I was a little over 90 hours into Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth when November hit and I shelved it to focus on NaNoWriMo. I was disappointed that I didn't get to finish it, but I really wanted to get back into writing after being out of commission most of the year.
After finishing my 50,000 words, I came back to Persona Q2 and decided to power through to the end so I could finish before the end of the year.
About 95 hours in, I realized I'd likely finished all known side quests and had about two floors of dungeon left to complete. This would probably clock in about a 100 hours. (It was eventually 100 hours and 22 minutes, so my guess was really close!)
And I realized, this is way too long.
I've felt all right up to 70 hours with an RPG, even 80 for one I'm really enjoying, but something about crossing the 90 hour mark really deflates my balloon, even for a franchise I'd ordinarily enjoy. I mean, Persona Q2 is pure fanservice. I got to build a dream party out of all my favorite characters from Personas 3-5, even the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable! There's nothing wrong with the combat system, the persona collecting, or the story. It's just so long that I was ready for it to end at about 90 hours.
I ended up doing a lot of gaming this year due to being on medical leave and lacking the focus to do creative work. (I seriously tried doing revision work while going through radiation treatment and ended up deciding to lay down instead.) So this year I had a lot more game time than I ordinarily would.
This is a day and age when the capacity for a game to be long is greater than ever, but as a working adult who loves games, this also means that there's also a lot out there that I really want to play that long games prevent me from getting to.
Persona 5 was similarly a 100+ hour game for me, and though the upcoming Persona 5 Royal rerelease is supposed to streamline some of the gameplay in acknowledgement that perhaps it was too long, Royal is also adding new content, so the end result is likely to be the same length or a little longer.
I don't precisely remember my Persona 4 playthrough time, but I think it was about 80 hours, which is long, but not unforgivably so.
I usually buy the extended versions of the various Persona games at some point, FES and Golden, so I'll likely get Royal as well, but I already know it's going to be something tossed in the backlog and when I finally get around to it I'll play on the easiest difficulty because I already did it "for real" on the original version and a second time around would just be to see the new stuff.
Atlus is probably in the planning stages for Persona 6. I can't imagine they're not already thinking about the next game while they're milking Persona 5 for all the spin-offs/updates they can get.
But please, shorter this time. And while I'm asking for ponies, give me a female protagonist too.
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