Ben-DutkaEver since we learned of the game's North American release date, Final Fantasy XIII has begun to dominate news headlines everywhere. …what, you got a problem with that?
Although many of us have already gotten used to shorter games in this generation, we can always turn to the role-playing genre for some supremely long adventures. Recent examples would be Demon's Souls and Dragon Age: Origins , both of which will net you 50 or 60 hours of entertainment (and that's at a bare minimum), and even the action/adventure game, Assassin's Creed II , is clocking in at around 40 hours. And when you say the name, "Final Fantasy," most anticipate a fairly large number in terms of gameplay length, which is why we're not surprised to hear that FFXIII will take even experienced players around 50 hours. According to Kotaku , game director Motomu Toriyama made the following prediction:
"For XIII, the size of the entire game is considerable. Just running through the main story takes experienced players over 50 hours. For the first time, I think it's possible to play through in full in about 60 hours or so."
Now, before any of you say, "well, I knew that would happen," bear in mind that FF veterans know these games have actually gotten longer over the years. I dove into FFVII and FFVIII in each of the past two years, and I'm always surprised at just how short both are if you stick to the main story. You can finish FFVII in around 25 hours if you speed right through it, for instance. So to hear Toriyama give us these numbers is exciting for any FF fan; it means we just get more goodness for our $60. Ain't gonna argue.
Related Game(s): Final Fantasy XIII
sorry square, but i cant believe anything you say youve sold your soul to the devil.
ill believe it when i see it.
or should i say IF i see it.
50 aint bad. considering most other games are much shorter in comparison.
most of the time i play shooters and i'm not a big fan of RPGs so 50 hours is a really long game to me
OKAY!! roundabout how many hours would a veteran rpg clock FFX? I'm faaaar from veteran but clocked it in 52 hours, INCLUDING completing a few side quests. . .
If you complete all of the side quests and master all characters you'll clock in over 100 hours.
I don't think a game should be judged by how long or short it is UNLESS it is leaning to heavily on either side (mostly on the short side). 50+ hours sounds good to me because games I've played and beaten as of late averaged 20 hours or less. If you think 50+ hours isn't enough or it feels like it only meets the desired time-frame because of "dragging arcs" then you're entirely correct.
Take anyone's life for example. No one goes through life putting forth 100% of their time ONLY into things that will help shape their destiny. Life is full of twists and turns and implementing arcs into a game helps to change the pace and if anything makes the game that much more interesting and diverse.
Card minigames, sports minigames, random assassination missions, unbelievable races, beat-em up husband missions, and even chasing down a thief makes a game that much more diverse and memorable. If you don't like them then that's on you but most side-quests (if not all) are optional.
Gotta give it up for Assassin's Creed 2. It truly is a fun time-consuming beast. Hurry up and come out FF13. I'm shaking with anxiety over here.
Last edited by just2skillf00l on 12/3/2009 2:45:21 AM
I just saw that "feel the pulse" trailer…I was planning on commenting first with a pun and then a joke to follow…but I have to say, this Final Fantasy game is beau…beautiful (sniff). Yeah I said it, this game is beautiful: the music, the character's personalities, the plot, the emotion and intensity of the situation, just about everything in the game is beautiful. I was on the verge of crying after the trailer. A trailer for god's sake! If the game looks this great right now as a multiplatform title, imagine if it were exclusive! Man the possibilities. Oh yeah and that pun…no that video was just too amazing to mock.
Last edited by just2skillf00l on 12/3/2009 3:20:15 AM
MAIN reason why I buy the FF games, LONGEVITY.
It'll probably take me more than 50 hours.
To me FFXIII pwns GOWIII, my 2 cents.
Really, The main reason i play FF games is for a good adventure, 50 hours is plenty of time to tell a good story.
I just hope they do have more interesting things to do for side quests becuase 12 really did lack on them. I also hope that the sory events are more frequent than 12, yes 12 takes around 80 hours, just but it so slow on avancing its story, your running around fields and temples slaying monsters for the most of it. which gets tedious.
Yea I guess we've all had our issues with FFXII, the gameplay was good, the characters were interesting but there was just something special about FFX. Its like with FFX, the story really got INTO you, you could feel Tidus' pain, his relationship with Yuna, his Dad being SIN etc etc…. but with FFXII, it felt a bit empty, not much emotions attached to it.
Last edited by www on 12/3/2009 8:36:28 AM
"To me FFXIII pwns GOWIII"
Same, not saying its gonna bad though.
sin was his dad?! (didn't buy the game but borrowed it) omg?! They pulled a dark vader on him?! Oh and i have ffxii (for about 2 years now). And the longest i played it was about 30 minutes. It's tooo hard =(
i hope his estimation was wrong. I spent 154hrs on DragonQuest Vlll and THAT was perfect. 50hrs ain't a true RPG for me.
50 just for the story. Read the whole article. DragonQuest VIII's story was not 150+ hours. 150+ with side quests and grinding, yes.
"I spent 154hrs on DragonQuest Vlll"
o_O
I spent almost that much time with DQVIII too but that included side quests and grinding. 150 just for the story length is a gross exaggeration.
FFIX took me about 130 hours to finish and 90(or probably more but maybe since I played it 3 years back on my PS1) on my second playthrough(I also skip many stuff or finish them quickly because my goal was to get Excalibur 2).
But like Jawknee said, 50 hours ain't bad compared to other games, not to mention some AAA games.
Last edited by Snaaaake on 12/3/2009 8:51:33 AM
How could you people stand to play the same game for so F*&^%@@ long; Doesn't it get old looking at the same characters for 50+ hours?.
You do know there's this thing called Story right?
No. Especially when it comes to Final Fantasy. If I didn't like the games I buy after 10 ours of play or so then I would sell all my games after playing them. I played through Uncharted 2 five times. That's 50+ hours.
Last edited by Jawknee on 12/3/2009 10:31:50 AM
Hexen I'm still wondering how you could ever enjoy that silly FPS that reminded me of Quake's retarded cousin.
Hexen I see you've never played any FF game. NO it does NOT get boring. On your long journey, you come across various characters with unique abilities that join your party, and each of these characters usually have different goals and aims but it just so happens all of you might be looking for the same thing or some other.
And your characters gain more abilities and increased strength as you progress. Plus, there are a GAZILLION ways to take down an enemy in FF. There's more to FF than I can explain right now, just remember that it never gets boring.
@LV
0_0 😉 o_0 🙂
@www
The only RPG that I have really only played was Beyond Oasis(probably what turn me off rpg's); so I think you should probably just ignore me since I'm ignorant on the Genre.
Nope, never get sick of it, it's like a page turner where you just care more and more about the characters and what is happening to them so much so that you must know what happens next and how they will handle it. By extension you wonder how YOU will handle it. See FFVII turning the masses (including myself) into crybabies.
What do you mean looking at the same characters, doesn't that happen for every game? At least FF has 'different characters' for each new sequel haha.
Playing FF for long times always rocks!
Story, its 90% of the reason i play games.
Longest game I played was inFAMOUS, it took me 40 hours (estimation) to complete the game to 100%.
A talking calculator..
Pardon me 😉
Awesome finally another long-ish game for this generation.
Though isn't it kind of on the shorter side of the stick for typical Final Fantasy playing times?
Ok nervermind I'm 31 hours into FFV and I'm supposedly 3/4 of 3/5 of the way there.
3 things i care about:
Long and good story
Easy gameplay
Chocobos
In most RPGs you grind in order to beat a boss or to get powerful enough to survive in a new area.So if FF13 is a game you can finish in 50 hours as an experienced RPG gamer that time must take grinding into account.Unless its been dumbed down so much that grinding isn't necessary.Don't forget that wada said FF13 isn't a JRPG.And leona lewis is providing the theme tune.I think anyone expecting a genuine FF experience wil be disappointed.If i don't get 100+ hours out of an RPG i'm disappointed.
50 hours for the main story is great, but I'll believe it when I see it. And even then, I won't hold my breath for 50 hours of *actual story*. The only RPG I've encountered to date that has a roughly 50 hour story length is Xenogears. And that's *solely* for story AND if you're ploughing through the story efficiently. Stop to grind at any point, and it can go past 60 hours.
None of the Final Fantasy games come close. The closest is actually FFIX, which has a story length of 40 hours. By "story length", I'm referring to playing through the game normally (i.e. not a speed run), but only doing the story events and nothing else, while doing as little grinding as possible. Basically playing the story as efficiently as possible. In this regard, IX has the most number of events to go through in an FF game. Most of the FF games clock in at around 30-35 hours on average. And some of the early ones can be beaten very quickly (IV can be done in 15 hours or so, though it's hard as hell; 18-20 is more realistic).
On the other hand, there a couple of FFs that *seem* long, but that's only because of how they're designed and not because of the actual story. The biggest offenders are VIII and XII: VIII has maybe 20 hours of story events, but it takes nearly twice as long to go through because everything moves so slooooowly. From the loading times to the drawn out battle system (no pun intended; though the best way to speed through VIII is to grind at the beginning of the game so that you don't have to it as much later on) to the really slow running speed, VIII is just a slow game with not much happening in it. And XII is even worse, with much of the game designed to be a huge timesink, complete with massive vistas that you run very slowly through and dungeons/areas that are artificially long (the Ridorana Cateract – GOD), and yet in terms of events, even fewer things happen in XII than in VIII.
So if XIII takes 50 hours to go through the main story, great! BUt I want 50 hours of story a la Xenogears, and not 20 hours of story + 30 hours of padded time spent running around because there's too much backtracking, I run too slowly and there are too many (unavoidable) fights.
Last edited by Ultima on 12/7/2009 10:20:55 AM