How long to beat games

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scotland
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How long to beat games

Postby scotland » January 10th, 2017, 9:46 am

This is an interesting side conversation I thought I would bump into its own topic. How long does it take to beat some games, and how does that affect your decision to even play them?

Retro STrife wrote:
Atarifever wrote:I like the idea of a 25 hour JRPG. I wish there were more of them so I'd have some chance at completing some. Right now I'm playing Secret of Mana on Wii, and reviews have led me to believe it's not extremely long.


I feel that same way. For guidance, I highly recommend http://www.howlongtobeat.com. Search a game there and it gives you a general idea of how long it takes to beat--both for the main storyline and for completionists. Most mainstream games are covered and it is pretty accurate.


I find this site severely underrates the time to completion. I find for the RPGs I have played, it takes me 3 times as long to finish. For instance, I played Lord of the Rings Third Age on the Gamecube, and I believe it has a timer built in your save file. http://howlongtobeat.com says a completionist will take 23.5 hours -- I believe it took me almost 70 hours to win the game. There is even an option where you can then replay the game giving your starting character the final +20 Sword of Cleaving or something, which would be the completionist thing to do.

Another example is Bards Tale 1 on the NES. It also says about 30 hours for the completionist. I think that is a severe underestimate for that game. I have no idea how long it really takes to beat that game, since it goes on and on and on way past 30 hours.

I am not a completionist, and will skip out on exploring everywhere, searching every rock and wall for easter eggs, seeking out every person with a clue or costume or achievement. I will grind however, and often am overleveled by the final boss fight. Still, I think these times are 'minimal times for risk taking chess masters to complete' and not gamers like me, who ground pound their way to victory through massive leveling up. (that should be a tee shirt)

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Atarifever
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Re: How long to beat games

Postby Atarifever » January 10th, 2017, 5:03 pm

scotland wrote:Still, I think these times are 'minimal times for risk taking chess masters to complete' and not gamers like me, who ground pound their way to victory through massive leveling up. (that should be a tee shirt)


We should totally have T-shirts. I do think this is part of why our times are above those listed. Getting to the point where you can beat the final boss by just mashing "ATK" takes time. :)

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ptdebate
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Re: How long to beat games

Postby ptdebate » January 10th, 2017, 8:44 pm

Interesting hearing your thoughts, Scotland, and a great topic for conversation.

I tend to take a pretty different approach with RPGs--I make it a challenge to try to get through the game at the lowest level possible without using glitches. It makes the battles a lot more strategic and tense. My most extreme example is beating Final Fantasy VIII without leveling the main character up once, although some of the secondary characters gained a level or two. With that being said, the amount of time I spend on a game is wholly dependent on how much I enjoy replaying it. For some reason, even though it's far from my favorite game, I've spent a ton of time (maybe 300 hours or so) on playing Final Fantasy XIII across two platforms and multiple save files. My actual completion time for that one is about 45-50 hours, but the challenge bosses in the game require considerable grinding and a lot of strategy to even have a chance. It's the high-level challenges that really keep me coming back to that one. It's the same with the Souls (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls) as well.

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scotland
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Re: How long to beat games

Postby scotland » January 11th, 2017, 8:27 am

ptdebate wrote:Interesting hearing your thoughts, Scotland, and a great topic for conversation.

I tend to take a pretty different approach with RPGs--I make it a challenge to try to get through the game at the lowest level possible without using glitches. It makes the battles a lot more strategic and tense. My most extreme example is beating Final Fantasy VIII without leveling the main character up once, although some of the secondary characters gained a level or two. With that being said, the amount of time I spend on a game is wholly dependent on how much I enjoy replaying it. For some reason, even though it's far from my favorite game, I've spent a ton of time (maybe 300 hours or so) on playing Final Fantasy XIII across two platforms and multiple save files. My actual completion time for that one is about 45-50 hours, but the challenge bosses in the game require considerable grinding and a lot of strategy to even have a chance. It's the high-level challenges that really keep me coming back to that one. It's the same with the Souls (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls) as well.


I totally appreciate your joy in a tense tactical battle. Tactical games like Advance Wars have really been enjoyable for me, as well as similar games with RPG elements. However, there is no price for failure except try again there.

Yet when it comes to a straight up RPG, its different. For one thing, dying and trying again hurts the immersion in the story and my attachment to the charactets. It may also be from my tabletop roots, where role playing games don't have save files, death can be permadeath, each adventure is just another chapter in a never ending story, and the ultimate goal is to grow the character and just have fun. Its like politics, where you don't bring a bill to a vote unless you know you have the votes for it to pass - never fight a dragon unless you already know you can win that fight.

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Retro STrife
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Re: How long to beat games

Postby Retro STrife » January 12th, 2017, 2:27 pm

I'm very much a completionist and an over-leveler. I try to complete all or most of the sidequests in an RPG. It bugs me if I don't. I also level my characters up very high, usually to level 99 if that's the highest level. To me, it's part of completing the game. Even missing a stupid potion in a dungeon would bug me. Even in non-RPGs, I can't help but be a completionist. Even when I don't want to be. For example, I'm playing Uncharted 4 and I promised myself that I wouldn't worry about collecting all the treasures. But I can't help it...a few chapters in and I had already resorted to using an online guide for finding all of them.

This makes me think..I bet you can tell a lot about a person's psychology just by whether they are completionists or not...
Completionists probably tend to be perfectionists, OCD, and/or type-A personalities, etc. in their real life. I bet most of them prefer linear type games...the more open-world it is, the most stressful it is on their personality-type because they can't complete everything.
On the other hand, the people who just want to hurry and beat the game, skip the boring cutscenes, not be bothered with meaningless sidequests, etc. probably have more opposite real-life personalities to the completionists.

As for the website, howlongtobeat.com, I move at a plodding pace so I know that my times are usually longer than the times on there. However, it's still a very good guideline IMO. If a game says 100 hours to beat, I know I have no hope. If it says 20 hours, I estimate it could take me 25-40 hours, so at least I know it's doable.

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Rev
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Re: How long to beat games

Postby Rev » January 12th, 2017, 3:19 pm

Retro STrife wrote:This makes me think..I bet you can tell a lot about a person's psychology just by whether they are completionists or not...
Completionists probably tend to be perfectionists, OCD, and/or type-A personalities, etc. in their real life. I bet most of them prefer linear type games...the more open-world it is, the most stressful it is on their personality-type because they can't complete everything.
On the other hand, the people who just want to hurry and beat the game, skip the boring cutscenes, not be bothered with meaningless sidequests, etc. probably have more opposite real-life personalities to the completionists.

As for the website, howlongtobeat.com, I move at a plodding pace so I know that my times are usually longer than the times on there. However, it's still a very good guideline IMO. If a game says 100 hours to beat, I know I have no hope. If it says 20 hours, I estimate it could take me 25-40 hours, so at least I know it's doable.


This describes me to a T. I always take longer than the estimates and open world games stress me out because there is too much to do.

Voor
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Re: How long to beat games

Postby Voor » January 12th, 2017, 10:54 pm

Same here. I've never beaten an open world game--and I tried Ocarina of Time like 6 times. Don't even try anymore.

I'm not a completionist in life either (except where it really counts). The rest--get it done and move along.


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