some degree. Tales of Symphonia is one such game that stands out in my memory where if I'm not mistaken, the back of the box even says something along the lines of "over 80 hours of gameplay!" to which I was like "wow :D" Now as a working adult I have the entertainment budget to get games whenever I feel like within reason, but not enough time to even play everything that I already own- let alone new releases coming out every year. I now place way more value on short but sweet experiences rather than longer padded out ones, and have considerably less tolerance for game mechanics that feel like they're disrespectful of the player's time. Persona/Metaphor walks a fine line- I really do love these games for many reasons so I'm willing to play one every so often. I haven't played Persona since P5 vanilla came out 7 years ago, for example, so stepping into Metaphor recently has been a welcome return to that style of game. But I can't play them all the time and even hesitate at playing games like Royal and Reload. P5 and P3 are both beloved games to me but it's hard to justify replaying such a long experience, even in a new package. Similarly most games aren't this egregious, but a game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that is just stuffed to the brim with all sorts of time disrespecting systems completely loses me these days.
I think it's a twofold problem, and it's not 100% one or the other but both equally. The problems are yes games are getting longer, but for the most part i don't think they're artificially dragged on for the sake of length, rather they're packed full of good content. The other problem though is life as we age just gets busy and we don't have the time we used to have to game. Me in my teenage years would have LOVED these 100+ hour games such as P5R & Metaphor, these days though i just don't have the time. My nephews can beat a new game every week, meanwhile i barely get a handful of hours each week to game.
another concern i have is how do games within the same genre differentiate themselves from one another - in other words, how different are the battle systems, or the leveling/progression systems, or the item uses, or the story writing/arcs/twists, etc.
While I love Personal for its philosophical themes, practically it is a micromanaging simulator…also, I remember many RPG boxes from the SNES era touting game time as a definite selling point.
I'll always stan for Chrono Trigger, but if you want something more modern, there's Visions of Mana, and I'll be recommending another on the channel soon...
I kinda agree. I know JRPGs try to be very immersive and getting you attached to people and places, but some of the mundane stuff is drawn out too long sometimes. I've play P5R, P4G and right now P3R and I love these games so much, but what I notice again right now after 70h, I'm in November and I'm burned out by all the daily activites, I just skip through textboxes and go straight to the next social link. I like the social links and would love to see these people in a more meaningfull way more often, rather than playing a game to increase my academics for the 10th time. Especially in the evening there are so few social links, it's kinda empty now after also maxing social stats, all I can do is repeat some activities with teammates for statboosts.
The great thing about Atlus games is, they give you a choice. If you prefer story and character interaction, play Persona or Metaphor. Do you prefer gameplay above all else, play the Shin megami tensei games. Do they overstay their welcome? Yeah, I think so. I'm getting sick of metaphor right now, even though I really like it. After a stressfull day I honestly just want to have some mindless fun. So I either play etrian odyssey or the smt games. And I don't mind their lenghts. But Metaphor doesn't let me have fun for long periods of time, so I just sit there twiddling my thumbs. Same with Genshin Impact. Just sitting and waiting until a cutscene is over and I can finally explore again. Now that I think about it, the length of a game doesn't really bother me as long as it gives me something to do other than reading or listening to characters talk.
I think it depends. Some RPGs, like Sea of Stars, felt like a chore to get through due to the shallow gameplay and _terrible_ characters like Garl. But I LOVE how long Xenoblade games are. They're the perfect game I can just play and play and play. Quest after quest, exploring, taking in the sights, soaking in the great music. When a game is great fun, a long length can feel fantastic!
I don't mind long games at all. I'm not much of a gamer whatsoever. I enjoy the few games I play and that's it. Quite frequently most of the time when I hear people say a game is too long it's not because of them getting bored of the game or anything, they are trying to rush past every single game they play like they are in a marathon and I really don't get that mentality. Work does take a lot of time away from me but sticking with these games gives me a comfort space.
i always wonder how many games people are completing - the steam numbers dont usually look good in that department - my guess is people play for a while until a new shiny is delivered to their house - i trying to be super selective now knowing these games take hundreds of hours - like dqxi or xenoblade chronicles x - but also allowing myself the freedom to engage with side quests that pique my interest - i think msq + optional sides is the way - but still the value is there in terms of hours but just in terms of experience - nothing else other than solo pen and paper rpgs allow for this kind of experience - and even then it would be very different. i think you have to treat it like a themepark, but you do the things you like within the themepark - otherwise you'll be stuck there forever like a rat in a maze
Personally I don’t feel that way. The most recent JRPG that I tackled 80+ hours was YS X nordics, did all the side quests, battled that “secret” boss, collected all the fishes etc etc. I don’t regret my time being “wasted” on for doing everything instead of going straight towards the main objective on easy mode. In regards to Persona games being too long, I don’t agree with that, like how others have said. The way I see it the social link system clearly is a fun and engaging system, otherwise persona series wouldn’t be where it’s at now when it comes to its huge success. People love interacting with the cast, upping their social stats, midmaxing, rinse & repeat. If you feel that the system is too “time consuming” perhaps recent persona games aren’t hitting that sweet spot as of lately because of responsibilities getting in the way, but the way I see it. Perhaps the best way to enjoy persona games without that lingering thought of it being too long, try playing the games at your own pace, play other titles in between the long RPG’s, come back to ‘em when you have the desire to play ‘em.
This isn't the first time our RPG opinions have clashed and it won't be the last but I enjoy listening to you to articulate why I have my perspective. Good videos man
I’m not gonna lie…while I still enjoyed Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth by my gods was there too much content. It feels so bloated. I started to skip a lot of stuff at the end.
I think you are absolutely right, anyway, and this is the reason I don’t play games anymore that much. I’d rather spend 100hrs with my friends around playing tabletop games than dwell alone in a dark room grinding mindlessly a persona game. At least that’s time spent with real people even if the game isn’t the greatest
I think theres a time and place for both long and short rpgs. For example, idt i would love the trails series as much if it’s not for their length. I ironically treat it as an interactive book and because of it, characters and world building is amazing. But i still appreciate the short and concise rpg’s where they don’t tryhard as much on the world building and just focuses on the main group of characters.
I definitely feel like the in between moments really build up to the bigger moments so they feel more important and impactful, we learn so much about these characters and world. The games wouldn’t feel the same or have the same impact if these elements were stripped out. I respect your opinion but I can’t agree for the atlus side if it.
Its funny as a teen in High-school hearing that a jrpg is 60 to 100 hours long would have me elated, now as a 30 year old full tim worker, husband and father, 60 to 100 hours is overwhelming for me.
I love 100 hour JRPGs because spending 100 hours in a good JRPG feels like I spent a month in a fantasy world experiencing this great epic journey. For me it's an excellent escape from the real world and an experience that I can only get from a long JRPG like that, games like Persona wouldn't be as enjoyable for me if they were shorter; I like the idea of feeling like I moved to a new town and spent a whole month there getting to know the characters & experiencing the story. While many people like long JRPGs, long JRPGs aren't for everyone and that's ok! Not every game needs to be for everyone. If you happen to not like long JRPGs, then just play the shorter ones. It's like complaining why so many cakes have this icing you don't like, bro just eat a different cake.
Just bought Like a Dragon IW for 25 this Black Friday and getting psyched for a 120 hour gaming experience. Persona and Metaphor are games I think I would like but the long time, calendar system, and team building seem to daunting for me so haven’t picked them up.
Totally agree here. Persona 5 Royal was the game that made me realize how an RPG can be "too long". Sea of Stars is a great example of an RPG that is not too long but has a tight story with great gameplay while respecting the player's time.
For me, I feel like a game only needs at most 50 hours to really get its peak value out. Even when I was younger, if I played a great game that felt long, I wanted it to end. I got up to 62 hours in Rebirth and was 3/4 through the story and I felt like I should have just beaten the story with some side content rather than try and experience the whole thing as it didn't feel appealing. People can say "Oh, just play the side content later", but that isn't appealing imo. When I beat a game, unless I want to NG+ it, that is kinda it for me. I want to experience something new.
What a great topic Brandon. I'm curious about your thoughts about MMORPGs as I feel that those games set the stage for these types of gameplay grinds. As someone who grew up with MMORPGs I know what it feels like and I guess similar to you as long as it feels fun and worthwhile, I don't mind it. On another note, I get more affected when the story causes a game to be too long. I made a comment a while ago about Xenoblade Chronicles 3 being that type of game, where I could not wait for the game to be over because of the ridiculous amount of dialogue. Also curious about your thoughts here. I would interested in a follow-up video related to these two topics.
We're actually thinking about doing an episode of The JRPG Pursuit on MMOs. I don't have much experience with them, but I do have some, so I think it'll be a good discussion.
Good video. I always love starting Persona games but I never finish them - the daily chores kill my interest but I love the atmosphere and always keep going back. Tried a few different Trails games - they just didn't keep my interest, and a few other miscellaneous RPGs - new Mana game, Metaphor - seemed OK but didn't make me want to keep playing, Reynatis and others. Only game that kept me playing all the way to the end this year was Echoes of Wisdom and that doesn't even fit in to the RPG genre. Last RPGs that kept me interested were Atelier Ryza 1 & 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2..and that's about it. Started and dropped probably 20 or more other RPGs but just ended up going back to playing Pokemon ROM hacks.
I haven't played the Persona series, but I love JRPGs and it's so hard to juggle all the games that come out, especially with the playtimes these days. I find that I burn out on most games around 30 hours unless I'm just enjoying them so much I don't want to stop.
Just finished OG FF7, clocked in around 35hours. That game is so lean and focused, plot is always moving forward. None of the side quests are necessary to beat the game (not that there are that many). You could finish 3 of these 30-40h rpgs in the time it takes you to finish Persona 5 once. ^^ I appreciate it when games respect my time.
Personally I don’t mind how long a game is as long as it’s ‘good’. If a rpg has a really good story or great gameplay it will keep me going. But as an adult with other responsibilities I do appreciate shorter games now.
And some jRPGs did get it right. In "Chrono Cross", you level up only after each consecutive boss fight. In Shadow Hearts 1/2, you don't need to grind (and the only reason to engage in seeking out random battles is if you go for the good ending, not for experience or stats raise) since you pretty much gain levels normally from your regular encounters. All of these games have a masterclass pacing.
I agree. Now when I was younger back in persona 3 days, I enjoyed it being long, but it was because, I had plenty of time to play it. I was able to stay up till 5 am. Then sleep, wake up, eat, go to work, and play more. But now with kids, bigger job, and more responsibilities. I no longer have the time put 70-120 plus hours in one game. I’ve played through ps5 royal and platinumed it, but by the time I’ve gotten to the okumaru dungeon, I was dying for the game to end.. so much that, it wasn’t enjoyable anymore, I wanted to play something else, I didn’t want to think about persona anymore, the music got so stuck in my head that it was annoying, that I said, I am officially, persona’d out… and my video game back log over the years kept piling up because, games are very long, 70 plus just for the main campaign. And as much as I want to play them, it would take me 6 months to a year to beat just one of those games, because of their length, and my life schedule and such, and the games that are 20-40 max. Aren’t too bad, I can play them, and beat them at an appropriate time, and if they were enjoyable enough, I can play them again, and there are cases where I’d rather do that, when I’m already 50 plus hours in the 70 plus game. I’m saying to myself (I’m so done with this now, I wanna see the ending, but i paid for this game, so I can’t just TH-cam it, I gotta beat it). Just my perspective now, if a game is too long, it eventually becomes torture… I need a break, but if I take that break, the game would always sit in the back of my end because, I feel like, I need to beat it to out it away for now or till my kids dig it up when they are older lol but yeah, give me a 20-40 hour game with replay value any day, over a game with 70-120 hour just for the main campaign.
It's not so much games are too long, but it's that games don't use their time effectively. It's quantity & price-based percieved over giving a very good quality product. FF:X is 40-50hrs long and you are moving, you getting plot points & character development. The extra content can stretch that even more. The issue w/ Persona is that the game gives you options to do whatever at whatever day, but there is a lack "Lemme rest/FF for a couple days" and storybeats repeating,, the game feels a lot of lengthy than it needs to be.
Hard agree also, I don't think length is the issue but the substance of the game. So many jrpgs are long because the narrative is meant to be in this specific time period, but to justify the "production cost" and price of the game, you have to pad it out. And you can see this because you will see games that people wish were longer, take FF16 for example where while it's pretty short it's even shorter when you look at the narrative (basically kill all the eikons and kill Ultima). DQ3HD is short as heck, but the narrative is simple, and the gameplay is fun with very little padding. Even when you factor in things like optional content, where at best they are just time sinks.
I like long length games. I get to play a few hours a day and work my way up to finishing the game. It’s like having a 2nd life for a bit and it feels amazing once you finally see the credits.
Social links and stats grinding are completely optional and you can lower the difficulty anytime. I dont have time also so I just always play on easy and enjoy the story
I mostly disagree on the notion that the busywork within some JRPG's like the highschool sim stuff in Persona is a "waste of time". When it comes to most turn based or Strategy RPG's i usually expect a decent length that matches the scope of the story. Say 50-80+ hours minimum. When it comes to action RPG's i often think that the quality of entertainment can get more bloated with a longer game "depending on the budget" so a slightly shorter experience is okay in most cercumstances. Say 30-50 hours for like a FF7 Remake or Nier game. When playing a standard RPG it feels far more immersive to me to spend time "role playing" during downtime than going from one core story set piece to the next like some kind of scripted on rails movie. Trails is my favorite series even though it can be kind of maddening to spend so much time between storybeats talking to every NPC. However it is that level of worldbuilding that i adore above all in the Legend Of Heroes series. Generally i dont think most games in this genre have any semblance of bloat outside a particularly lengthy dungeon or arbitrary fetchquest, but even in those instances it just makes it all part of the grounded.experience of the protagonist's i am role playing. In fact even on massive series like trails i want to be faced with genuine struggle to make the experience sweeter to overcome, which leads to me playing exclusively on Nightmare and delving deep into all a game has to offer/master.
I think different games are meant to be played in different ways. What I enjoy about the persona games is you can just go and spend a little time in that wold and it gives you time to really connect with it. You can also skip a lot of the social links if you really want to. Yes, they give you small bonuses, but they aren't necessary. You do have some control over how long it takes. What really bugs me is the pacing. I'm either doing social links for 4-5 hours or spending 2+ hours in a dungeon. And the calendar systems really contributes to the need to get as much done on a dungeon visit as possible. DQ 11 was also really long, but if you treat it more like a collection of short stories you can play 30 minutes at a time, it's nice and comforting to have, as long as it lasts. But if you try to just plow through it in a week, it can seem to drone on and on...
another aspect of padding is 'zoning' or 'blissing' - like fighting in dqxi for a couple of hours - it's not difficult on default setting but you can get into an interactive, engaging, low-stress flow state - and just being able to decompress in a little bubble like that - blocking out the rest of the world - that's worth something to some people - the question there would be, is that how you want to decrompress and relax?
I know JRPGs have kind of always been like this, but I feel like gaming in general has this problem nowadays and it isn’t just confined to the JRPG sphere. I would gladly pay full price for a 12-16 hour game as long as it’s good, just like you’re arguing for, but guess what? A lot of games add RPG mechanics when they don’t need it, doubling, even tripling the playtime with nothing of value to show for it. There’s also the whole “If it’s not open world, what’s the point?” sentiment that I absolutely hate. I personally blame Skyrim’s popularity for both, since almost every AAA game company felt inclined to shove both of those elements everywhere trying to ride Skyrim’s coattails. With both of those attributes increasing the length of a game on average, I think the “More hours = good because you’re getting more time for your money” argument slowly seeped in as a result. Some people can’t admit that a game can be TOO long. All this idea breeds is longer, more arduous development cycles with an even higher risk of the game being a flop and comes guaranteed with a bunch of extra fluff. Returning to the topic of JRPGs in particular, I don’t play them that often so you’re probably more qualified to say, but I wouldn’t label it as the Persona problem per se, since Persona has something of value that is unique. That being its focus on time management and [dating sim without actually playing one?] that you can’t get much elsewhere in JRPGs, which unfortunately means you get to read. A LOT. Thats where most of the time is being spent, or at least thats how I perceived it (the social stat grinding didn’t take that long I feel like and it’s broken up enough between dungeons and character schedule availability where it did not become monotonous for me). I don’t even like it that much, I far prefer SMT as a series, but I’d say I’m really only bothered when there’s nothing of value being added with these long completion times (grinding is the classic example of this) just to boast that it’s worth your money because it has X amount of hours of content. Just off the top of my head, Elden Ring’s endgame (I don’t know if this counts as a JRPG in the community, but I feel the same way about Tales of Arise if it doesn’t) felt bloated in this way. There was definitely hours of fat that could’ve been trimmed.
New to the channel but just want to say I appreciate your nuanced and thoughtful takes. I haven’t played any Persona games yet but planning to soon, and I’m sure I will have more thoughts after that experience.
I do think a lot of newer games are padding out their play time because these days, people are even looking at single-player games and declaring them "dead" if no one is playing them. I try to platinum most games I play to get the most value out of them, and a lot of games just start going downhill with their triple digit collectibles. I'd much rather an amazing 30 hours of concise storytelling and game play and be done than 40 hours of great with 35 hours of mediocre on the side. Some games, though, are 100 hours and time just flies by with them, so like everything, it is just subjective, and there are always exceptions.
As a newcomer to the genre, I'm currently 70 hours into Persona 3 Reload (which I chose to be my first JRPG) and I do sometimes wonder if it's going to end one day. Everything is still mostly new and exciting to me, but if I were a grizzled JRPG veteran I could see some of it beginning to wear thin after a while. The only thing I can say for sure is that if it weren't for Xbox Play Anywhere that lets you sync your save file between console and Windows handheld and take it on the go, I would have no chance of ever finishing this 😅
I actually agree. I don't want games that are 100s of hours long. Especially if it's pointless side quests/padding. Looking at you FF7 remake.... The best time I've had in the last few years are the Fatal Frame games, each about 12 to 15 hours. I've also been playing through the Final Fantasy Pixel Collection. Those are ~30 to 40 hours
I can understand this totally, I'm usually a person that follows mainly the main stuff and only do the side if I'm having fun doing it (like Harvestella, probably my most played game). Maybe that's why I'm so obsessed playing Romancing saga, it goes to the point, I'm 45 hours and just three more bosses to go.
I actually played persona 3 fes a couple of times. I quit a few times because of how caught up I needed to be in order to not get soft locked. There was grinding stats and social links in the real world, and grinding levels in Tartarus. I'm really close to passing it now because my brain understood the formula. One thing I'm not a fan of is the fusion system to where it's a huge guessing game, it sucks both irl time from you, and in game money from your wallet. I didn't have those problems as much in persona 4 and 5. I don't mind the ordinary days, I Don't know why, but I like to play out ordinary things in games like the beginning of half life and such. Did you find ng+ runs of persona to be better paced? (If you tried it) You can just focus on the social links and activities that you wanna do in between the main story moments.
PS2 JRPGs were the first major increase in run time. The hardware was finally good enough where they could kinda do what they wanted and what they wanted was to pad the heck out of their games.
In metaphor updating your stats basically are giving you lore of the world in every stat increase if it isn't lore you are going against different canidates or as rewards to request. I feel like they fixed a lot of what you are talking about.
Across the board with RPGs (but particularly with JRPGs), I almost always look at HowLongToBeat anymore to gauge how long it would take to play through and if my excitement level is enough to endure. It's unfortunate because so many of them have amazing stories that I'll probably never experience simple because I don't want to spend the better part of a year trying to complete them in my spare time.
My favorite JRPGs are Parasite Eve and Ys: The Oath in Felghana, both of which can be beaten in around 10 hours. Longer games aren't necessarily worse but I agree with you, usually that time is just filled with padding that isn't really engaging or interesting enough to justify the length.
thoughts_ 1- the quality ofthe story and the writig is what matters. 2- tecnology as improved faster than the quality of the writting in videogames. specially jrpgs. 3- many games are big because they simply can and perhaps must due to pressure for the company bosses.
Everyone’s mileage can vary so much on this. Both internal and external factors which can also change for you over time. Internally, are all aspects of the game engaging to you? If so, hundreds of hours with the game can be a breeze. But if, say, the gameplay feels like it’s just in the way of a story you are in to, a sub forty hour game can feel like an interminable slog. Externally, everything from work and/or school to relationships to your mental state is a factor. Or maybe you are thinking too much about other games, like that hype upcoming release, or a backlog you want to clear. Or you are early in a long running series (shout out to Trails, and curse you Sky SC’s crazy difficulty spikes, hard mode was a bad idea) And sometimes you really just need to take a break from games, withe the grass touching and all
I think if a game stays consistently good throughout however many hours the length is not an issue. It’s only bad for you or specific people that are short on time or who wants play the newest game every week. When I buy jrpgs I especially expect a lengthy game
Interesting topic. As for me, I prefer the games to be at most 40-50 hours. Even if it's the best rpg of all time, if I could choose between 80 hours or 40 hours, I would still prefer the shorter one. For games that are good but not great, I would say 20 hours is the max I would like to play. I have about 20 hours of gaming per month and I prefer to experience more game that I can before dying. Also, I prefer when there is no padding in games. So if a 40 hours game is 15 hours without padding, I prefer the shorter one. I would even pay more to have the shorter experience. It's how I am. I know a lot of people will disagree here.
Persona is fine on the first playthrough but trying to get all the confidants to max is just miserable without replaying many times or just using a guide (even less fun).
Yeah I agree games are getting longer and my backlog is only getting larger. When I was a kid/teenager I fully believed that a game could never be too long but now as an adult with much more limited free time due to obligations I see that I was wrong before. I played Persona 5 Royal for the first time this year back in January and I didn’t finish it till June. The game took me 240 hours to complete and I wasn’t dragging it out or anything I played through at what felt like a natural pace and despite how much I enjoyed it I was looking forward to it being over. Don’t get me wrong I loved my time with Persona 5 it was a 10/10 experience and I don’t regret it but 240 hours is 240 hours and due to its length I have no intention of replaying it any time soon because I’m not ready to sink that much time again into a single experience. I’m playing Person 3 Reload now and am having a similar feeling. Loving the game but feeling the length of it. I’m about 90 hours in at the end of September and only about halfway through Tartarus in terms of the number of floors. I might take a break and play some shorter experiences before I play Metaphor.
I think a game should be as long as it needs to be if it's still delivering value, and to me that's delivering story or lore value. If it's not adding those things, then it's too long. I spent 183 hours on Persona 5 and I don't think it was too long at all, because everything I did added to the overall world of the game. Then I did 161 hours in Dragon Quest XI and I thought that was completely ridiculous because there's so many quests that don't add any value, but they're still required in the game. I completely agree it's not the length of the game, it's the quality. My favorite game ever is The Last of Us and that's only like 10-15 hours long. I also think that studios are putting unnecessary things games these days so that people "get their money's worth," although ironically that makes it less valuable to us. There's so many games now and games keep getting more expensive, so I guess studios feel like they have to add things to make it more enticing for people to buy. Like, "look at how much stuff you can do in this one game and you only have to pay once!" Seems like everyone has to make some huge open world now with a million sidequests. Personally I don't like playing one game for too long, Persona 5 was an exception. I got really sick of playing Dragon Quest XI at the end.
Yeah I totally get that. There is a lot of padding these days, though I know some people will define "padding" differently than you or I will. I'm in the phase of life where I'm starting to prefer the briefer experiences (though I still love games like Persona 5 Royal of course).
There definitely is something to smaller hour games. And a shorter game can be just as good or better than a longer game, best example I can come up with is comparing Elden Ring to Bloodborne. Both games are masterpieces but I had to put in almost 300 hours to beat the main game and the DLC whereas Bloodbornes main game and DLC only ended up taking about 50 hours, so much more tight-knit.
Also, while shorter games are definitely worth it, length of a game does matter to some extent. While $70 for a 20 hour game would be worth it, at what point is it not worth it, even if the game is good? Would a 45 minute great game be worth $70?
Yep, which is why I play more SMT titles these days. Less dialogue, less story, no excess of side activities and completionist drudgery, more customization options. The earlier Persona games (1 and 2) focused exclusively on the plot, with pacing that rarely let up for anything other than weapon/magic uprgrades, Persona collection and fusion. Post-Persona 2 games (P3/P4/P5) are essentially Life Simulator+, where the plus comes from the supernatural background in the plot.
I disagree, I think the social links in Persona games is tremendous fun, maybe they are not your thing, don't force yourself to play it, just because you have a gaming channel, play the JRPGs you favour, I largely avoid strategy JRPGs.
Totally agree! Love getting to know the characters better, it fleshes out the world.
So boring
Yeah I’m not really into strategy RPG’s either. I play JRPG’s for the sense of adventure and discovery and fun combat. strategy RPG’s focus too much on politickey type storylines which I usually find boring.
I don't think he was specifically talking about the social links here, but more so the social stats, and how they are levelled for the most part - which is definitely far less interesting than the social links.
The social links are great, but being locked out of continuing a social link because you need to study for 10 days in a row to level up your intelligence is kinda bulshit
If you love the game, you’ll wish it were twice as long. Patience scales with fondness.
Sadly MANY people online have this mentality how much gameplay your getting per dollar spent, which is crazy.
I do love 100hrs+ games, jrpgs with complex stories or character development can’t really be short.
Now, it’s different when a game feels long, persona games have never felt long to me. I enjoy the ride. Micromanaging everything is my jam.
Something like Final Fantasy XII though… I couldn’t wait for the game to be over.
Opposite for me.
As a full time worker and dad of two I adore these styles of game, getting home from work at 10pm I can just chill and relax in these worlds. I’ve managed to jump from one new jrpg to the next this year and there lengths have been a helpful part of that
Dame here but it's hard to fit in proper game time consistently. If you're a dad then there's plenty of things we could be doing lol
>"As a full time worker and dad of two"
Wow, that's crazy. Don't remember asking though.
@ it’s ok, no one’s listening to you anyway
The life sim stuff is the secret sauce of Persona. No way it would be anywhere near as popular without it.
Sorry bro, the day they shorten Megaten games are the day I stop preordering and start waiting on deep discounts. If it’s too long for you then it’s not your type of game.
He means in a broader sense of it. They are too long no matter how you cut it p5r is a great example so are the xenoblade games
@@Jack-nj9pino matter how you cut it lmao. I love these absolute declarations. Your needs are not the needs of everyone else. Some people really love to immerse themselves in a game, and min max them. They purchase the soundtrack, merchandise, and rebuy it on different platforms. These games are made for those people. The real realization is that people’s attention spans have gotten shorter. If you can’t commit to an experience then you’re not the target audience here.
@@ForTheViolence and neither are yours lmao thats what makes it absolute! you can write all that and it still doesn't change the fact that a 200 hr game is long asf. Saying people have a short attention span because 300 hours of an rpg is a mission and a half is such a typical internet comment. Everything you litteral wrote can be used in reverse. People do the exact same thing for shorter games and replay ability wih merch ost and more. Jrpgs now are much longer then they used to be had nothing to do with the target audience as we all grew up with jrpgs.
Ah yes, the Persona problem. I fell in love with Atlus in the PS2 era, and it's definitely something I struggle with sometimes.
For me, the initial experience is almost always worth it. It's when I go back for a replay that it gets unpleasant. Having to sit through the same story events again just to see the alternate social links, or fight the optional super bosses, is miserable.
I think a lot of this would be helped by taking some ideas from VNs, and allowing players to choose if they want to auto-fast forward or auto-skip through events that they've already seen.
The sweet spot for me is Chrono Trigger. You can do a full NG playthrough in 20-30 hours, and then NG+ runs are generally 2-10 hours after that. It's truly phenomenal!
When I played Persona 5 Royal after beating the OG Persona 5 a year prior, I still had a good time with it. But that's probably because a number of strategies for bosses were changed, and I was focusing on being able to acquire the additional content.
Chrono Trigger is the GOAT for a reason! Though I hate that when I replay it from the beginning, I get to the end in about 10-12 hours. Man I just cruise through that thing!
You don't know what grinding is until you play a Disgaea game.
Could only do that in the first 2 then never went back to it after so many lol
I see your username Shizima. 😆 Devil Survivor 2 was a great game.
Hard disagree. If a game is good, it's good. Don't want it to end.
@@cd.knuckles Ys 8 is a game I loved but also thought was too long.
@@TrevRockOne I just finished that one yesterday and I agree. There were some pacing issues. I still look back on chapter 2 and wonder how I got through that.
Hard agree. If a game is great and 30 hours, I’d replay it. Meanwhile my wall is full of 100+ hour games I got bored of 60hours in.
And since they use length as a selling point so often, length often means it’s 30hrs of content stretched out over 100hrs. You can make 2secs of gameplay last 100hrs. Does that mean you think it’s better because it’s made longer?
@drowningin of course not. But i like having short games and long games. Ya’ll arguing all games should have some arbitrary fixed length, let devs make whatever they want
I honestly feel like no RPG should be shorter than 50 hours.
i LOVE tales of Bersaria, its 45 hours long and it still feels too short, I’ve beaten that game more times than i can count- wishing it was longer
I respect your opinion, and it also depends on the game, but seriously complaining about the length of games while making a lengthy video about that, which could have been easily reduced to like 2 minutes, it's very counterproductive
Odds are you probably wouldnt watch it fi it was 2 minutes long haha
Longer games are a better value for gamers on a budget. If you're 10 years old with lots of free time and limited money, longer is better. If you're 40 and have a good job and 100 games in your backlog but barely find time for 10 hours of gaming a week, shorter is better.
I work full-time and I'm a part-time grad student, so for me the argument about games being too long is not as much based on quality but more so practical constraints, lol. I DO enjoy long RPGs, it's just almost impossible for me to actually finish them. I've always been a mood-based gamer, and this actually becomes a pretty big issue when you stretch games over months of real time (which is what happens when I play super long games). It's really hard for me to maintain interest and keep coming back, and if I stop returning to a game, there's an extremely small chance I'll ever get back to it because I would just have to restart at that point to get into the game's atmosphere/flow.
Man this video hit me hard. I love JRPGs since I was a kid, and by the time I had other hobbies like music, soccer and, really, I don't remember being a struggle to play these games.
Today I am almost 40 yo, a full time worker, father of 1 and I keep on thinking that there are so many really good games in other genres that I can have the full experience in one week! Or I will have to play the same awesome story for 2 months. I don't know... I would like to read more books, mangas, watch anime but there is always this game I am playing to finish...
Right now I am playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3 on Switch, loving it, but I am 30+ hours in and still on act 3 of 7. At some point I know I will get sick and drop it.
Metroid, Bayonetta, Mario Wonder, Mario RPG, Zelda Echoes, Older Ys, Dragon's Crown, Chrono Trigger... All below 30 hours.
No question that Metaphor is a long game but I found it be to more respectful of my time than Persona. I love that a lot of the activities provide interactions with party members or a bit of world building. The pacing of the stat levelling is also better, with no need the do the equivalent of eating burgers every day.
Yeah, this is just how you play games, and this is all you and how you play.
You're a story guy, and the game exists to push you through to the next narrative. The pressure to "finish" a game comes with that, and I think this is all about how you experience games. I'm not really like you, so I dont feel particularly pressured by how long or short the game is. I honestly am not burdened by any of that stream of consciousness you relate here, which is more "I like trails more than Persona because I was bored and the silent protag bothers me" than anything objective.
I disagree I love long games and the persona time management is fun
I Played Elden Ring, then finished Persona 4, _then_ jumped directly into Persona 5 this year. I'm exhausted, and I'm still not done with P5. Don't get me wrong, I think these games are masterpieces, but *man.* Before I tackled the 3 games I listed I started out the year playing games that were still pretty long like Yakuza 0, NieR Replicant, NieR Automata, and even FFVII Remake but my time with those seemed to breeze by when compared to the time I put into the former. I am really interested in Metaphor, but I just _can't_ anytime soon. At least I don't feel the need to rush into it because Atlus will inevitably put out a definitive edition of Metaphor at some point.
I wanted to add:
When I was a kid I remember playing FFVII and thinking "Wow! That game was 80 hours long! That was amazing!" Now I'm Spending 200+ hours in some games and I'm definitely not praising the length anymore. I like _dense_ experiences, not _drawn-out_ experiences.
Metaphor Refantazio took me 107 hours, so yeah, very lengthy indeed. Metaphor was the first atlus game where I genuinely felt it was too long. I loved Persona 3,4 and 5 but Metaphor was just too long. They could easily have trimmed away like 20-25 hours
I think Persona 5 is honestly also not a game that has 100 hours of content, it just takes 100 hours to play. Like, sorry, but if you're gonna ask philosophical questions and set up big plot twists, actually engage with those questions and make the plot twists at least as interesting as you've set them up to be.
(Sorry, I'm tired today, but I had issues with Persona 5's story)
@@jonaskristiansen781was that for main story or 100%
@@therealchecho1868 It was maybe 95%. Definitely some things I missed, but I did most of it.
The thing I always find funny is that everyone always says a game is too long or too short, but nobody ever talks about when a game is the right length and I’m assuming a developer would rather people say a game is too long rather than too short.
When something's exactly the right length, you don't really notice haha.
But, uh, Chrono Trigger is a perfect length, for example. Short, sure, but exactly short enough for you to do another quick new game+ and check out some of the other endings :P
I completely agree with your logic. Also, you should divide by max of 12 hours instead of 24, since you must sleep, eat, drink water, toilet stuff like that (will not mention study and work I put you in mission mode lol), as logically you will not spend a 100 consecutive days without those.
So for example trails series, it's gonna be 200 days with the usage of the whole time used playing as long as you are awake. Yeah, feel the sadness...
I don't agree. Persona is popular because most JRPG fans found the gameplay engaging. The characters are awesome and you want to spend time with them. While Daybreak, Zero and Azure are great all around, Cold Steel spends to much time in boring story beats with boring characters that you don't buy for a second that are military soldiers. I love all 4 Cold Steel games, but i would never replay them because tons of story bits feel like real chores.
I'm in the exact opposite camp; I played Persona 3 Reload earlier this year, and I did all the Arcana boosting side-events and all the points boosting stuff too. If I had to play Persona 3 Reload again from scratch, I'd skip all the side content and just focus on building a party that could kill reapers. It's why I have doubts about trying Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal - I liked Persona 3 Reload, but I don't want to play a game only to get to the end and find out that I could have achieved the same results with far less effort. That's discouraging. It kills my sense of progression; I don't feel like I improved at Persona 3 Reload when I got to the end, I just feel like I did it the stupid way.
@SuperSupersoda Fair enough, that's a matter of taste and i understand that. But Persona is probably the most popular JRPG franchise right now for a reason. Tons of people prefere Cold Steel, but overall i think Persona is more apealling. If you didn't enjoy Reload don't try Golden or Royal, they are very long games with similar premisses.
@@shinseijuurou6229 I actually really did like Persona 3 Reload, I found the combat system to be fun and engaging as all hell. I'm probably going to give Persona 5 Royal a try sometime in 2025, but I'm also going to not go into the game blind: I'm going to google the game's exploits before I try it. I only had two real problems with Reload, the issue with the progression that I mentioned, and the fact that I didn't find any of the female party members to be likable. Both of those are a personal taste thing, everyone's mileage will vary.
Persona is, right now, the biggest JRPG franchise around. Just because I think there was an easier way to get the rewards from the side activities doesn't mean I found them to be a chore to get through, many of the bonding events were really very good and were worth doing for the sake of the story. I also liked that these events were generally much shorter than a similar thing in Trails would be. Even though Trails is my current favorite JRPG franchise, I will admit that trails can be a lot, and that I do need breaks from time to time.
I never want Persona games to end, it's just so fun and there's so much to do
I don't really mind a game's length as long as I'm having fun with it. Do I feel like some parts of games are too long? Absolutely. Personally, I think Elden Ring was *waaaaaay* too long and it could've had parts of it reduced in scope. But I still enjoyed my time with it. As long as a game isn't boring or making me wish I was doing something else, I'm fine.
Yup, I agree with you here. Just because a game is long, doesn't mean that it's good. If it's padded with mandatory world exploration where said world is desolate and empty, it feels cheap. But games, like the Trails series, that allow options such as scene skip and fast-forward, are respectful of our time. I've played all of the Trails series facilitating the fast forward feature in all the battles and much of the world exploration and that's trimmed down the time for me to complete these games to 40 hours each, usually. Exception being Trails of Cold Steel IV - that game was looooong!
You sound like a person who didn't get very far or does not play the game. There is alot more to the game then you think.
@@Brand-pn5yz Are you talking about the Trails series? Because I've played the first nine games in the series; each of them took me ~40 hours to complete with Trails of Cold Steel IV being the exception at 70 hours. And that's with ALL of the sidequests being completed too.
...have you played the Trails series?
@@infernofoxgaming10nope, persona series
@@Brand-pn5yz Gotcha - because yes, those are *absolutely* ~80-110 hour experiences. I've found the only skippable things there are the scenes. It's okay to skip or fast forward the same dialogue when working the part time jobs, but I hate to do anything like that for the story and character-driven dialogue. But admittedly I've only played Persona 3 Reload, Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5, and Persona 5 Royal just once each.
You describe open world games including Zelda
I agree. So here's my thing: I used to love long games, but I developed a mitochondrial/neurological disease about 8 years ago and it got worse after I got covid in 2020. My body actually doesn't make energy now the way it's supposed to, so I can't play games for long periods the way I used to. I'm lucky if I can play for an hour or two a day, many days I feel too sick to play at all. If there's a game that takes 80-100+ hours, that could actually take me several months to play a single game. In the meantime, there are other things I would like to try. So I've pivoted to shorter experiences, and also games that are easier on my brain. I'm much happier with gaming since doing that! 😊
I'll be 100% honest. When I hear a game is 100 hours long it totally kills my motivation to play it.
I'm an adult, I don't have time to play a 80-100 hour long game. I'd much rather play a 3 or 4 20-30 hour games as opposed to one 100 hour game. Its the exact reason why I haven't played Metaphor, Persona 3 Reload, or Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, they're just too long.
Especially with how many games we get these days. I can't spend 3-4 weeks on one game where there's several games coming out in that time frame. Yeah it's a first world problem but it is what it is I guess
Even JRPGs that were once 10-40 hours are now increasing. Xenoblade went from 50 hours from the Wii to now 100+ hours from Xenoblade 3. Mario & Luigi RPGs went from 20 hours to 40 hours. Fire emblem went from 20 to 60 hours.
I don’t like equating time and money as some kind of linear relationship, so I definitely agree with you there. It’s about the quality of the time spent, not the amount of time spent regardless.
The two things I’ve noticed in a lot of the genre are conversations that are repetitive or have lots of “agreement/reaction” beats and dungeons that are long just to be long. The ship in P5 is a NIGHTMARE. Descending to the bottom of whatever that thing was called took forever. These are the things that need to be truncated.
This is true for those games that create content by having you do endless collections. Basically anything Ubisoft releases, for example, has about 50% filler content.
Persona games are not that. The games are packed with actual content and it never feels stale or repetitive. The daily life is part of the gameplay, and very much enjoyable. Thinking persona is about "the big events" is missing the point.
But even if you wanted to skip the daily life for some reason, you can, so your complaints are just not valid
I have the same issue. I want to play all these JRPGs but they overstay their welcome so many times. You could cut some of these games in half and have an arguably better game.
For the long game andies out there, you can always replay a game. Most of these games have NG+ other incentives to play a game.
Social links are actually my favorite part of Persona, I like learning more about the world I'm playing, so big side stories that use the themes of the game in different ways is perfect for me and I'm pretty sure for many others.
That's why I'm so excited for Persona 5 phantom x because for every new playable character the game gets we get a new social link and by the end of the games lifespan we'll have something like 100+ social links
I prefer RPGs that respect my time. A long game is okay from time to time, but I so rarely have the time for a 100 hour game anymore.
I remember when a 'long' game was FF5 or 6, at 40-50 hours.
Long games with good and engaging stories definitely can be fun, but sometimes I wonder if it really needed to be that long for the same story.
Most popular JRPGs don’t respect your time including persona games
Seeing all these commenters not actually watch your video, sounds like a skill issue on their part 😅
I absolutely agree with this video. Way too much padding in modern games. Consider just how much time in Persona, for example, watching the calendar system move, each day loading, all that repetitiveness you mention. Characters move slow. A dialogue that could be a few lines becomes a whole scene. One thing I hated with Persona was how you have to creep through a dungeon, you can't just speed run because oh no! the monsters will see you!! JRPGs these days feel more like some SIMs-life chores. I really wish modern JRPGs could be more like older games but with modern graphics, would really prefer a nice-looking 50 hour game that is constantly progressing than what we usually get.
On the other hand, though, and you can see this in some comments- some people might REALLY like any one of these games for whatever personal reasons, it's really all subjective. Me I don't like Persona but I love Trails and especially Cold Steel 1 and 2, while I see others love Persona and possibly Trails but maybe not those two entries so much.... so I guess it turns into "yes you can beat these games within 40-50 hours if you do the bare minimum, and if you really love the game here's more stuff in it that you'll probably enjoy". Me, I like to 100% games, so once I start I'm in it for the long haul and maybe that's the problem, feeling like I somehow HAVE TO do everything in these games even if I don't like them to the point where I just want them done and over with. Lots to think on.
I rally like this video actually. You bring up some really valid points. The whole Persona thing gets me from the UI, I have to see the numbers go up haha.
I somewhat agree with you Brandon. With the persona games specifically, I love the gameplay and calendar system however you have a point that there comes a point when the things you are doing every day become uninteresting and you are just trying to get the most social points. It would be a hard problem to fix but I think part of it is they tell you that you can spend your time however you want but we all know there is the optimal way to play to get the most social points and to spend your time the most effectively. If they were able to kind of take that away to encourage you to try different things go down different paths and maybe do some side questy type stuff in those activities it might make it more interesting. Another thing is the social links. This is been a problem with persona for a long time but if the side stories they had with the social links were a bit more interesting and written a little tighter, it would at least give you some sort of payoff. Don’t get me wrong I really enjoy some of the silly side stories but sometimes some of those social links lack depth and it just feels like a game mechanic to make stronger personas. I think if Atlus was able to improve some of these things it would take their games from 8/10 or 9/10 to 10/10.
what's left out of the equation in determining the value proposition for a long game is that it's depriving you of other experiences in favor of having many helpings of the same experience the game you bought is offering
I had to stop playing trails. I would read every NPC available dialogue every single time they updated. Just running around talking to every npc before advancing the main story every day so I could follow every single story. It just got to be too much after the Sky trilogy and Crossbell I’ve taken a few year break from the series
when i get totally sucked into one of these super long games, by the end of it I want it to keep going since I love it so much >_<
when it comes to metaphor, a lot of the grinding you do (if you decide to do it) just happens in the overworld, so you dont need to play out full battles, which makes it so much faster.
i also felt that each thing I decided to do really mattered, since if I want to become king...I really do need to increase my eloquence, imagination, etc.
also, in the rare instance I spend time increasing those stats, usually its paired with great worldbuilding!
the "social links" are only 8 ranks here instead of 10 as well, so it feels like each rank up is a big step up (for most of the characters, anyway...)
however, i can admit I may be a bit addicted to the game as you mentioned in the video..which is probably not the best for my health.. but.. just wanted to point out some differences I noticed between metaphor and persona :P
As is the case for many adult gamers, I think, the dynamic has definitely shifted for me with age. When I was younger and could only get a couple new games a year around the holidays and my birthday, I absolutely do remember genuinely thinking that games advertised as being really long increased their value to some degree. Tales of Symphonia is one such game that stands out in my memory where if I'm not mistaken, the back of the box even says something along the lines of "over 80 hours of gameplay!" to which I was like "wow :D"
Now as a working adult I have the entertainment budget to get games whenever I feel like within reason, but not enough time to even play everything that I already own- let alone new releases coming out every year. I now place way more value on short but sweet experiences rather than longer padded out ones, and have considerably less tolerance for game mechanics that feel like they're disrespectful of the player's time. Persona/Metaphor walks a fine line- I really do love these games for many reasons so I'm willing to play one every so often. I haven't played Persona since P5 vanilla came out 7 years ago, for example, so stepping into Metaphor recently has been a welcome return to that style of game. But I can't play them all the time and even hesitate at playing games like Royal and Reload. P5 and P3 are both beloved games to me but it's hard to justify replaying such a long experience, even in a new package. Similarly most games aren't this egregious, but a game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that is just stuffed to the brim with all sorts of time disrespecting systems completely loses me these days.
I think it's a twofold problem, and it's not 100% one or the other but both equally. The problems are yes games are getting longer, but for the most part i don't think they're artificially dragged on for the sake of length, rather they're packed full of good content. The other problem though is life as we age just gets busy and we don't have the time we used to have to game. Me in my teenage years would have LOVED these 100+ hour games such as P5R & Metaphor, these days though i just don't have the time. My nephews can beat a new game every week, meanwhile i barely get a handful of hours each week to game.
another concern i have is how do games within the same genre differentiate themselves from one another - in other words, how different are the battle systems, or the leveling/progression systems, or the item uses, or the story writing/arcs/twists, etc.
While I love Personal for its philosophical themes, practically it is a micromanaging simulator…also, I remember many RPG boxes from the SNES era touting game time as a definite selling point.
What's a short JRPG you recommend? I played BoFDQ and didn't get the appeal until about a decade later, I read regressor/returner manhwas.
I'll always stan for Chrono Trigger, but if you want something more modern, there's Visions of Mana, and I'll be recommending another on the channel soon...
I kinda agree. I know JRPGs try to be very immersive and getting you attached to people and places, but some of the mundane stuff is drawn out too long sometimes.
I've play P5R, P4G and right now P3R and I love these games so much, but what I notice again right now after 70h, I'm in November and I'm burned out by all the daily activites, I just skip through textboxes and go straight to the next social link. I like the social links and would love to see these people in a more meaningfull way more often, rather than playing a game to increase my academics for the 10th time. Especially in the evening there are so few social links, it's kinda empty now after also maxing social stats, all I can do is repeat some activities with teammates for statboosts.
The great thing about Atlus games is, they give you a choice. If you prefer story and character interaction, play Persona or Metaphor. Do you prefer gameplay above all else, play the Shin megami tensei games. Do they overstay their welcome? Yeah, I think so. I'm getting sick of metaphor right now, even though I really like it. After a stressfull day I honestly just want to have some mindless fun. So I either play etrian odyssey or the smt games. And I don't mind their lenghts. But Metaphor doesn't let me have fun for long periods of time, so I just sit there twiddling my thumbs. Same with Genshin Impact. Just sitting and waiting until a cutscene is over and I can finally explore again. Now that I think about it, the length of a game doesn't really bother me as long as it gives me something to do other than reading or listening to characters talk.
I think it depends. Some RPGs, like Sea of Stars, felt like a chore to get through due to the shallow gameplay and _terrible_ characters like Garl.
But I LOVE how long Xenoblade games are. They're the perfect game I can just play and play and play. Quest after quest, exploring, taking in the sights, soaking in the great music. When a game is great fun, a long length can feel fantastic!
I don't mind long games at all. I'm not much of a gamer whatsoever. I enjoy the few games I play and that's it. Quite frequently most of the time when I hear people say a game is too long it's not because of them getting bored of the game or anything, they are trying to rush past every single game they play like they are in a marathon and I really don't get that mentality. Work does take a lot of time away from me but sticking with these games gives me a comfort space.
Make them longer! 😀
i always wonder how many games people are completing - the steam numbers dont usually look good in that department - my guess is people play for a while until a new shiny is delivered to their house - i trying to be super selective now knowing these games take hundreds of hours - like dqxi or xenoblade chronicles x - but also allowing myself the freedom to engage with side quests that pique my interest - i think msq + optional sides is the way - but still the value is there in terms of hours but just in terms of experience - nothing else other than solo pen and paper rpgs allow for this kind of experience - and even then it would be very different. i think you have to treat it like a themepark, but you do the things you like within the themepark - otherwise you'll be stuck there forever like a rat in a maze
Personally I don’t feel that way.
The most recent JRPG that I tackled 80+ hours was YS X nordics, did all the side quests, battled that “secret” boss, collected all the fishes etc etc.
I don’t regret my time being “wasted” on for doing everything instead of going straight towards the main objective on easy mode.
In regards to Persona games being too long, I don’t agree with that, like how others have said.
The way I see it the social link system clearly is a fun and engaging system, otherwise persona series wouldn’t be where it’s at now when it comes to its huge success.
People love interacting with the cast, upping their social stats, midmaxing, rinse & repeat.
If you feel that the system is too “time consuming” perhaps recent persona games aren’t hitting that sweet spot as of lately because of responsibilities getting in the way, but the way I see it. Perhaps the best way to enjoy persona games without that lingering thought of it being too long, try playing the games at your own pace, play other titles in between the long RPG’s, come back to ‘em when you have the desire to play ‘em.
This isn't the first time our RPG opinions have clashed and it won't be the last but I enjoy listening to you to articulate why I have my perspective. Good videos man
I’m not gonna lie…while I still enjoyed Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth by my gods was there too much content. It feels so bloated. I started to skip a lot of stuff at the end.
I think you are absolutely right, anyway, and this is the reason I don’t play games anymore that much. I’d rather spend 100hrs with my friends around playing tabletop games than dwell alone in a dark room grinding mindlessly a persona game. At least that’s time spent with real people even if the game isn’t the greatest
I think theres a time and place for both long and short rpgs. For example, idt i would love the trails series as much if it’s not for their length. I ironically treat it as an interactive book and because of it, characters and world building is amazing. But i still appreciate the short and concise rpg’s where they don’t tryhard as much on the world building and just focuses on the main group of characters.
I definitely feel like the in between moments really build up to the bigger moments so they feel more important and impactful, we learn so much about these characters and world. The games wouldn’t feel the same or have the same impact if these elements were stripped out. I respect your opinion but I can’t agree for the atlus side if it.
The resentment I felt when you told me to go outside and make friends…
Its funny as a teen in High-school hearing that a jrpg is 60 to 100 hours long would have me elated, now as a 30 year old full tim worker, husband and father, 60 to 100 hours is overwhelming for me.
I love 100 hour JRPGs because spending 100 hours in a good JRPG feels like I spent a month in a fantasy world experiencing this great epic journey. For me it's an excellent escape from the real world and an experience that I can only get from a long JRPG like that, games like Persona wouldn't be as enjoyable for me if they were shorter; I like the idea of feeling like I moved to a new town and spent a whole month there getting to know the characters & experiencing the story.
While many people like long JRPGs, long JRPGs aren't for everyone and that's ok! Not every game needs to be for everyone. If you happen to not like long JRPGs, then just play the shorter ones. It's like complaining why so many cakes have this icing you don't like, bro just eat a different cake.
Just bought Like a Dragon IW for 25 this Black Friday and getting psyched for a 120 hour gaming experience. Persona and Metaphor are games I think I would like but the long time, calendar system, and team building seem to daunting for me so haven’t picked them up.
Totally agree here. Persona 5 Royal was the game that made me realize how an RPG can be "too long". Sea of Stars is a great example of an RPG that is not too long but has a tight story with great gameplay while respecting the player's time.
For me, I feel like a game only needs at most 50 hours to really get its peak value out. Even when I was younger, if I played a great game that felt long, I wanted it to end.
I got up to 62 hours in Rebirth and was 3/4 through the story and I felt like I should have just beaten the story with some side content rather than try and experience the whole thing as it didn't feel appealing.
People can say "Oh, just play the side content later", but that isn't appealing imo. When I beat a game, unless I want to NG+ it, that is kinda it for me. I want to experience something new.
What a great topic Brandon. I'm curious about your thoughts about MMORPGs as I feel that those games set the stage for these types of gameplay grinds. As someone who grew up with MMORPGs I know what it feels like and I guess similar to you as long as it feels fun and worthwhile, I don't mind it. On another note, I get more affected when the story causes a game to be too long. I made a comment a while ago about Xenoblade Chronicles 3 being that type of game, where I could not wait for the game to be over because of the ridiculous amount of dialogue. Also curious about your thoughts here. I would interested in a follow-up video related to these two topics.
We're actually thinking about doing an episode of The JRPG Pursuit on MMOs. I don't have much experience with them, but I do have some, so I think it'll be a good discussion.
What do you mean "these days"? Persona 5 isn't much longer than Persona 3 (2006).
Good video. I always love starting Persona games but I never finish them - the daily chores kill my interest but I love the atmosphere and always keep going back. Tried a few different Trails games - they just didn't keep my interest, and a few other miscellaneous RPGs - new Mana game, Metaphor - seemed OK but didn't make me want to keep playing, Reynatis and others. Only game that kept me playing all the way to the end this year was Echoes of Wisdom and that doesn't even fit in to the RPG genre. Last RPGs that kept me interested were Atelier Ryza 1 & 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2..and that's about it. Started and dropped probably 20 or more other RPGs but just ended up going back to playing Pokemon ROM hacks.
I haven't played the Persona series, but I love JRPGs and it's so hard to juggle all the games that come out, especially with the playtimes these days. I find that I burn out on most games around 30 hours unless I'm just enjoying them so much I don't want to stop.
Just finished OG FF7, clocked in around 35hours. That game is so lean and focused, plot is always moving forward. None of the side quests are necessary to beat the game (not that there are that many). You could finish 3 of these 30-40h rpgs in the time it takes you to finish Persona 5 once. ^^ I appreciate it when games respect my time.
Personally I don’t mind how long a game is as long as it’s ‘good’. If a rpg has a really good story or great gameplay it will keep me going. But as an adult with other responsibilities I do appreciate shorter games now.
And some jRPGs did get it right. In "Chrono Cross", you level up only after each consecutive boss fight. In Shadow Hearts 1/2, you don't need to grind (and the only reason to engage in seeking out random battles is if you go for the good ending, not for experience or stats raise) since you pretty much gain levels normally from your regular encounters. All of these games have a masterclass pacing.
I agree. Now when I was younger back in persona 3 days, I enjoyed it being long, but it was because, I had plenty of time to play it. I was able to stay up till 5 am. Then sleep, wake up, eat, go to work, and play more. But now with kids, bigger job, and more responsibilities. I no longer have the time put 70-120 plus hours in one game. I’ve played through ps5 royal and platinumed it, but by the time I’ve gotten to the okumaru dungeon, I was dying for the game to end.. so much that, it wasn’t enjoyable anymore, I wanted to play something else, I didn’t want to think about persona anymore, the music got so stuck in my head that it was annoying, that I said, I am officially, persona’d out… and my video game back log over the years kept piling up because, games are very long, 70 plus just for the main campaign. And as much as I want to play them, it would take me 6 months to a year to beat just one of those games, because of their length, and my life schedule and such, and the games that are 20-40 max. Aren’t too bad, I can play them, and beat them at an appropriate time, and if they were enjoyable enough, I can play them again, and there are cases where I’d rather do that, when I’m already 50 plus hours in the 70 plus game. I’m saying to myself (I’m so done with this now, I wanna see the ending, but i paid for this game, so I can’t just TH-cam it, I gotta beat it). Just my perspective now, if a game is too long, it eventually becomes torture… I need a break, but if I take that break, the game would always sit in the back of my end because, I feel like, I need to beat it to out it away for now or till my kids dig it up when they are older lol but yeah, give me a 20-40 hour game with replay value any day, over a game with 70-120 hour just for the main campaign.
It's not so much games are too long, but it's that games don't use their time effectively. It's quantity & price-based percieved over giving a very good quality product. FF:X is 40-50hrs long and you are moving, you getting plot points & character development. The extra content can stretch that even more. The issue w/ Persona is that the game gives you options to do whatever at whatever day, but there is a lack "Lemme rest/FF for a couple days" and storybeats repeating,, the game feels a lot of lengthy than it needs to be.
Hard agree also, I don't think length is the issue but the substance of the game. So many jrpgs are long because the narrative is meant to be in this specific time period, but to justify the "production cost" and price of the game, you have to pad it out. And you can see this because you will see games that people wish were longer, take FF16 for example where while it's pretty short it's even shorter when you look at the narrative (basically kill all the eikons and kill Ultima). DQ3HD is short as heck, but the narrative is simple, and the gameplay is fun with very little padding. Even when you factor in things like optional content, where at best they are just time sinks.
I like long length games. I get to play a few hours a day and work my way up to finishing the game. It’s like having a 2nd life for a bit and it feels amazing once you finally see the credits.
Dude, I wish games were a lot shorter because I would get through a lot more games! THE STRUGGLE!
I love having full experiences!
I love 100+ hr JRPGs
Social links and stats grinding are completely optional and you can lower the difficulty anytime. I dont have time also so I just always play on easy and enjoy the story
I mostly disagree on the notion that the busywork within some JRPG's like the highschool sim stuff in Persona is a "waste of time". When it comes to most turn based or Strategy RPG's i usually expect a decent length that matches the scope of the story. Say 50-80+ hours minimum.
When it comes to action RPG's i often think that the quality of entertainment can get more bloated with a longer game "depending on the budget" so a slightly shorter experience is okay in most cercumstances. Say 30-50 hours for like a FF7 Remake or Nier game.
When playing a standard RPG it feels far more immersive to me to spend time "role playing" during downtime than going from one core story set piece to the next like some kind of scripted on rails movie.
Trails is my favorite series even though it can be kind of maddening to spend so much time between storybeats talking to every NPC. However it is that level of worldbuilding that i adore above all in the Legend Of Heroes series.
Generally i dont think most games in this genre have any semblance of bloat outside a particularly lengthy dungeon or arbitrary fetchquest, but even in those instances it just makes it all part of the grounded.experience of the protagonist's i am role playing.
In fact even on massive series like trails i want to be faced with genuine struggle to make the experience sweeter to overcome, which leads to me playing exclusively on Nightmare and delving deep into all a game has to offer/master.
I recall someone saying some countries are more comfortable with grinding in RPGs than others
I think different games are meant to be played in different ways. What I enjoy about the persona games is you can just go and spend a little time in that wold and it gives you time to really connect with it. You can also skip a lot of the social links if you really want to. Yes, they give you small bonuses, but they aren't necessary. You do have some control over how long it takes. What really bugs me is the pacing. I'm either doing social links for 4-5 hours or spending 2+ hours in a dungeon. And the calendar systems really contributes to the need to get as much done on a dungeon visit as possible. DQ 11 was also really long, but if you treat it more like a collection of short stories you can play 30 minutes at a time, it's nice and comforting to have, as long as it lasts. But if you try to just plow through it in a week, it can seem to drone on and on...
another aspect of padding is 'zoning' or 'blissing' - like fighting in dqxi for a couple of hours - it's not difficult on default setting but you can get into an interactive, engaging, low-stress flow state - and just being able to decompress in a little bubble like that - blocking out the rest of the world - that's worth something to some people - the question there would be, is that how you want to decrompress and relax?
I know JRPGs have kind of always been like this, but I feel like gaming in general has this problem nowadays and it isn’t just confined to the JRPG sphere. I would gladly pay full price for a 12-16 hour game as long as it’s good, just like you’re arguing for, but guess what? A lot of games add RPG mechanics when they don’t need it, doubling, even tripling the playtime with nothing of value to show for it. There’s also the whole “If it’s not open world, what’s the point?” sentiment that I absolutely hate. I personally blame Skyrim’s popularity for both, since almost every AAA game company felt inclined to shove both of those elements everywhere trying to ride Skyrim’s coattails. With both of those attributes increasing the length of a game on average, I think the “More hours = good because you’re getting more time for your money” argument slowly seeped in as a result. Some people can’t admit that a game can be TOO long. All this idea breeds is longer, more arduous development cycles with an even higher risk of the game being a flop and comes guaranteed with a bunch of extra fluff. Returning to the topic of JRPGs in particular, I don’t play them that often so you’re probably more qualified to say, but I wouldn’t label it as the Persona problem per se, since Persona has something of value that is unique. That being its focus on time management and [dating sim without actually playing one?] that you can’t get much elsewhere in JRPGs, which unfortunately means you get to read. A LOT. Thats where most of the time is being spent, or at least thats how I perceived it (the social stat grinding didn’t take that long I feel like and it’s broken up enough between dungeons and character schedule availability where it did not become monotonous for me). I don’t even like it that much, I far prefer SMT as a series, but I’d say I’m really only bothered when there’s nothing of value being added with these long completion times (grinding is the classic example of this) just to boast that it’s worth your money because it has X amount of hours of content. Just off the top of my head, Elden Ring’s endgame (I don’t know if this counts as a JRPG in the community, but I feel the same way about Tales of Arise if it doesn’t) felt bloated in this way. There was definitely hours of fat that could’ve been trimmed.
New to the channel but just want to say I appreciate your nuanced and thoughtful takes. I haven’t played any Persona games yet but planning to soon, and I’m sure I will have more thoughts after that experience.
Thanks for that, I appreciate it!
I do think a lot of newer games are padding out their play time because these days, people are even looking at single-player games and declaring them "dead" if no one is playing them. I try to platinum most games I play to get the most value out of them, and a lot of games just start going downhill with their triple digit collectibles. I'd much rather an amazing 30 hours of concise storytelling and game play and be done than 40 hours of great with 35 hours of mediocre on the side. Some games, though, are 100 hours and time just flies by with them, so like everything, it is just subjective, and there are always exceptions.
As a newcomer to the genre, I'm currently 70 hours into Persona 3 Reload (which I chose to be my first JRPG) and I do sometimes wonder if it's going to end one day. Everything is still mostly new and exciting to me, but if I were a grizzled JRPG veteran I could see some of it beginning to wear thin after a while. The only thing I can say for sure is that if it weren't for Xbox Play Anywhere that lets you sync your save file between console and Windows handheld and take it on the go, I would have no chance of ever finishing this 😅
I actually agree. I don't want games that are 100s of hours long. Especially if it's pointless side quests/padding. Looking at you FF7 remake....
The best time I've had in the last few years are the Fatal Frame games, each about 12 to 15 hours. I've also been playing through the Final Fantasy Pixel Collection. Those are ~30 to 40 hours
I can understand this totally, I'm usually a person that follows mainly the main stuff and only do the side if I'm having fun doing it (like Harvestella, probably my most played game).
Maybe that's why I'm so obsessed playing Romancing saga, it goes to the point, I'm 45 hours and just three more bosses to go.
I actually played persona 3 fes a couple of times. I quit a few times because of how caught up I needed to be in order to not get soft locked. There was grinding stats and social links in the real world, and grinding levels in Tartarus. I'm really close to passing it now because my brain understood the formula.
One thing I'm not a fan of is the fusion system to where it's a huge guessing game, it sucks both irl time from you, and in game money from your wallet.
I didn't have those problems as much in persona 4 and 5. I don't mind the ordinary days, I Don't know why, but I like to play out ordinary things in games like the beginning of half life and such.
Did you find ng+ runs of persona to be better paced? (If you tried it) You can just focus on the social links and activities that you wanna do in between the main story moments.
PS2 JRPGs were the first major increase in run time. The hardware was finally good enough where they could kinda do what they wanted and what they wanted was to pad the heck out of their games.
In metaphor updating your stats basically are giving you lore of the world in every stat increase if it isn't lore you are going against different canidates or as rewards to request. I feel like they fixed a lot of what you are talking about.
Across the board with RPGs (but particularly with JRPGs), I almost always look at HowLongToBeat anymore to gauge how long it would take to play through and if my excitement level is enough to endure. It's unfortunate because so many of them have amazing stories that I'll probably never experience simple because I don't want to spend the better part of a year trying to complete them in my spare time.
My favorite JRPGs are Parasite Eve and Ys: The Oath in Felghana, both of which can be beaten in around 10 hours.
Longer games aren't necessarily worse but I agree with you, usually that time is just filled with padding that isn't really engaging or interesting enough to justify the length.
thoughts_
1- the quality ofthe story and the writig is what matters.
2- tecnology as improved faster than the quality of the writting in videogames. specially jrpgs.
3- many games are big because they simply can and perhaps must due to pressure for the company bosses.
Everyone’s mileage can vary so much on this. Both internal and external factors which can also change for you over time. Internally, are all aspects of the game engaging to you? If so, hundreds of hours with the game can be a breeze. But if, say, the gameplay feels like it’s just in the way of a story you are in to, a sub forty hour game can feel like an interminable slog.
Externally, everything from work and/or school to relationships to your mental state is a factor. Or maybe you are thinking too much about other games, like that hype upcoming release, or a backlog you want to clear. Or you are early in a long running series (shout out to Trails, and curse you Sky SC’s crazy difficulty spikes, hard mode was a bad idea)
And sometimes you really just need to take a break from games, withe the grass touching and all
Playing JRPG while i am having summer vacation is the best experience i can get in my life and Persona series is definitely one of them
I think if a game stays consistently good throughout however many hours the length is not an issue.
It’s only bad for you or specific people that are short on time or who wants play the newest game every week.
When I buy jrpgs I especially expect a lengthy game
The recent Mario And Luigi game (Brothership) in a nutshell lol.
Interesting topic. As for me, I prefer the games to be at most 40-50 hours. Even if it's the best rpg of all time, if I could choose between 80 hours or 40 hours, I would still prefer the shorter one. For games that are good but not great, I would say 20 hours is the max I would like to play. I have about 20 hours of gaming per month and I prefer to experience more game that I can before dying. Also, I prefer when there is no padding in games. So if a 40 hours game is 15 hours without padding, I prefer the shorter one. I would even pay more to have the shorter experience. It's how I am. I know a lot of people will disagree here.
Persona is fine on the first playthrough but trying to get all the confidants to max is just miserable without replaying many times or just using a guide (even less fun).
Yeah I agree games are getting longer and my backlog is only getting larger. When I was a kid/teenager I fully believed that a game could never be too long but now as an adult with much more limited free time due to obligations I see that I was wrong before.
I played Persona 5 Royal for the first time this year back in January and I didn’t finish it till June. The game took me 240 hours to complete and I wasn’t dragging it out or anything I played through at what felt like a natural pace and despite how much I enjoyed it I was looking forward to it being over. Don’t get me wrong I loved my time with Persona 5 it was a 10/10 experience and I don’t regret it but 240 hours is 240 hours and due to its length I have no intention of replaying it any time soon because I’m not ready to sink that much time again into a single experience.
I’m playing Person 3 Reload now and am having a similar feeling. Loving the game but feeling the length of it. I’m about 90 hours in at the end of September and only about halfway through Tartarus in terms of the number of floors. I might take a break and play some shorter experiences before I play Metaphor.
I think a game should be as long as it needs to be if it's still delivering value, and to me that's delivering story or lore value. If it's not adding those things, then it's too long.
I spent 183 hours on Persona 5 and I don't think it was too long at all, because everything I did added to the overall world of the game. Then I did 161 hours in Dragon Quest XI and I thought that was completely ridiculous because there's so many quests that don't add any value, but they're still required in the game.
I completely agree it's not the length of the game, it's the quality. My favorite game ever is The Last of Us and that's only like 10-15 hours long. I also think that studios are putting unnecessary things games these days so that people "get their money's worth," although ironically that makes it less valuable to us. There's so many games now and games keep getting more expensive, so I guess studios feel like they have to add things to make it more enticing for people to buy. Like, "look at how much stuff you can do in this one game and you only have to pay once!" Seems like everyone has to make some huge open world now with a million sidequests.
Personally I don't like playing one game for too long, Persona 5 was an exception. I got really sick of playing Dragon Quest XI at the end.
Yeah I totally get that. There is a lot of padding these days, though I know some people will define "padding" differently than you or I will. I'm in the phase of life where I'm starting to prefer the briefer experiences (though I still love games like Persona 5 Royal of course).
There definitely is something to smaller hour games. And a shorter game can be just as good or better than a longer game, best example I can come up with is comparing Elden Ring to Bloodborne. Both games are masterpieces but I had to put in almost 300 hours to beat the main game and the DLC whereas Bloodbornes main game and DLC only ended up taking about 50 hours, so much more tight-knit.
Also, while shorter games are definitely worth it, length of a game does matter to some extent. While $70 for a 20 hour game would be worth it, at what point is it not worth it, even if the game is good? Would a 45 minute great game be worth $70?
Yep, which is why I play more SMT titles these days. Less dialogue, less story, no excess of side activities and completionist drudgery, more customization options. The earlier Persona games (1 and 2) focused exclusively on the plot, with pacing that rarely let up for anything other than weapon/magic uprgrades, Persona collection and fusion. Post-Persona 2 games (P3/P4/P5) are essentially Life Simulator+, where the plus comes from the supernatural background in the plot.