I've been playing Persona 3: FES a lot lately. I bought it the day it came out, four months ago, and though I've been chipping away at it, I still haven't finished it. THe last time I looked at my save file, I've put in a good 67 hours. Not counting the occasional reset or failed boss fight and that puts me, conservatively, at 70 hours. That's almost three days. I've been playing for four months, nearly half a year. I haven't even started the add on quest which I'm told offers another 30 hours of gameplay. Atlus, your game is too long.
Now, console RPGS and I have a long and storied history together. I remember playing through Phantasy Star I on the SMS and Dragon Warrior IV on the NES, to give you some idea of my age. And I continued playing RPGs all the way up through the current era (I refuse to term it "next gen.") But somewhere along the line I quit finishing them and I think that I know why. I got old. I'm married, working, and working on a Ph.D. The days of the caffeinated all-nighter, so integral to RPG completion, are long behind me. I'm just too busy now to put in the kind of hours demanded by my cruel masters at Square and Atlus.
But I still love RPGs. I love shmups, platformers, all kinds of games, but there's something particularly relaxing about an RPG. Usually, after a long and stressful day I don't want to grind my teeth, sprain my thumbs, and throw my controller against the wall because I missed a crucial jump or got fried by a boss for the umpteenth time. I want to escape into another place where I can wander around the village at leisure, explore the overworld, and have a little adventure with pals like Frog, Ness, Yangus, Kaim.
RPGs, more than any genre, are about story and character. Playing an RPG but not finishing it is like picking up a novel, getting into the plot, starting to care about the characters and then not reading to the last page. I want that RPG experience in full, I just don't want to spend six months of intermittent playing to get it.
And here's where I think it goes beyond me getting old and not having time: somewhere along the line Square and Atlus and all their cohorts decided that a 25 to 30 hour adventure just doesn't cut it. 80 to 100 hours has become the norm. Now, these companies are very good at what they do. They've been around for a while now and they certainly know their fanbase. I mean, if Square didn't know who they're selling to, they wouldn't still be milking the withered teats of the Final Fantasy VII cash cow more than 10 years after the fact. So, gamers must demand that their RPGs be interminably long slogs, right? Maybe. I don't. I want an RPG that I can finish in under 40 hours. If the story of Godfather II can be told in 2 1/2 hours, if 40 straight hours of reading can get you through the bulk of a Dostoyevsky novel, then the story of Dragonquest VIII can be told in 40 hours.
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I definitely agree that 80-100 hours is not the hotspot for an RPG. But neither do I think it's necessarily less than 30 hours. For one thing, I'm not sure how you put 70 hours into Persona 3 - I did everything I could in that game (missing a few of the S Links) and didn't achieve that goal. Maybe FES made things different.
Anyways, back to the subject. Deciding a hotspot for these games is very difficult. I think the best solution would be to design RPGs as games that can be finished in 20-30 hours, but can stretch to around 50-60 with optional content. There are some problems with this idea, though.
1) Challenge. By making a game that can be finished in 30 hours, there is no challenge when completionist gamers eventually face the final boss. Recently, Final Fantasy XII met this problem.
2) Development. Developers can't justify making half their game, story and character development be optional. While much of their audience will take the time to see it all, an equal number won't, and then they've almost wasted an investment on them.
Part of what makes RPGs compelling is the myriad of side quests and available plots, the time and investment you get to put in. I find myself more attached to the characters as a result of this investment. What you're asking is in many ways to create the opposite scenario: cater to people like you and alienate fans who want more. Unfortunately we're in a world where they can't cater to either side, and trying to please both just doesn't work either (as illustrated above). Maybe the RPG needs to be split into two genres: short and long.
@Thefil
Good points, all. I realize that what I'm asking for is contradictory: I want the sense of compeltion that comes with finishing a good RPG but I don't want to commit myself to endless hours of playtime.
Maybe this is a separate issue, but I think that at some point "challenge" became erroneously synonymous with "hours to complete," where RPGs are concerned. Most console RPGs today offer little real challenge, they just take forever to complete. The DS remake of FF III reminded me, in brutal fashion, of just how tough old RPGs were.
You aren't old. I feel the same way. As much as I loved Persona 3, I never finished it either. I felt like 80+ hours was more than I was willing to spend on a gaming experience, and this is coming from a person who loves nothing more than to envelop herself in an imaginary universe and play. I agree in your above comment about challenge vs hours to complete. When I played and completed Lost Odyssey, I felt challenged, but I didn't feel daunted, a very important line not to cross. There's a sweet spot when it comes to a great story in a good framework. :)
Holy crap you win for your banner.
On topic though, I know what you mean. I played FF 1 and 3 to death, dragon warrior, and even pokemon counts. But now I just can't seem to do any that come out. Its like a choice has to be made between 'pay attention to loved ones' and 'beat this f*(%ing piece of garbage that I sort of care about'. And anymore RPGs have gotten away from my favorite aspect about them, which was they were as easy as you made them. If you wanted a challenge you could pick 4 white mages and try to beat bosses at the lowest level you could. If you felt like picking the best party and power leveling, you could do that too. With 80+ hours of content, power leveling just seems like a waste of time.
Modern games are starting to fall into that spot of quanity over Quality. If it looks pretty and there's lots of it it can't be bad, right? This philosophy is dreadfully over used by many game developers. I was always partial to hybrids. RPG/ADV titles. Final Fantasy Adventure for Gameboy and The Quest for Glory Series were successful at this concept. You want to settle into an enviorment and have a rich story with life like characters, and extraneous things for your character to do just for pleasure and leisure time. What you don't want is endless levels of hacking and slashing for the sake of it. Hopefully, their will be a swing back to richer adventures and less quests for extending game play hours past that 100 hr barrier