More developers should make short RPGs

[MrMegaPhoenix]

I'd stop playing Jrpgs if short was the default.

I don't play them for stories anyway, but if you want a short story where a god or demon or alien is defeated by a group of friends, other genres can fit that.

I don't think absurd near 100 hours should be common either, but these games and their gameplay loops benefit most from that 30-40 hour range

 

[Ra]

Wait, hold up!

The Outer Worlds is a pretty short RPG?!

I'm been so backlogged, so I haven't kept up with a lot of things, and the idea of me starting some big another 40-50 hour game is just draining to me.

The Outer Worlds would shoot up in my playlist if it's shorter.

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It's much smaller in scale than people expected, going into it at launch. There aren't huge Fallout-like landscapes to explore with a million side quests.

So yeah, you can get through it pretty quickly.

 

[MrWindUpBird]

The early Ys games could last the average player between 8-14 hours up until Ys Seven.

 

[JuniperAndSage]

It's not an RPG though. It's a VN with action scenes.

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You take an RPG and shorten it to sub 10 hours, it maybe starts looking a bit like a VN...

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

It's much smaller in scale than people expected, going into it at launch. There aren't huge Fallout-like landscapes to explore with a million side quests.

So yeah, you can get through it pretty quickly.

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This is fantastic. I have The Outer Wilds still sitting there on my PC Gamepass just waiting to be installed, but erroneously thought it was a Fallout level of scope and length.

 

[Grouch Douglass]

South Park Stick of Truth is about as short as I would want for a RPG

 

[Amin_Parker]

I really don't mind if a JRPG is long or short as long as it has a fantastic storyline and a intriguingly deep battle system to go along with it, then I'm going to definitely purchase the game.

 

[Ra]

This is fantastic. I have The Outer Wilds still sitting there on my PC Gamepass just waiting to be installed, but erroneously thought it was a Fallout level of scope and length.

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You still get Obsidian/New Vegas caliber writing, just in a really focused package. Great companions too.

I was probably too hard on it because I went in expecting a Fallout scope.

Definitely boot it up. I played on PC as well, runs well and is very pretty.

 

[Shrikey]

Chrono Trigger is around 20ish hours if you mainline it. There's definitely an argument to be made here. As much as I love Final Fantasy, many of the, could have shaved off a dozen or so hours no problem.

 

[Deleted member 13148]

Voidspire Tactics takes about 15 hours to beat, and is definitely worth playing. I haven't tried the other games by Rad Codex yet, but they all have great reviews.

 

[Deleted member 26746]

Transistor?

 

[UnluckyKate]

5 hr RPG? What's the point?

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replay with different classes, make different choices, explore the game more.

 

[Deleted member 679]

It does sound interesting. Should be paced more like an Uncharted game, though. The sense of adventure is one of the best parts of JRPGs specifically, so I still want to go to a bunch of different places and fight memorable things. Give me a Hard Mode that doesn't hold back and starts with the level of difficulty you'd find in the post-game of most JRPGs.

Basically an Uncharted-style game with RPG combat, it sounds very appealing to me.

 

[Deleted member 31817]

Could work but I have yet to play a short (<20 hour) RPG that I really fell in love with. Open to suggestions though.

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Alpha Protocol, Transistor, Bastion, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Child of Light are all amazing and under 20 hours.

 

[King Kingo]

I cannot recommend this game enough. It's a short prequel to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that can be enjoyed as a standalone experience.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

I wish more RPG's were made with replays in mind. I feel like they're the one genre where replays have to always be spaced out by like months or years.

 

[Feep]

OP straight up doing market research up in here

;)

(Yes I want good short RPGs)

 

[Deleted member 31817]

I wish more RPG's were made with replays in mind. I feel like they're the one genre where replays have to always be spaced out by like months or years.

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The length can be am issue for replays but RPGs are pretty much the only games I replay because they can vary wildly based on your class(es) and choices.

 

[jblanco]

I just finished Oath in Felghana and it was fucking good. Took me about 8 hours. Play that.

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AMEN

 

[BasilZero]

Any recommendations for on Steam?

 

[skeezx]

i feel like 20-ish hr rpgs are more the norm than not, if you really break it down and get into playstyle

i understand the sentiment but once the "big" shorter rpgs start rolling out you'll see a lot of backlash

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

You still get Obsidian/New Vegas caliber writing, just in a really focused package. Great companions too.

I was probably too hard on it because I went in expecting a Fallout scope.

Definitely boot it up. I played on PC as well, runs well and is very pretty.

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Whelp, you now got me downloading as I type this at already 65%.

 

[GamerJM]

I'd love a Persona 6 that is as long as previous Persona games, but I'd totally pay for a $15 Persona short story that was like a single P5 palace + surrounding story with a set party

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I actually basically made Persona 5 kinda like this for me. I played it over the course of well over a year, taking long breaks between every palace or two, because I didn't have the attention span to dedicate my time to one single RPG for like months.

Also, now I really want an indie game that's basically just one DQ4 chapter :P.

 

[Starlatine]

obviously i wouldnt be against them existing since i could just not play them, but i really cant think of any 3-6hr rpgs that i enjoy or even the concept working at all

one of the best things in rpgs for me is spending time with the cast, developing them, the sense of progression and getting stronger, and maybe i'll be proven wrong one day with an amazing game doing all that in 3 hours but i highly highly doubt it can happen, and i certainly never saw it happening before

"make shorter rpgs but increase replay value" isnt the solution. sometimes its okay to enjoy a long story and then never engage with it again. i dont regret playing persona 5 as long as it was. i will never replay persona 5 (nor royal), but i wouldnt do it or like it more if everything ended in two hours, if anything i wouldnt care about any character on it at all if progression was kept the same or just find everything rushed if they tried to cram as much as they could.

 

[Mentok]

I'm definitely with you OP. I find a lot of RPGs fill up the playtime with useless or unnecessary filler. I'd love more shorter, compact experiences.

 

[Deleted member 11976]

I really liked The Crimson Shroud on 3DS because it was short and sweet. Its battle system was novel but not deep enough to support a longer endeavour, so I'm happy with what we got. It didn't have any filler or pressure to grind at all, from what I remember of it.

 

[Shelbyville Milhouse]

People complain that an RPG is too short when it's "only" 50 hours long.
But I agree, I'd like some shorter RPGs
6 hours seems a little too short for me to have meaningful character progression tho.

 

[Astronut325]

OMG... Yes Please. I would love shorter RPGs. I can't do 50/100 hour games anymore. Working full time, parent, house/other responsibilities mean I get 1 hour of game time a week. And I haven't even gotten that the whole past month!

I want more sub-10 hour games.

I stopped buying games that are longer than 20 hours of play time.

 

[tolkir]

After 25 hours on Crosscode and still far to end it, I'm agree.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

3-6 hour game is not enough time to get into the mechanics of an rpg.

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It could be depending on how complex the game is, and how novel the scenarios are. I think having something that could be beaten in 3-6 hours, but allows for more exploration of the game mechanics would be cool.

 

[Starlatine]

I think having something that could be beaten in 3-6 hours, but allows for more exploration of the game mechanics would be cool.

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go play fallout 2 then. you can beat it under 30 minutes without being a speedrunner!

jokes aside, i get what youre saying, but i still disagree. not everyone wants mechanics driven rpgs, many people care about the story and the characters, and like the poster above you (i thought you quoted another person! my bad) i'm also in the camp that think 3-6 hours is too short to develop meaningful connections with the characters in it, no matter how good the writing is. and "but movies" isn't a rebuttal, i could easily say back "but 7 volume 600 page books"

damn my entire post was based on thinking you quoted someone else, how embarassing. ehhh its just a general rant now anyway

 

[Iron Eddie]

I don't even like tacking games anymore that are over 40 hours but anything below 20 hours for an RPG seems rather short.

 

[Pyke Presco]

The Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death RPGs were about that length I think, and only cost like $3 on steam. They were 8 bit style jrpgs from the 360 era, kind of funny, lighthearted and quick.

I would definitely recommend checking those out if you want an old school jrpg that only lasts 6-8 hours. I think the penny arcade games were like that too. I didn't like those quite as much, though they did have more modern graphics if 8-bit style turns you off.

 

[Starlatine]

The Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death RPGs were about that length I think, and only cost like $3. They were 8 bit style jrpgs from the 360 era, kind of funny, lighthearted and quick.

I would definitely recommend checking those out if you want an old school jrpg that only lasts 6-8 hours. I think the penny arcade games were like that too, though I didn't like those quite as much, though they did have more modern graphics if 8-bit style turns you off.

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you do realize youre recommending the games to one of the devs behind them right

 

[Deleted member 679]

go play fallout 2 then. you can beat it under 30 minutes without being a speedrunner!

jokes aside, i get what youre saying, but i still disagree. not everyone wants mechanics driven rpgs, many people care about the story and the characters, and like the poster above you (i thought you quoted another person! my bad) i'm also in the camp that think 3-6 hours is too short to develop meaningful connections with the characters in it, no matter how good the writing is. and "but movies" isn't a rebuttal, i could easily say back "but 7 volume 600 page books"

damn my entire post was based on thinking you quoted someone else, how embarassing. ehhh its just a general rant now anyway

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I think "but movies" is still a relevant rebuttal because it just shows that it's a different style of storytelling. If someone is arguing for short RPGs to replace longer ones, then yeah, they absolutely can't tell the same stories in 3-6 hours, but they can tell different stories that are just as good. Which is why I brought up Uncharted as an example. A game that goes for that kind of setting but with RPG mechanics still sounds like a really fun time to me. I would love to play it, even though it wouldn't scratch the same itch.

To borrow some of the themes of P5 for a second, a 6~8 hour long "heist movie JRPG" would be really fucking cool. I wouldn't want Persona 6 to be that game, but I would absolutely love to play that game.

 

[Pyke Presco]

you do realize youre recommending the games to one of the devs behind them right

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Hahahaha...as a matter of fact I did not; had no idea who Zeboyd games were despite apparently having bought and played their titles! But bravo to them then, those games were quite solid.

 

[breakdancing duck]

15-20 hours is the sweet spot for me. FF7R was going a little long for me, but bumping it down in difficulty and skipping a few sidequests did the trick for me. Five hours is much too short unless there's an expectation that there's reasons to replay it multiple times and make different choices.

 

[Starlatine]

I think "but movies" is still a relevant rebuttal because it just shows that it's a different style of storytelling. If someone is arguing for short RPGs to replace longer ones, then yeah, they absolutely can't tell the same stories in 3-6 hours, but they can tell different stories that are just as good. Which is why I brought up Uncharted as an example. A game that goes for that kind of setting but with RPG mechanics still sounds like a really fun time to me. I would love to play it, even though it wouldn't scratch the same itch.

To borrow some of the themes of P5 for a second, a 6~8 hour long "heist movie JRPG" would be really fucking cool. I wouldn't want Persona 6 to be that game, but I would absolutely love to play that game.

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I don't think its just a different type of storytelling. Its a different genre of game too. A shorter adventure game absolutely can work (in fact the shorter the better on those cases) cause they're focused on a story, not necessarily the characters and their progression. The things i like in RPGs take time to grow and replay value doesnt necessarily improve them in any sense. And the premise longer games can't have replay value to see different builds and choices is wrong as well, replaying fallout games is still a blast and my playthroughs in it are always very long. Rushing to Vegas to finish the game shorter gives me even less chances to see all this new content so i don't see how it could be an "improvement".

This is of course just personal opinion, other people like rpgs for the grinding, for the mechanics, etcetera. I'm not implying my opinion takes precedence over others, i just have a hard time believing it could work cause i dont know any good example of it, but i would obviously love to be proven wrong and as i first said in this thread i have nothing against the games existing at all since i can just ignore them - i just dont like when people start thinking that longer rpgs are a problem or "bloated" "or "not respecting our time!" like era usually does and wanting everything to be shorter and short just for the sake of it

 

[Instro]

Seems harder to make a short RPG that is also good. They often feel undercooked. The ones that are successful seem to be those that fall into some sort of hybrid genre.

 

[Deleted member 17627]

While Sakura Wars is not exactly a RPG in the traditional sense (maybe a visual novel/musou with light RPG elements?), its length is perfect. My GOTY so far, and the fact that it doesn't overstay its welcome really helps (I even kept on playing after finishing it, which almost never happens to me these days)

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Same and same. Even with the other ones that are more RPG oriented, they still take about 20 hours each to finish. Honestly, playing the Sakura Wars series has made it so hard to go back to other RPGs because they've shown me that you can have a nice, coherent story, character development, and comedic side-content in your game, without making it last 60 to 70 hours.

Trying to get through Trails of Cold Steel II earlier this year was just the hardest thing because although that game is 50 hours long, it felt like it had about 10 hours of actual noteworthy story content.

You take an RPG and shorten it to sub 10 hours, it maybe starts looking a bit like a VN...

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You get it! Like I really don't need a game to have 40 different dungeons that last over an hour each, only for about five minutes of actually story/character development to happen in each of them.

 

[Deleted member 679]

I don't think its just a different type of storytelling. Its a different genre of game too. A shorter adventure game absolutely can work (in fact the shorter the better on those cases) cause they're focused on a story, not necessarily the characters and their progression. The things i like in RPGs take time to grow and replay value doesnt necessarily improve them in any sense. And the premise longer games can't have replay value to see different builds and choices is wrong as well, replaying fallout games is still a blast and my playthroughs in it are always very long. Rushing to Vegas to finish the game shorter gives me even less chances to see all this new content so i don't see how it could be an "improvement".

This is of course just personal opinion, other people like rpgs for the grinding, for the mechanics, etcetera. I'm not implying my opinion takes precedence over others, i just have a hard time believing it could work cause i dont know any good example of it, but i would obviously love to be proven wrong and as i first said in this thread i have nothing against the games existing at all since i can just ignore them - i just dont like when people start thinking that longer rpgs are a problem or "bloated" "or "not respecting our time!" like era usually does and wanting everything to be shorter and short just for the sake of it

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Hmmm, maybe it would be a different subgenre entirely, I definitely welcome it, though.

I don't like the "respect my time" argument either. You should respect your time. If you're not enjoying something, stop playing it. There's no magical legnth that makes an experience worthwhile, a bad 20 hours game is also a waste of time to play through.

I do think many games have pacing issues, but they're a lot more structural than length-related. It's possible to improve the pacing by shortening the length if you just cut the problematic bits, but it's also possible to have a game that is just as long but with better pacing. I wouldn't remove anything from Persona 4, for example. I do think a lot of the stuff added in Golden aren't great, but the QoL features end up making it still fairly well paced. On the other hand, I think Uncharted 4 has abhorrent pacing, and is a slog to complete, even though my first playthrough took only a fraction of my first Persona 4 playthrough, which went by very quickly.

 

[Worldshaker]

My favorite RPGs are all short (20 hours or so)

Chrono Trigger
Ys Oath...
Mario RPG

I'm always looking for 12-30 hour adventures and it's a huge reason I haven't touched Persona 5 or replayed Xenoblade DE. I just don't want to invest 100 hours into a jrpg these days.

I had fun with Dragon Quest XI, but I doubt I'll go back to it anytime soon.

 

[kai3345]

More people should play Tyranny!

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seconded!

 

[djinn]

I've been playing this really fun, short rpg called Cosmic Star Heroine 🙃

 

[Hailinel]

HLTB has it pegged at 23-26.5 hours long. I'm thinking more 3-6 hour games.

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3-6 hours for an RPG is way too short.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Would episodic RPGs be the best of both worlds? You would have short individual games while still having an overall sense of progression both storywise and gameplaywise

 

[Dogui]

Short like 10-15 is kinda manageable but 3-6 seems hard to do unless it focus on solo characters and tinier scopes. Even then, most classic Ys games still takes more than 6 hours and Undertale easily reaches 10. And these 2 are the most extreme examples of short here.

Maybe trying to go for the Live a Live route, but treating each story as separate games? Like, imagine a series of 3 hours short and cheap jrpg like games, meant to be played in one sitting. All the games would have the exactly same mechanics so each game doesn't waste time explaining stuff.

Still, pretty hard to do something like this in a genre meant for character progression.

I think more 10-15 hours long jrpg like games would be cool, but 3-6 feels too short.

 

[kai3345]

I've been asking myself for years why an MMO without the leveling and exploration and instead a complete focus on raiding and/or dungeoning doesn't exist.

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Dragon Age Origins is kinda this imo. The combat loop feels very much like you're playing a single player version of a WoW 5-Man dungeon.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

3-6 hour game is not enough time to get into the mechanics of an rpg.

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I don't really think this is the case. I think you could cut down on a huge amount of length in an RPG if there were little to no repeated enemy encounters. By that I don't mean that enemies themselves never repeat but that you're never fighting the same formation of enemies more than once.

 

[Hailinel]

You take an RPG and shorten it to sub 10 hours, it maybe starts looking a bit like a VN...

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Sakura Wars isn't an RPG, though. It really is a modern VN, but with action combat.

Would episodic RPGs be the best of both worlds? You would have short individual games while still having an overall sense of progression both storywise and gameplaywise

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There have been episodic RPGs before. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and the Penny Arcade Adventures RPG both come to mind. Neither of them were particularly good.