Excellent little Zelda-style ARPG set in an anime-influenced post-apocalyptic setting with really darling characters, excellent 2D animation work, and a fantastic soundtrack. Not super deep and meaty like Tyranny, but there’s some modest character upgrading, inventory/weapons, and plenty of neat puzzles and really great dialogue.
There was this shareware game that is getting a long awaited sequel, which got its own thread on these forums. Very Ultima-ish, very good Baldur’s Gate-ish combat, pixel art. It was called Knights of.… something and I never can remember its name!
It is fairly short, probably under 10 hours.
Yusha 30 allows you to play a whole RPG in a couple of seconds, although it’s stretched out. Still a pretty darn cool game that scratches the RPG itch, strangely.
FF6 is not short. It’s banned from the thread.
The problem with JRPGs is, they have overwrought narrative. They have a set time.
A speedrun of Chrono Trigger is still like 4 hours. (didn’t bother looking it up…)
Or as I like to call it, the best Witcher game.
I’ve learned over the years that if you stick to the main campaign of an RPG with maybe a few side-quests then most RPGs can probably be of a reasonable length but some are designed around grinding unfortunately. I think there was one Dragon Quest game for the PSX that was 200+ hours of required grinding to win. Games like this are grotesque and are either designed for people with no lives or have autistic tendencies. I was really enjoying Skyrim - a bit too much - when I made the fatal mistake of trying to do every side-quest that came along. Burnt myself out within a few hours and never even got 33% completion I suspect and now when I think of the game, I get a slight sick feeling. But you know what? It was my own damn fault; my choice to utterly belabor things to the point of self-stupification. after Skyrim, Witcher 3 and Pathfinder Kingmaker, I decided I would never play one of these bloated RPGs again so I think this is a good topic for recommendations of RPGs of reasonable length.
Ah, I see, so just Phantasy Star IV from here on then.
Well thank you from those of us who enjoyed Dragon Quest VII ¬_¬
I don’t think any JRPGs qualify with their frequent random battles, constant cut scenes, and forced anime melodrama…
I love the idea of this thread, but starting it off by listing Fallout, at 20-30 hours, I would considering intermediate to long, not a short RPG. But I guess most RPGs do take longer, unfortunately, and are padded out.
Fallout 1 is really short by any standard.
30 hours is kind of a hard cap AKA I messed up. I beat it in 15 hours. Half the time for the first time. Average completion time is more between 15-20 hours. (I added an extra 10 hours)
Fallout 1 seemed very short but maybe only because I was enjoying myself so much. Played it a couple of years or so after it came out and it seemed really fresh and different; and it’s the only game I ever played that I wanted to replay within a couple of days - maybe only hours - of finishing my first playthrough. This has never happened to me with any other PC/video game, before or since. Ironically, Fallout 2 felt overlong to me and I was bored before the end but I slogged on to complete it. I’m shocked that there are people who create restoration mods to actually restore “lost content” in FO2 to make the game longer but most lost content in games is cut for good reason. One fun fact about FO1 was, due to its extremely satisfying open-ended nature, you could supposedly complete the game in 10 minutes if you knew where to find the water purifier chip, so it could be the shortest RPG ever developed; if you wanted that.
In retrospect, I spent waaaaaay too long in Junktown winning money at the casino. Overall I played Fallout for a long time.
I suppose Fallout can be prolonged, but overall it is pretty damn short.
Junktown, Hub, Boneyards, there as some quests there. Not a lot though.
All I can think of is Knights of the Chalice? Although I would have put it at the mid to upper end of the length range for this discussion closer to 20+ than 10).
It is brisk though. XP is doled out rather generously and generally each major area/dungeon brings at least one level up.
Thank you, that’s the one!
Super Paper Mario and Suikoden 1 are probably my two favorite short RPG’s. Suikoden is comfy JRPG goodness with decent battle mechanics and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome with an overly long playtime or need to grind, and Super Paper Mario is one of the most well-written (and funniest) games out there.
Other notables for me:
South Park Stick of Truth - Just absolutely top-notch game adaptation of the show, and another example of humorous storytelling in an RPG, which I’m always for (too many dour and self-serious RPG’s out there).
Y’s 1 & 2 - quick and easy combat mixed with good visuals and glorious buttrock
…That’s so great.
HAQUE!
An actual game of Haque is pretty short by RPG standards, certainly much shorter than a game of Nethack. But playing again and again is a longer-term game, in which you don’t stop discovering new things for a long, long time. I’ve beaten it 100 times and failed who knows how many, and I still occasionally see something I haven’t seen before.
Get out!
How can you say no to these adorable little munchkins!
