Long games you wish others would play.

[Cirrus]

Some of my favorite games are the ones that I can look back on and say, "Holy crap, I went through puberty while playing that game." Looking through the Time to Kill articles here on DP, it got me to thinking: most games coming out lately are relatively short compared to some of the great RPGs of the mid to late 90s, on the SNES and the Playstation.

Even the RPGs released today don't have that crazy length, for the most part. Now, I'll admit, there are plenty that you could sink a 'developmental stage' or two into, but games do seem to log in and 20 or less much more often than the 60 or more I used to do. And maybe it's us?

Current gamers, and those just getting into serious gaming (you know, teenagers, etc...) sometimes just don't have the patience to let a game heat up, to really see how wonderful games like Final Fantasy III are. ("When I was your age...")

For instance, my wife, who sometimes feels a little left out of the group with me and my gaming friends, asked me "What is the best one of those long RPG games that you guys play?" She is referring to the same type of game I have been describing. Basically, I told her if she were to crack down and play through Final Fantasy III that she would be in a special club, and I'd love it. I don't see it ever happening, because she doesn't have the patience, or the time.

Name one or two games that you would suggest that EVERYONE play, even though they clock in at 40+ hours on average.

For me, I would say that everyone should play FFIII for SNES (not psx!), and Suikoden 2 for the Playstation. Both games represent the best of their era, and are possibly underappreciated by some. Grandia for PSX is a close runner-up.

And everyone has already played FF VII, so think of something else. ;) (I might get some ideas!)

[Dahne]

For me, I would say that everyone should play FFIII for SNES (not psx!), and Suikoden 2 for the Playstation. Both games represent the best of their era, and are possibly underappreciated by some.

Preach it, brother.

[badinsults]

I don't know... I could easily complete FF3 in under 20 hours, possibly even 15 hours. I have passed FF2 in under 11 hours. Now, try passing a game like Dragon Warrior 7. I played it for an hour and abruptly stopped when my brother said it took him 120 hours to pass. Personally, I disagree that newer games are shorter. I prefer the good old Mario games which could be beaten in one sitting.

[Cirrus]

I don't know... I could easily complete FF3 in under 20 hours, possibly even 15 hours. I have passed FF2 in under 11 hours. Now, try passing a game like Dragon Warrior 7. I played it for an hour and abruptly stopped when my brother said it took him 120 hours to pass. Personally, I disagree that newer games are shorter. I prefer the good old Mario games which could be beaten in one sitting.

I know that FFIII could be beaten in less than 20 hours, but if you are playing it for the first time, and trying to turn every leaf, you know it goes way way above that. That's what I'm talking about.

Also, Dragon Warrior VII is a good example... you didn't finish it because you found out it was too long, but it's an amazing game, and exactly the kind of thing I'm referring to. I'm sure there are people here that would say, YES, play that game even though it will take you forever. It's worth it.

And I love the old games that take less time to beat, too, when it comes to action oriented games like SMB 3 especially. I am mostly talking about adventure and RPGs here.

[-hellvin-]

Betrayal At Krondor. It's not the best looking game in the world and some of the character animations in battle sequences are a bit gimp looking, but deep within is an amazing game with a wonderful story. You almost feel like you're "playing a book". The game also doesn't solely focus on combat either, there's insane amounts of exploraton to be done, fun riddle chests to solve and lots of mini quests to solve all over the world.

Some places can take quite some time to find everything (Dimwood forest) and it's easy to miss many things the first time through. I recently replayed the game in DOS with the BAK Help website. I had a sector by sector map to quickly discover all the hidden items/chests ect. and I know the game VERY well, where all the good spells/weapons are and it still probably took me about 15-20 hours.

[Fuyukaze]

I would recomend games like Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, Lufia, or Star Ocean 2 to people.

The thing the Rot3K series is that its never the same game twice. You can start off with different places, generals, and such and while the game mechanics are the same, it doesnt always end the same.

Lufia, the first RPG that truely captured my attention, and emotions. While it wasnt an overly long game it always ended up taking me a long time to finish. With the secret dungeons or the 99 floor cave in the second game, it had alot of things to do. Just not much concerning replayability.

Star Ocean 2 was a RPG many will never fully finish simply because there is so much to it. From the various multiple endings to the secret dungeon, to simply maxing out the charcters levels, it was a game that was both hard and very rewarding.



-helvin-, that was a very good game. I forgot all about that. I normaly hunted and slept till my stats were maxed before I tried finishing each chapter. That was a fun game but I hated the voice acting in it. Ever read the book series for it?


Cirrus-I would recomend starting with something either old or new. The problem with the first one is that the game the graphics are very aged, the music isnt great, and well, its just plain old. Its simple though in the options of things you can do and buy so its a bit more easy then the later games. The new games have impresive graphics, beautifull music, female charcters (they are even playable!), and plenty of options on how to train and such. Only problem is all these new aditions means you have that much more to worry about in your attempt to take over China. Its basicly more a case of what you perfer. New graphics, or old because both have solid gameplay and both offer the same basic gaming exp. With 9 games released to the series over many systems, its hard to find to many systems that dont have a release available for it. I would recomend Nobunaga's Ambition, Genghis Kahn, or a number of other series, but for the most part they are basicly the same game set in a different location with different names.

[GaijinPunch]

I think RPGs standards these days are <25 = short, 35-45 average, 50+ long. I haven't seen a 20 hour RPG is years. The last few I played were the following:

Tales of Rebirth: 40+
Growlanser: 58+
...drawing blank. Not sure what I played before these.

Simulation games on the otherhand are traditionally shorter. My last three were:
Sakura Taisen 1:18-20
Sakura Taisen 2: 18-20
Black Matrix: 22 or so

[Anexanhume]

Morrowind.

Faith, Law, Justice. Walk on.

[Cirrus]

I would recomend games like Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, Lufia, or Star Ocean 2 to people.

The thing the Rot3K series is that its never the same game twice. You can start off with different places, generals, and such and while the game mechanics are the same, it doesnt always end the same.

Lufia, the first RPG that truely captured my attention, and emotions. While it wasnt an overly long game it always ended up taking me a long time to finish. With the secret dungeons or the 99 floor cave in the second game, it had alot of things to do. Just not much concerning replayability.

Star Ocean 2 was a RPG many will never fully finish simply because there is so much to it. From the various multiple endings to the secret dungeon, to simply maxing out the charcters levels, it was a game that was both hard and very rewarding.


I am absolutely with you on Star Ocean 2, I can't beileve I forgot to mention that one. That is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. I know many people who have started, but not finished, that game... and they are worse for it.

Which Three Kingdoms game is the best to start with? I imagine the original is maybe a bit too outdated to really start with... I am up for playing through them.


Also, Anexanhume: hell yeah on Morrowind. That game has a serious fanbase, but I'm not sure how many people have really squeezed it dry.

[Jive3D]

SHENMUE I & II

[badinsults]

Betrayal At Krondor. It's not the best looking game in the world and some of the character animations in battle sequences are a bit gimp looking, but deep within is an amazing game with a wonderful story. You almost feel like you're "playing a book". The game also doesn't solely focus on combat either, there's insane amounts of exploraton to be done, fun riddle chests to solve and lots of mini quests to solve all over the world.

Some places can take quite some time to find everything (Dimwood forest) and it's easy to miss many things the first time through. I recently replayed the game in DOS with the BAK Help website. I had a sector by sector map to quickly discover all the hidden items/chests ect. and I know the game VERY well, where all the good spells/weapons are and it still probably took me about 15-20 hours.

Have you read any of Feist's books? The Magician books are an excellent read. Unfortunately, I never really got into the third book, which takes place after they take control of Krondor.

[-hellvin-]

-helvin-, that was a very good game. I forgot all about that. I normaly hunted and slept till my stats were maxed before I tried finishing each chapter. That was a fun game but I hated the voice acting in it. Ever read the book series for it?

Are you talking about the voices that play when you come across the NPC's about the game world? Yeah, some of it is bad, but I think a few sound pretty good.



Betrayal At Krondor. It's not the best looking game in the world and some of the character animations in battle sequences are a bit gimp looking, but deep within is an amazing game with a wonderful story. You almost feel like you're "playing a book". The game also doesn't solely focus on combat either, there's insane amounts of exploraton to be done, fun riddle chests to solve and lots of mini quests to solve all over the world.

Some places can take quite some time to find everything (Dimwood forest) and it's easy to miss many things the first time through. I recently replayed the game in DOS with the BAK Help website. I had a sector by sector map to quickly discover all the hidden items/chests ect. and I know the game VERY well, where all the good spells/weapons are and it still probably took me about 15-20 hours.

Have you read any of Feist's books? The Magician books are an excellent read. Unfortunately, I never really got into the third book, which takes place after they take control of Krondor.

Yes, I have:

Magician: Apprentice
Magician: Master
Silverthorn
Darkness At Sethanon
Prince of the Blood

I have read the first three I listed and they are excellent. I really enjoyed them. You can defenitely feel Feist's great writing in the game as well, the story sequence's are really fun to read and give the game world more depth. Of the three book's I've read I liked Silverthorn the best. The Magician book's were a great read and it was cool to find out more about Pug's past. I like Apprentice much more than Master though. Some part's of Master were kind of drawn out during his time with the Tsurani.

[Cirrus]

Sorry to threadjack here, but how about some examples of really long games where you were glad you put the time in? ;)

Actually, about Betrayal at Krondor, does it run in Windows XP normally? I picked up a copy from the Underdogs, but it closes right away... I know this is a super old game, and it always ran a little wonky, even when in DOS or whatever it was supposed to run in natively.

[-hellvin-]

Sorry to threadjack here, but how about some examples of really long games where you were glad you put the time in? ;)

Hehehe, sorry about that derail man. Anyhow, I'm gonna add a few others to the list:

PC - Planescape: Torment

This game is quite a little gem. It has quite a few hilarious moments in it, great characters and an awesome story as well. It's quite a deep game and can be rather complicated but it's worth the time investment. You really need to know what you're doing before you start because depending on what you say you can gain experience or cause yourself to turn to a more chaotic alignment (such as making fun of the worker skeleton's skirts...). So it does have a bit of a learning curve but it's worth it.

PC - Morrowind

At first I hated this game because it was nothing like Daggerfall but eventually it began to sink in that it was a good thing. The game is insanely replayable and just one character you could literally work on for 100+ hours just leveling and exploring and not even touching the main quest. It's insanely addicting. Another good story in this one as well. If you have a PC and love RPGS you have to try it out.

Damn...now I kind of want to install it....

[-hellvin-]

Sorry to threadjack here, but how about some examples of really long games where you were glad you put the time in? ;)

Actually, about Betrayal at Krondor, does it run in Windows XP normally? I picked up a copy from the Underdogs, but it closes right away... I know this is a super old game, and it always ran a little wonky, even when in DOS or whatever it was supposed to run in natively.

This game will work beautifully with Dosbox (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/). The program is really easy to use and it runs the game very well. You need a slight dos know how but nothing too extreme. You will need to tweak the dosbox.config a little bit though and these are the settings that worked great for me:

core=dynamic
cycles=18000

Just set it to a dynamic core, and up the cycles and it should work great. Also look in the config file and write down the IRQ, DMA, ect settings for the sound card section so you can set it properly.

The only problem I've noticed is sometimes it doesn't respond to the mouse in cutscenes. Pressing enter will work fine though. Sometimes when you click a few times it accepts it, but sometimes it won't. Only weird thing I've noticed.

[Cirrus]

Sorry to threadjack here, but how about some examples of really long games where you were glad you put the time in? ;)

Actually, about Betrayal at Krondor, does it run in Windows XP normally? I picked up a copy from the Underdogs, but it closes right away... I know this is a super old game, and it always ran a little wonky, even when in DOS or whatever it was supposed to run in natively.

This game will work beautifully with Dosbox (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/). The program is really easy to use and it runs the game very well. You need a slight dos know how but nothing too extreme. You will need to tweak the dosbox.config a little bit though and these are the settings that worked great for me:

core=dynamic
cycles=18000

Just set it to a dynamic core, and up the cycles and it should work great. Also look in the config file and write down the IRQ, DMA, ect settings for the sound card section so you can set it properly.

The only problem I've noticed is sometimes it doesn't respond to the mouse in cutscenes. Pressing enter will work fine though. Sometimes when you click a few times it accepts it, but sometimes it won't. Only weird thing I've noticed.

Yeah, I've used DOSBox, there is a nice frontend called DFend, and I should have thought of that!

Planescape Torment is an amazing game that people really need to play, but I'm not sure if it is that long, maybe 15 hours? I forget, but one thing I know for sure is it's great. And I'm right with ya on Morrowind. I love that game and I've spent way too many nights up until 6 AM playing. I did it on the XBOX, and it had Bloodmoon and the other add-on inlcluded (game of the year edition).

To add: Baldur's Gate 1 and especially 2 are both fantastic. Also, the Icewind Dale games are really great, as well, but focus a little more on battle than story.

Please play Baldur's Gate.

[FurinkanianFrood]

Morrowind, Betrayal at Krondor, and DWarrior 7 are all good examples.

Shining Force 3 takes quite a long time if you play through all three chapters.... Great game. Get a Saturn.

I played through FFantasy 3 once. Personally I think it's extremely overrated, and it's not long either. It's better than the later FF games though. I'm really not a Square fan. I'm huge RPG fan, but after playing a couple hundred RPG's (many import only BTW) only a few of Square's games seem all that good. FF4 (JP SFC, not easytype) is much better, as is FF5. Personally I find FF6 a rather poor game.

Grandia (Saturn, not the rancid PS version!) is far better than anything Square has ever made.

Everyone should play Langrisser 2,4,5 and Tengai Makyo 2+4 but the language barrier makes it difficult for most obviously.

Ultima 4 is a good one.

Everyone needs to play Phantasy Star 1,2,4. NOW.

Falcom games. Horribly underappreciated in the US.

Dragon Warrior 3-6.
[/quote]

[shvnsth]

final fantasy tactics.
legend of dragoon.

and why should you play ff3 on the snes instead of psx?

[Kroogah]

and why should you play ff3 on the snes instead of psx?

No. Load. Times.

I've played all the way through ff3 many times on the SNES, and I can't make myself play it on the PSX.

[link1110]

Even the RPGs released today don't have that crazy length, for the most part. Now, I'll admit, there are plenty that you could sink a 'developmental stage' or two into, but games do seem to log in and 20 or less much more often than the 60 or more I used to do. And maybe it's us?

Dark Cloud 2 and Dragon Warrior 7 are both relatively recent, and both clocked in at over 60 hours for me, and I'm usually a fast player (For comparison, I beat Tales of Rebirth in 28 hours my first time,) so for many people they might take over 70 hours.

[swlovinist]

The game Dark wizzard for the Sega Cd is not only underratted, but is about 80+ hours to beat, that is if you have the cinema battle scenes on. The game not only has a great storyline, but if you beat the game, you can go back through the game with a different character and have a different ending. I have not played the game in a long time, but I think that it is a game of serious length that must be played by all........

[slip81]

Breath of Fire I & II
Shining Force series
Lunar Series
Albert Odyssey
Secret of Evermore
Chrono Trigger
Phantasy Star series
Lufia series

As much as I love long games I'm glad they're getting shorter, because I have a LOT of games to get through, and there is no way I could beat them all if they each took 40+ hours.

So right now I'm having fun playing through all of my short ones, and then it will be time to tackle the big RPGs like Baulder's Gate and Skies of Arcadia that I've been putting off for so long.

[blissfulnoise]

The game Dark wizzard for the Sega Cd is not only underratted, but is about 80+ hours to beat, that is if you have the cinema battle scenes on. The game not only has a great storyline, but if you beat the game, you can go back through the game with a different character and have a different ending. I have not played the game in a long time, but I think that it is a game of serious length that must be played by all........

Not just length but the game is legit difficult. You'll be restoring saves quite a bit and trying different strategies to attack at the enemy.

My problem with the game though isn't it's length, but it's FORCED length. Battles tend to take longer than they should because of map size / movement ratios.

But, the positive is the monsters you use are very cool. It's kind of Archonish but traditional turn based Shining Force.

As far as a long game that doesn't get the love it deserves, I'd vote for Phantom Brave. Yet another very deep turn based strategy RPG. It's sense of stat management can be very very overwhelming, but if you try not to munchkin the game, you'll have a lot of fun.

Also, again, the Ultima series, even on the NES can be a bit daunting since most of the time you're not sure where to go, but they're very thrilling games once you get the ball rolling. Specifically, Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar and Ultima 3: Exodus are two great games in the series to start with.

The Wizardy series, though extremely successful in Japan, was always cultish in the states. Another heavily stat based game, but they can also be very rewarding.

Finally, Civilization. I've found that people won't play it unless they're already whores for turn based strategy. That's really sad. I'd wish more people from the RTS/FPS generation will go back and look at this godly series. Especially after the success of Rise of Nations...

[WiseSalesman]

I want everyone to play through Final Fantasy Tactics and Valkyrie Profile, both PSX, but that's just me.

Beyond Good and Evil (GC) would rank up there too, although that's not that long. Honorable mentions go to:
Vagrant Story (PSX)
Grandia 2 (DC)
Eternal Darkness (GC)
Kingdom Hearts (PS2)
The Magic of Scherezade (NES)
Robotrek (SNES)
SoulBlazer (SNES)

I could name more, but the other ones are more popular. The one listed here; I still find hardcore gamers that haven't played them. Unacceptable, I say!

[Cryomancer]

SHENMUE I & II

Exactly.

[Arqueologia_Digital]

Shenmue
Shenmue II
Baldur´s gate series
Icewind Dale series
Light Crusader

All RPG´s, all games that people here doesn´t like very much...(bad for them :evil: )

Cheers,

Matías

[THATinkjar]

Civilization III.

I can't get any of my friends into it. The closest thing to a long game my friends play is Championship Manager/ Football Manager (now).

They'd love Civ if they just gave it a chance. But they have such short attention spans, they'd give up so quickly. I'm fighting a lost cause I suspect.

[XxMe2NiKxX]

Baldur's Gate 2. Simply put, longest game ever.
Shining the Holy Ark. Takes awhile to beat, it's pretty good too.

[sabre2922]

Shenmue (DC)
the Front Mission series PSone and two
Ive already put in over 40hours on FM4 on PS2 and Im only half way through both 3 and 4 are verrry long games and good strategy games.
If any gamers out there want a game that will last almost forever pick up one of the Front Mission games ;)

[SoulBlazer]

First, call it FF6 like it should be. ;)

Second, what's wrong with the PSX remake? I prefer that as opposed to the original SNES version. Sure, it's a little slow on the load time, but use a PS2 and Fast Load and it really helps.

But I agree with FF6 (as well as 4) and Suikoden 2 as being some RPG's that everyone should try. I'd also say Morrowind and Star Ocean 3 belong up there as well.