Single Sitting JRPGs

Hey all, my friend streams a lot of retro jrpgs like dragon quest and final fantasy and has tasked me with finding some more good ones for him to play.

Here's the kicker, he does them all in a single sitting. His longest being a 26 hour stream. He's currently working on ff8 which might be his new longest, although he's doing the low level run to shave off some hours.

So what i was wondering, is what JRPGs would be interesting to watch in one sitting? anywhere from 8-30 hours, but any longer than that might be a little risky.

The stream is over @ twitch.tv/thechuggernauts . Appologies in advance if twitch links aren't allowed here, feel free to remove it if that's the case mods. Cheers !

Originally Posted by WillisWill
Here's the kicker, he does them all in a single sitting. His longest being a 26 hour stream. He's currently working on ff8 which might be his new longest, although he's doing the low level run to shave off some hours.

I think your friend should seek help, and I don't mean to find more games.

Interesting to *watch* in one 20+ hour sitting? None. Don't think you'll find many takers on that.

Interesting to play in one 20+ hour sitting, maybe. If he's doing this sort of thing anyway, maybe he'd be interesting in doing one of those charity streams.

That sure is an odd request. JRPGs often have a lot of optional content (particularly chatting with everyone about everything) so it might be feasible. Still, I hope he isn't doing a bunch of these. That lack of sleep isn't a good thing to do to yourself.

I'm playing Legend of Heroes, Trails of Cold Steel right now. It looks to me like the optional quests in the game really are optional so, by sticking to just the required missions, it might work out.

The Last Remnant might work out but there's no difficulty setting and it can get pretty hard. There's a way to cheese it by avoiding levelling that might help. Unfortunately, the game is no longer for sale on Steam. (Odd Square hasn't turned that back on yet. The PlayStation re-master was a long time ago now.)

Yup, there are a few smaller JRPGs out there -- mostly older ones, so if you or your friend are not that tolerant to retro gaming (old gfx, clunky gameplay), your last resort is the indie scene. There are many RPG Maker stuff out there, but beware: about 90% of'em are crap.

As for the old small gems
1. Some old Game Boy JRPS, such as:
- Final Fantasy Adventure (the starter of the great "Mana" series)
- Final Fantasy Legend 1 (the starter of the great "SaGa" series)
2. Some old NES JRPGs such as:
- Mother 1 (starter of the great "Mother/Earthbound" series)
- Dragon Quest 1 (starter of the great "Dragon Quest/Warrior" series)
- Faxanadu (a great little platformer/jrpg hybrid)
- StarTropics ( a cool Zelda-like action/adventure)
- Ys ( starter of the great "Ys" action/jrpg series)

… and so on.
These games are mostly around 5-8 hour long, a one day long entertainment for the dedicated person.
Again: do not expect epic storylines and nuanced gameplay -- these games are as simle as they can get, but great fun nevertheless.

The premise seems a bit odd to me, as I tend to try to make a game last as long as possible rather than banging it out in one setting, but different strokes and all. There are literally tons of older games out there, but a few of them might lead to serious health/impairment issues, were someone to try to complete the entire game in one single setting. I'd really suggest making sure your mate never hears of games such as Everquest, as that could shortly lead to their demise!

here's the only one I can think of that might be tolerable to watch in one sitting : Half-minute hero.


Though personally I've never seen the appeal of watching some streamer play a game. I only watch gameplay vids if either I'm completely stuck / lost or to determine whether I want to buy a game I'm on the fence about.

Koudelka is around 15 hour long, I think this one is a good fit.



Note that the first Shadow Hearts is not that long either, maybe 25 hours, (2&3 are long though'). Breath of fire : Dragon Quarter is shorter than average too, maybe 25 hours too. Note sure if these games are already too long or not, especially since Dragon Quarter can take longer with reloads, it's quite harder than average.