TherealLogros wrote:
Lyrailis wrote:
FF12 had 25 hours... twenty-five hours logged on the clock when I sent the last story boss packing (and he wasn't even all that hard).
Not trying to be nitpicking here but if you completed FF12 in 25 hours (which is doable) then you rushed through the game. It should be possible to do it even faster than you but the average person doesn't buy a FF title to finish it as fast as possible.
I played through at a natural progression speed. I didn't "Rush" anything. In fact, I remember spending lots of time trying to grind money to buy new equipment in side dungeons and such. The only thing I passed up were some of the side-quest "hunt mobs!" thing, when some of the mobs appeared so ridiculously overpowered that nothing I could do would actually kill the stupid thing, without grinding out for hours and hours and hours. I didn't feel like grinding that much.
And I will admit that the clock read 25 hours, but that does not count times I've re-loaded though I'm usually good about saving at every opportunity. It was probably closer to 30. But still. 30? I remember SNES games fitting 60+ hours into a 1-5MB cartridge.
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I played a bit over 50 hours. Sure I tried to complete every sidequest and was a bit too strong for the endboss when I met him. But I don't think I took overly long.
The issues I have with the newer FF titles have nothing to do with game length but with a wide array of other shortcomings.
It is possible to finish FF7 in under 30 hours but seriously, who does that? If you finished FF12 this fast it most likely wasn't the lack of possible content, it was the lacking quality of this content which made you skip all optional parts. Big IMO so don't be offended if one or more of my assumptions is totally wrong. ;)
Edited, Dec 12th 2011 6:04am by TherealLogros
FF7 in 30 hours? That'd be a heck of a rush lol. I think my first playthrough was more like 50-55. But then, like I said, I tend to go through a game at natural progression speed, instead of trying to speed through as fast as possible. FF7 also had some decent side-quests to do with actual, real rewards (chocobo racing was hella fun) too.
And I'm not even singling out FF games here, though they are the first example that came to mind. I've got a Shadow Hearts 2 save right before the "Final Dungeon" and its clock is reading 26 hours. Not the first playthrough, but yet it had been quite awhile since I've played that. Most side quests done, only missing a few. I kinda got bored with the game, didn't really feel like doing the optional stuff right away, but I bet the final reading would have been 30-35.
Still a bit shy of the 40+ you once got out of SNES games. And the thing about these SNES games? It was 90% storyline, 10% optional stuff. Look at newer J-RPGs... that has somehow shifted to more like 75% storyline, 25% optional stuff. They stick these overpowered fights in the game, that make you grind grind grind then advertise 60+ hours of gameplay (because you'd spend 30 of it in pure grind). Older SNES games didn't need this (unless, of course, you were playing 7th Saga LOL). I remember doing about 60-65 hours on my first play-through of Secret of Mana. Or how about Ogre Battle (the first one)? Oh Jeez. That game had, IIRC, 28 maps in it, and each map past the 5th or so took 2-2.5 hours to do, and there were about 10-15 min of stuff to do after each map. We could round that to an even 2.5 hours per map. So, let's say 22 maps x 2.5 hours, you're looking at about 55min total for a playthrough (it doesn't have a clock, though).
But anywaaaaaaays I go way off topic here, my apologies.
Back to the original subject here: Playing MMORPGs tends to be a lot more cost-effective of an entertainment solution than buying singleplayer games alone. Of the MMORPGs, I've yet to see one that offers the appeal and long-lasting fun that WoW has, not to mention how easy WoW is to just "jump into" and get on your way without hours of grinding just to get up to where everyone else is.
Edited, Dec 12th 2011 8:39am by Lyrailis 
