I am the complete opposite, I play all RPGs for 100% completion, if I don't think I will I wouldn't even waste my time or money, for me the story is just an added bonus, if it's good then cool if not then fine, as long as the gameplay is good and addictive then I'm all about completion
@mathewhosier9739 Yep, I gotta do all the secrets cause I feel it can tell more of the world's past, more character development etc. I don't like to miss out on content that might answer some questions I might have....wild arms is PACKED with secrets.
@@bioboost12 if it’s related to discovering more about the game then sure i’d do the same. but if it’s only for achievements/trophy, i don’t think it’s worth my time bcs at that point it’s closer to being a chore than entertainment
Maybe it's because I have slight OCD but I could never be satisfied without getting 100%, especially on a trails game, the most fun I had last year was completing trails into reverie
I had to agreed, i just finished Cold Steel 2 for the first time and while i liked it, no way i'm playing it again to get the Black Records. I wacthed it on youtube and that's it lol.
@@davidj.medinag.6524 That hiding a important scene behind a full replay was (in my humble opinion) one of the biggest mistakes Falcom made with this game. Especially because most players are not even aware they miss something important by playing the game only once. I can get around games that need a second play-through as another character to get the full story (like Scarlet Nexus) if those games are fun to play. But I agree that I never go for a 100% complete, because I could not care less about a trophy or an achievement. I simply don't see any value in that. I play games for fun, and not as a way to keep me busy... I play a game until the credits roll. Sometimes I replay the last part of a game to see another outcome or out of curiosity (what happens if), but I almost never replay a full game without a very good reason. Of course I sometimes replay games years after I played them just for fun, or out of a feeling of nostalgia (Example: I replayed the Quake II remaster many, many years after I played the original on a now ancient PC).
I bounce between your stance and wanting to get the 100%/platinums. For me, some games the platinum feels like I'm experiencing everything the game has to offer, which is great. For others, like you said it's more a tedious checklist to get through (like Nier Replicant). Overall though I enjoy trying to complete games within reason but there are definitely times where once credits roll I say I'm good and move on too.
The older I get the more I agree with this! These days I’ll typically choose just one or two extra things to complete that interest me the most and call it a day. Xenoblade is a good example of this. I went through the full Colony 6 reconstruction because I really wanted to see its conclusion but I didn’t bother with the hundreds of other kill x number of monsters side quests. Even then it was still pretty tedious farming for materials.
@@mathewhosier9739 I am 69 and I play games for fun. 100% complete feels too much busywork for me. I do not care about trophy's or achievements, and hate doing repetitive tasks over and over again to get those (for me) useless things. Don't get me wrong - I am fully prepared to put hours and hours into a game (I played the full Trails series and am now playing Trails Into Reverie until Daybreak will be released coming summer), but I stop when I finished the game (and all interesting side content), and all that is left are repetitive tasks, only needed for a trophy or achievement.
The only reason I go after the extra stuff in Xenoblade is for the EXP. Xenoblade is a bit unbalanced in that regard, but at least they give you a pass time.
I want to thank whoever made the flags in Assassins's Creed 1. That collectible was so fucking boring that it forever made me despise completing games and thus saved me thousands of hours over the years.
I remember having a falling out with my friend years ago regarding Witcher 3. I just wanted to enjoy the story and just go without previous knowledge. He got mad that I was not using his guides etc... It seems different people value different things when gaming. Someone just fun and exploration of both world and story and others some sense of completion. Few years after that I got into another argument with different friend where he mocked me for not going for trophies or playing on easy difficulty. I had my comeback with "I see no value in this, it is not worth my time"... and in the end it was just normal discussion between friends but again, showed me how it is so different for everyone. I fall into the category like you do. I love story the most. Be it game, movie or comic... The story and characters is what matters to me. Sure I am glad for good graphics, good effects in film, good artstyle in manga, but in the end, I love the story. I have no problem playing on easy difficulty and ignoring achievements that are not relevant for me. What is relevant for me outside of story is obviously side content that expands the lore of the world, character stories and stuff like this. I am willing to spend time doing boring things if it rewards me with what I want to know. I will explore the map, even where there are no quests, just to find more lore from npcs etc. But when something is just "do this shit for 2 hours and you get some achievement", naaaah. I spent 220 hours on Cold Steel IV while story is like 60 or 70, but I did it because I love Zemuria lore and every NPC and side quest there gave me something more. So yeah, completion for me is when I get all the stuff game has to offer ragarding main story, side stories, character stories and world lore.
I feel exactly the same. I use a guide for most of my falcom games just so I do not miss any sidequests. I am personally someone who really hates minigames, so most FF games are not for me. FF 7 would be interesting to play one day but it has way too many miniagames and I do not want to do those. Trails has amazing side content and I would hate to miss those quests, because they enhance the world and characters. And I also used a guide for Ys 8 so I could get the true ending. I also did Danas side dungeon, but I never want to do that one again because the puzzles got really annying after a while. They were good, but I would not want to play the game again to do those puzzles. I can not wait to play Cold Steel 3 when I get to it. I just need to finish some other games first. I hope we both just keep having fun with our games. Fun is the most important thing in my opinion.
@@Nikita_Akashya Yeah, when I started trails I was so surprised how well done NPCs are. No hate to like Tales series, but there talking to npcs was usually worth nothing outside of quest givers. In trails, every npc has a story and I like that. For example Honkai Star Rail is kinda similar to this, where talking to npcs is actually pretty cool. Also yeah, lets just have fun our own way.
While I would never force a friend to follow my guides, but I am definitely a completionist, but I don't use guides but instead build my own as I play, theres nothing fulfilling about using someone else's guide, finding your own way to 100% is the fun part
The only rpg I beat 100% was Radiant História: Perfect Chronology. Nothing in that game feels like is there just to make it longer, almost every side quest is to develop main characters and make a future to the true end, which was really cool! I ended playing it for 80 hours and was great.. I could have beaten in 30 If I wanted. I tried to do 100% of my favorite game, Xenoblade Chronicles, and I couldn't, because there are some impossible challenges and a lot of side quest which I dont really mind. So always I play it I try to just enjoy and don't focus on what I don't like to have a good experience with the game
I really enjoyed the combat of Xenoblade 2, Torna, and was defeating the super bosses, but the I realized I would have to grind to defeat them so I gave up
I don't 100% every game just for it's own sake. But I love exploring nooks and crannies of open worlds, and if the game rewards me with collectibles (esp books, diary pages etc that add to the lore) I'm happy. I also enjoy companion quests that deepen the story behind other characters in the game. I'll see how many trophies I can earn on my first playthrough and see if the plat is doable. But I'm more interested in seeing and experiencing everything I can, while leveling up at a good pace I(hate grinding).
This is a great point to bring up. For myself, I don't really care for trophies but I do try to do contents that would potentially be part of the story such as extra content or cutscenes. As much as I love JRPG's (my favorite genre btw), sometimes they make it so hard for gamers to enjoy content by making them do repetitive stuff for hours in return for these extra contents. I could just watch UA-cam, but for me that just doesn't feel like finishing a game so I end up doing them anyways because of my habit of "not wanting to miss anything". Sometimes I feel like I delve too deep into JRPG characters that I want them to have the best possible experience as much as they can along their journey with me XD
Yeah, the point of 'when you stop having fun' really hits for me. I forget precisely which game it was that killed my desire for completionism -- I want to say it might've been Tales of the Abyss -- but I just don't care once things start to feel like a chore. It's basically why I don't like fighting games on principle; getting skilled enough to have fun is too much of a chore. I do like trying to see everything a game -- and especially a JRPG -- has to offer, but there comes a certain point where I just cut myself off. I do find it somewhat interesting that you have such a strong philosophy of 'one playthrough only'. For my part, I've found that a lot of my favorite games I'm glad to play again and again, even with knowing all of the story beats and such. It's kind of the same as books to me; I'll reread some of my favorites when the fancy strikes me and enjoy them just as much knowing what'll happen. Not to say your philosophy is wrong -- and I can certainly appreciate the time investment involved in repeat playthroughs is nontrivial -- just an interesting difference of perspective. As ever, thanks for the video!
I'll definitely do everything I can in a JRPG (side content etc.), but I'm not afraid to cutting it off when it starts to get tedious. That's helped a lot for me getting through a backlog.
Ive been slowly breaking this mindset. Years of MMOs and open world fatigue make me subconsciously try to 100% every game at the start until i go "youre doing it again". Been enjoying a lot more bigger jrpgs because of this
There are some really brutally intricate things that some of these games ask you to do and much like you said, a number of these situations would not be known to the player unless you were told it by someone else, watch a UA-cam video on that particular section of the game or pay direct attention to a walk-through. I guess I don’t mind that these things exist within the confines of these games but these really hidden things being tied to 100% completion is unfortunate and frankly frustrating. I agree with a lot of what you said. Thanks TKN!
Your section with Vesperia resonated with me as I'm playing the original FF7 currently for the first time. It feels like a game made for a kid who gets it as their only game for christmas and then replays it a dozen times over the year to find all the ridicilous secret it has to offer.
I’ve actually had to readjust how I played games. I used to need to see everything, and I don’t even know why. It usually made the games less enjoyable. Like people saying the Trails in the Sky games were around 45hrs each. It took me over 200hrs per game…. It’s not feasible to keep that up, and really it’s not fun. So I went through the trilogy again and just stuck to the main quest and it was just so much better. Games like Xenoblade I tried doing a lot of the side quests but most aren’t well written enough to justify it. I grabbed them, and If they got completed fine, but I wasn’t going out of my way and i actually started finishing games!
I completely agree with all of this. I think an interesting angle/take might be to address the economic side of things, how people feel monetarily compelled or forced to wring every drop of content out of a game because they can't afford to or won't spend as much money on games.
Yeah that's usually where I land. Though I do generally use a guide to get what side quests I can my first time through. Occasionally I'll replay a game years later or play through the Tales games with my brother. And you're right, it's very frustrating how obscure those side quests can be, especially in the earlier games. Recent trends of marking all side quests is so much better.
I think even by early standards Vesperia was quite unforgiving. The fact you would have such limited windows to go to a completely innocuous location for side content made it feel almost player hostile.
A lot of things here I agree with, I've been playing games for about 27 years since I was a kid booting up Super Mario World on SNES. It's very rare that I go for 100% let alone the Plat in any game which also includes JRPG's. My 1st one was Blue Reflection a few years ago mainly because I love that game and the Trophies tied to completion I was doing naturally so the few that weren't I didn't need to go to a lot of lengths to get them. One thing about that game that was frustrating was one of the Trophies was glitched. If a game fits within that I might take the dive. I simply don't have the patience or time to spend another 30hrs or more to get a shiny image when I could spend that time possibly finishing another game; to hit that point home further is Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure which takes less then 15hrs to finish. No salt for those who go the extra distance, everyone has different ways of enjoying games.
Yep. Couldn't agree more. There are a few games where I've gone for completion - nier:automata and ff12 zodiac age come to mind. But, generally, all i feel from trophies and completion is stress and frustration. I get so scared of missing out on something that the game becomes an endless "hold on, let me google if i can safely move on yet" for me. For example in the trails games. And recently horizon forbidden west is really frustrating me with all the useless stuff to do. This video is a good reminder to just let those map markers be, play the main story and character moments, and then just stop when I'm done.
Completely agree, I got into an argument at work with a couple of girls who were angry with me for finishing Hogwarts Legacy, I did the main quests and the character side quests but none of the collectable side quests. They both spent like a couple of months doing absolutely everything. There are so many games that come out that I will probably never play, cannot waste my time doing boring tasks. I usually finish the story, if the side quests seem interesting I'll play them, if not I'll just focus on completing the story.
I have a couple friends that are like that, I've never understood the appeal of searching those types of open worlds. If I can just read it on the wiki and get the same experience as if I found it in game it's probably not worth my time checking every corner for hours.
The only games I can 100% platinum are relatively short action games, despite rpgs being by favourite genre. The time investment to platinum an rpg is way too much for me.
I bounce between the two, really. I tend to look at the list (PS4) and then decide if I want to go for the platinum or not. Recently it's become more of a desire to see the story through without stopping due to how large my backlog has become lol. And as you said there is no bad way to enjoy a game as long as you enjoy it!
This is incredibly timely…currently finishing up Persona 5 Royal (which I’ve loved, all in all) for the first time but man the last handful of hours is such a slog between wrapping up social links and heading into Mementos for little-to-no reason
I never get the urge to complete them, except for the Persona series. The games are just so good I want to play through them again to get the extra content.
Very cool interesting upload mate. Agree wholeheartedly with this. I for one am way too proud to use guides. I love the sense of accomplishment in beating games (to the credits I mean) without any help or tips. Many platinums clearly are designed with guide use in mind. Unlike yourself however I am more a gameplay guy over story guy so I did end up playing SMT 5 for about 100 hours and will likely play vengance too as I loved its combat and exploration way more than its story. It all depends. Love harder difficulties too. For me though overall when those credits roll I have beaten it.
Yes ! This is me ! I only 100 percent games that I’m super excited about a game , love it have a lot of history with the series or game , shadow the hedgehog, sonic advance 3 , megadimension Neptunia vii on switch , Danganronpa daecadence ( main story only ) and Megaman battle network legacy collection and Apollo justice Ace attorney trilogy , Senran Kagura burst and god eater 1-2-3 just a few on my list
I am a semi-completionist (75 to 90%). I like to do as much as I can in a first playthrough, but I won’t play games a second time and stop if it becomes too tedious or difficult. The only exception to that were atelier games, because I messed up in Totori.
My tradition with Xenoblade Chronicles is getting everyone to level 99 and beating the Superbosses. If I do that, I feel complete and satisfied even if some side quests remain.
I think you touched on it briefly - people actually play with a guide on their first playthrough out of fear they'll miss something. That lends itself to 100% games.
I really appreciate this perspective. I feel like so many people feel that in order to properly play a game, you need to do absolutely everything it has to offer. For me, as I get older I care less about doing that. I want to experience these worlds and journey’s but, at some point I just don’t care about the side stuff anymore. I recently finished Ni No Kuni for the first time. At first, I was delighted to engage with the side content. Toward the end, it didn’t feel worthwhile and I beelined the last bit of story as quick as I could. I saw the story end and haven’t regretted any of the side content I skipped.
I'm a work in progress. I agree with basically every single damn word you said, and conceptually I always have. I do NOT like long games, I actually roll my eyes when games are advertised as long with even more side content piled on. But somehow I always feel a terrible pull to be a completionist. I never really looked inward until now, but I think for me it's that yes, I agree with TKN here. It's about fun, and I'd like to take the wheat, ditch the chaff, and then move on to the next one. But I think maybe something in my formative years shaped my impulse. I've been an RPG fan for over 30 years - and I grew up POOR. This meant I got a few games a year if I was lucky. So milking every single last nook and cranny out of a game in the 90's was exactly what I'd do. For me I think it's a scarcity mindset, even though I'm not poor anymore, and more games (that I want to play) release in a year than I can ever plausibly keep up with. This was a lovely video, TKN, and a reminder well worth mulling over. I'm endeavoring to be more like you here.
So, weird take: I feel so much of this yet do much of the opposite. I have a habit of completing games as an unintended consequence of getting sucked into a game world's deep lore. I also really like to replay games. Despite that, so much of what you're saying resonates with me. Especially as I've gotten older. Strongly agree with setting your own goals for a game. The player's enjoyment should always take priority. Very cool Jinzo by the way!
Thanks for the video! I used to be a completionist back then, I even have the desire to do so still today, but I rarely do, only if I having fun, I look at all my platinum throphy, ok I got one, from Skyrim! But like you say, game is for having fun, I don't care anymore if my backlog is huge, I play what I want and once I am done with a game, I put it down, well I usually finish then at least. Right now, I am having a ton of fun to replay my gaming memories!
Although I tend to be more of a completionist these days (I love getting the Platinum trophy for my favorite games), I do agree with one the individual points you make here... primarily, I despise when developers use hard mode and ridiculous challenges as part of that, especially when they only add hours to play time instead of adding content. Getting a rare item that makes the hard mode easier doesn't cut it. Getting a story detail I otherwise might have missed is great. I'm playing through FF7 Rebirth right now, and it's a mix of both. A ton of annoying mini games with payoff that only benefits the hard mode difficulty challenges. BUT, there are also a ton of little story beats that come with many of those things too. What I wish games would do is follow the Horizon Zero Dawn approach. Have a base set of trophies that are attainable to the masses for the Platinum... and have a separate set for the 100% difficulty completionists in the form of a NG+ list. I'll forever have 90% on those games, but I still have my Platinum that I feel represents a good 100% marker.
I felt the same about Persona 5 Royal's platinum trophy. It's reasonable and perfectly attainable in a single playthrough (the only complication being knowing how to trigger the third semester). Contrasted with the Thieves Den's completion list, which is a nightmare for non-hardcore completionists that requires a guide and at least two min-maxed playthroughs. I'm glad it's there for them, but no player should ever feel forced into the challenge and tedium involved.
I’m totally the same way. The main goal is “see the credits” then I usually make a short list to-do list of what I’m still interested in, + usually only finish half of that
Theres nothing more fullfilling then knowing you have done everything a RPG has to offer, gameplay, progression and content are the three most important elements of any RPG imo
I feel the same with you bro. I almost never really feel the need to really get everything in a Jrpg. I tried getting multiple endings in Shin Megami Tensei 4 & Good lord. Maybe it's because i'm older now but my patience to sit through hours of gameplay & either recapturing new demons and raising them to be viable or spending a fortune of ingame funds to re-buy my endgame demons. However theres not enough flow of income until the endgame so I have to redo the entire game legit and grind everything all over again. Good lord, I was so exhausted after completing it the first time that the thought of grinding again multiple times just made me give up. Lol, I just went online to watch the other 4 endings that were about 1-3 minutes each & good lord. It wasn't even really captivating. SMT4 had fun combat and dungeon exploration, but jeez speedrunning it is so boring. Just felt like I was grinding a game to change the ending credits to 1 of 5 variable colors. Just felt so underwhelmingly tedious when trying to do a full 100% run of a Jrpg. I can't say the same for other games though. Like Devil may cry, Musashi, Megaman X, Dynasty Warriors & Games of that nature. I suppose those games didn't require me to start over from scratch for a new playthrough so there's that too. The 100% of these games just offered content that enhanced or changed current playthrough unlike jrpgs that simply changed a cutscene or a few words to give you a Stanley Kubrick type of vibe that costs for about over 4x the time you completed it the first time. Just so underwhelming. Just as exactly as you said. 10 seconds of high, then you realize you could have played or didcovered 2-3 other amazing rpgs in that time. Smh
I am with you on this one, and I am somewhat of a completionist. But not to get a platinum, but I like to experience all the content/story the game has to offer. Like doing all the secret stuff, completing all the quests, and seeing the story/character development the game has to offer. For this reason, I despise RPG games with multiple endings and choices/romantic options that hide character development behind it. This is one of the reasons I won't ever play Persona games, a lot of tactical RPGS like to force this crap on you and Nier games are the bane of my existence. I don't want to play a game multiple times ever, these are not short games, and to make people play them multiple times to see all they have to offer is sadistic. I hate the excuse of "oh, I just played through it once and then look up what I missed online" not because it's a bad idea but if 90% of the people do that then what is the fricken point of making people deal with this nonsense in the first place. Not to mention in most games, the multiple endings/choices etc. are actually detrimental to the game's over all story. Most games just put this stuff in because some popular game did it, or to add padding to the game. This is the one hill I would die on when arguing what's good for JRPGs.
I like watching people go over how they 100% some games and the detail they go into is fascinating. I could never do it but respect for those that want to get everything.
This is definitely a very grounded approach. I’ve avoided so many JRPGs or just not had fun with them while attempting to follow a detailed guide of missables. I will say that while a story can get me going to the canonical ending, if the gameplay is solid and there’s a challenge there, then I will keep playing. Using your Kingdom Hearts example, I actually found that beating the game without changing equipment very interesting. I set it to the easiest difficulty along with attempting the speed run trophy and it was harder then expected. I also just love KH’s combat, so I could just infinitely keep playing without a story and be very content. And then all those secret bosses. The worst trophies are just the ones that are combat mini games where you are forced to lookup a guide on how to optimally complete the challenge. Maybe a better player would sit there and actually figure that all out on their own, but I’m not going to spend time doing that if there’s already an intended way to do the challenge that people know. Effectively forcing people to play with a guide is the worst. Challenges should be easily repeatable any time and something that you can work toward mastering. Stamina based challenges are just boring. Anyway, thank you for this video! I might seriously try to pick up more JRPGs again and not go for the platinum. I had started my run through of the Megaman Battle Network Legacy collection last year and got burned out trying to go for 100% on just the first game alone. The games are amazingly fun, but the 100% process is just tedious. I wish developers would just stop putting in tedious tasks that they know some poor chump is going to do just because they added it in.
i'm trying to adopt a stance more like yours! my main goal is to experience as many cool stories as possible and have as much fun with them as i can without losing energy. i use backloggery to keep track of my games and reviews of them, but i think the distinction between "beat" and "completed" made me feel a little pressured to complete as many games as possible (especially because when your stuff is completed on that site, there's big shiny letters that make my monke brain happy). maybe ill just change my personal standards for those terms a bit - beat is just credits and done, completed is doing as much extra as i think is worthwhile and fun to do :]
I'm with you mostly. I never cared about trophies/achievements but recently I started to like getting them for some of my favourite games but only if they didn't take too long or became a chore. I did it for FFVII Remake, I just had to!! but with Rebirth...man I can not be bothered especially when it comes to mini games that I can not be bothered with or don't enjoy. Like you say "when the fun stops, stop!" I have to admit though it's hard to stop when it's a game you really love! I did have a mental battle with stopping on Rebirth BUT it got to the point where I was about to turn my amazing joruyey into a dread by the end so I stopped :) Plus I am sooooo far behind in my jrpg games because of doing too much in my games lol. I get addicted to MMORPGS or Survival Crafting games where I can build my own bases. Trying not to at the moment because I want to play so many more games and I am not getting any younger haha. I've still got all the Trails games to play, those alone are going to take me a long time!!
Great points here! And totally get it! Never been a completionist myself and I'll never be haha. As someone who has limited time with life/work etc it just suits me more not to be. Plus sometimes I feel if I were a completionist I could actually ruin the game for myself, I don't want an awesome game to be tainted by me just having a wee rager Tae ma self cause I Cannae beat something like find 50 badgers for Jimmy in Kupo Town. Hahaha!
I agree with this and i rarely do bonus tasks in RPGs which aren't story related myself. I play games, especially RPG to beat them, to see whole story and go to the next one. Life is too short and games are too many to spent extra hours, sometimes dozens of hours, on mundane tasks to get this 100% completion in one game.
I agree with half of your reasons. I agree with that the story is a important aspect of what you will enjoy the game most. But to me if the feature of the said game is a interesting one and it had a achivement i will finished it, even when sometimes you must be grinding or fight the same enemy over and over again. When it became so boring, i will play other game and finished it again after playing that other game. I enjoy playing game that way, sometimes even double amount of time average people play said game 😅. When it's finished i really feel the statisfaction from finished and unlocking all the feature of said game. 😁😁
When I was younger I wanted to complete games as in experience everything the game had to offer. I did consider myself a completionist even. Then trophies/achievements became a thing and ruined that. All achievements was the obvious bar for completion, but many of them were so dumb and time consuming I would never do them. So then completion to me became somewhere between doing all the real content and just rolling credits. How much I do varies game to game.
I was never a completionist but my brother was and he gave up back in 2014. I cant be a completionist in any game and being a completionist in jrpgs is far far far harder then other games
I 100% agree. One, story is most important for me. Two, I'm doing the things I find fun within a gamw. Some games, that is just a little bit of the side stuff. For a game like Rebirth it was all of it first time through the narrative sans a hard mode run. Which I'll do when I feel the need to revisit the story.
Before I even fully dive into the video I can already agree with this. For me, I don't complete any game unless it's set up like that, and most of those are 1 and done for me anyway. I don't complete games because I like to enjoy my time thoroughly with games and it helps if there's replay value. Luckily JRPG's, most of them almost always have replay value, especially when it comes to customizing and allowing me to build however I want to build. Onward to the video now.
I agree. I dont really look at achievements and stuff because they're usually just more grind, or simply unreasonable. But I like playing jrpg games beyond the main ending. If I really love them, I'll play it twice. But depend on the game, I'm more combat/gameplay focused. The reason I play Monster Hunter, GBF Relink and PSO2 so much
for the most part i agree with you, once i see the credits roll the game is done and so on to the next but there are some exception if ive enjoyed the World, Characters, Lore, Etc (FF16, FF7R) i find myself looking though the trophies to find an excuse to spend more time with the Characters and world.
I need to take this approach with more games. I always end up looking up the trophies before I even play to decide if I want to even spend the time with a game. Some games I definitely have fun getting to 100%, but those are more arcadey type games where the point of the game is to play it again and again. I can't be doing it with rpgs that take hundreds of hours to complete
I've only ever "completed" one game and that one was more of a side-effect of trying to unlock all the units in SD Gundam G-Generation Cross Rays. (The DLCs didn't add trophies and I haven't finished all of those challenges because I've never been a fan of sticking my junk in a wood chipper, the difficulty does not scale well in that game. At all.) That said I do sometimes chase specific trophies, not for completion, but because I enjoy a game a lot and don't want to be done with it even if I've already completed the story.
I agree with you. Almost every time I have tried to replay an RPG to get a different ending, I end up bored and leave halfway through. And that has led me to always learn beforehand if a game has a true ending and the requirements for it (thanks to all the people out there capable of telling the requirements without spoiling the story!). Of course, I get very annoyed by games whose true ending can only be obtained in a new game plus
I'm pretty sure the only JRPGs where I went out of my way to beat all sidequests and extra activities were the Trails games. Short quests, fun/interesting/emotional little side stories, not that hard at all, valid rewards. In pretty much all other games, I just stack a bunch of sidequests and grab the rewards of the ones I just happen to complete by chance while going through the main journey. Minigames are smth I play once, just to see how it is, and then usually forget about then right after (except for Trails again, with Vantage Masters, cuz its genuinely fun, and Pom Pom Party, which I revile and despise, but has decent rewards and fun interactions with the characters). Other then that, the only extra content I always go for in most JRPGs are superbosses, because I do enjoy the challenge (Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep excluded, screw Mysterious Figure)
Honestly I've never completed even my very favorite JRPGs. I play them to have fun, not to force myself to do every single thing. I adore Persona 3, but I'm not gonna replay it just to follow a strict schedule to max every social link. I'm not gonna keep playing my favorite Tales game, Tales of Berseria, after beating the game just because I still haven't gotten some of the RNG ship minigame items. I've always been someone who just plays as much of a game as I enjoy. If I wanna play more after finishing the game then I will, but if I feel done with the game when the credits roll then I'm done with it. Also the mention of specifically pulling a Jinzo from a Pharaoh's Servant pack hoooo boy I felt that one right in my nostalgia.
I approach games with this mindset but with simpler rules. If it's easy enough/not much of a grind, I'm getting all the achievements at least (which doesn't always equates to in game 100%) + if I like the game enough. Otherwise I'm just enjoying the bits I can enjoy. Example with Dishonored 1 which has all those grindy dlc, well I'm skipping them. The sequel though? (2 and Death of the Outsider) getting all the achievements actually makes me like and appreciate the game so much more.
I would argue that a lot of JRPGs don't feel like they take that much longer to 100% (trophy-/achievement-wise) than they do to reach story end compared to other games. I haven't actually played as many as I'd like to though, so I'm mainly talking about Gust games. And Ys. I try to 100% everything I play, but I put off playing games that require meticulously following a guide the whole way. I do sometimes reach points in the completion process that make me say "yeah, I'm not doing that", examples being collecting all the objects in Katamari and the smithing trophies in Ishin Kiwami. The koi koi stuff in Sakura Wars isn't too bad if you've sustained sufficient brain damage through completing RGG games, which include koi koi. They also involve playing through the game on the hardest difficulty, which I think is fun in NG+. It usually takes 5 hours tops to get through while skipping cutscenes and side content, knowing you've seen it all. All that's left is a mostly mild-difficulty combat challenge.
Exept for some very few games I am exactly the same. I even go so far to play on the easiest difficulty because I don't see the point in challenging myself just to experience a (hopefully) awesome story :)
Agree totally. I play until I'm satisfied or i get tired. I got 70 hours i think im Xenoblade 1, i didn't even rebuilt the colony nor did human side quest. In Dragon quest XI, I'm halfway act 3 since a looooong time ago, and I'm satisfied, maybe I'll finish it someday, or not, still happy with how much i played.
This video is really hitting hard in light of FFVII Rebirth being released recently. Yes, in that game, a lot of what Rebirth has in content feels tacked on and made ridiculously hard for the sake of being ridiculously hard. The minigames, the post-game content with superbosses, it all very quickly loses the ability to spark joy. Throughout it all, there's a subtle kind of pressure for players to complete everything. Which is why my blood pressure went up quite a few times as I went through the frustrating parts. The Trails series on the other hand, that same pressure is quite tame in comparison.
Great video. At the same time, it must be very hard to be a JRPG completionist, having a full-time job and making UA-cam content. For me, I rarely 100% a game, I'm more of a 80%-85% completionist.
If I get ending credits good enough for me. I have backlog to tackle. If I want to revisit later if I wish I have higher chance of doing everything if it interesting tho. Like additional side story not like finishing xenoblade 100s of fetch quests. I also look into time/enjoyment vs reward too.
I like getting platinum in a game, but only games I really love, so there's lots of games I've played where I didn't do everything because I merely enjoyed the game but didn't love it, I enjoy doing that. But I think its totally fine that you just do the main story and then peace out, we're all different and we shouldn't feel any pressure to do something in a game that we don't enjoy.
Come on bro, complete the game bro, dont let us down bro 😂 i personally enjoy 100% my jrpgs like trails and ys and any game i enjoy (which is majority of them since i only buy games i enjoy lol).
There are only a few games in general that I really really wanna savor the experience; dig deep into the story and everything in it. For most games though, I just want the story. I switch to easy mode, or “story” mode. And beat it in waaaay less time the average player.
I very rarely complete a JRPG due to the grinding or multiple playthroughs required. I'm usually good to go after a single playthrough (FE 3 houses being a notable exception). But I'm torn with SMT 5. I originally bought it on switch upon release, but due to gameplay issues, and the hardware, I decided to stop playing after 10ish hours, just deciding to wait for an eventual "Definitive" version on a different console... but I didn't expect a completely new route that itself is 70 hours.
Even though I like to explore my games and see a good amount of their content, I don't often go out of my way to be a full 100% completionist myself, not just rpgs but other genres as well. For example I'm willing to do all the substories and take on the superbosses in Yakuza games, but I'm fine with skipping out on the likes of mahjong and koi-koi.
I like your last point about a "personal 100%". In most cases i don't like either story% or 100% as my "spec" for a JRPG or JRPG-adjacent game. In FFX for example, I've never beaten Penance, and I never played a version that even had the dark aeons implemented, but I still don't think I would have really sunk my teeth into what that game had to offer without getting all the aeons and at least most of the ultimate weapons. The earlier stages of the monster arena are a nice proving ground for those skills, but actually getting through to beating Penance is so much more than just digging into the earlier part of the harder-than-the-story content. Commonly I like my target for a game with good writing to be doing all the tasks that have solid writing attached or can be reasonably expected to be so...but an interesting scene gated by a bunch of uninteresting content is still not exciting to me. I can just watch the scene online instead. (Looking at you, Cold Steel 2...) This is another frustrating thing about Xenoblade 1, there is a lot of interesting writing, much of which is scattered around rather than easily compiled into a YT video, gated behind the grindfest quests. Your Tales of Arise segment at the end brought out a related thought I have had before when playing some of the recent Tales games. Some of these games (Arise especially) really feel like their late story stages were designed to be a springboard for their postgame, rather than to be good in their own right. That kind of feeling really burns me out fast, to the point that I rarely even set foot in the postgame dungeon of a Tales game anymore.
i don't aim at the platinum trophy for every single game i play, but for games i really like, i strive to achieve it because i think they are the ones that deserve more of my time for example, i played Valkyrie Elysium, somewhat liked it but not to the point of wanting to complete it at 100% the Trails games, though, i always get the platinum trophy when it comes to them, i sincerely like playing a game i loved more "arcade-ly" to do everything as soon and efficiently as possible when first playing CS1 and 2 i even wrote down everything i needed to do in every single day to get everything and eventually achieve the platinum trophy, even unnecessary things like getting all weapons for every character and so on
Some games just aren't worth 100% completing and many JRPGs are just that. Not worth it. You just end up disliking the experience because it becomes a time sync. If I have to play a game on a walkthrough just to get a platinum what's the point? Plus playing a game multiple times for the purpose of going through mundane requirements is more of a chore then it is any fun.
My approach to any game isn't about "Should I complete it?". It's "Is it worth completing it?", like what exactly leads to completion? Is it just some dumb side thing that ticks a mark or is it a full additional worthwhile content? Alot of older games tend to add random side options, such as the old FFs where random things are locked behind odd situations or decisions, that following a guide for completion is mandatory. Meanwhile KH2 added full new bosses in the data memory segments that felt worth it.
I'm of the same opinion. I play the games and i do try to complete as many sidequest as i can, but the retrieval quests annoy me to no end. And generally, i skip the mini games, i don't like them, even when they are necessary for the story. FF7 Rebirth, for example, i got sick of all the mini games it has (even to collect fungi)
I'll only platinum or 100% if the game is fun enough post-story for me to do so and if I genuinely enjoy the game enough to do it. Otherwise, it's on to the next journey :)
I only do completion runs on my favorite JRGs. FFIX, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 and Persona 4 and 5 are all games I've played multiple times and have done completion runs in once each. Heck, I've beaten FFIX on every platform it's come out on just because it's my favorite game.
blue refelction 2017, blue reflection tie/second light are ez platinum triophies. but yes, i also am not a completionist. despite loving soulsborne, i only got the plat for Bloodborne TOHE.
I don't go for 100% of one unless I really love the game. Like I'm going for the platinum for ff7 rebirth cause that game is incredible. Did the same with remake too and will probably do it for part 3 also. Really loving Unicorn Overlord so might go for that one. Most JRPGs are just too long to bother with it
A long time ago I used to do my best to 100% games I got, but as time has gone on I have come to not go for 100% unless I have come to very much enjoy the game or its platinum isn't too taxing. Xenoblade I do go for 100% because I enjoy the games, and I do go for all the side quests (unless the quests are horrible) and superbosses if I am in tune with the system and it doesn't require dozens of hours of grinding. Final Fantasy X is a very good example. I was content beating Omega weapon but the stuff you have to do just to have the stats to fight the super superbosses was way too much and I got bored. For the platinum, if the game requires beating the game on NG+ or on some uber hard mode I don't go for them as I would prefer to enjoy my time instead of having to grind.
I tend to 90% or so complete most JRPGs. I like to get the entire storyline and all the side story bits for characters, but I can't be bothered for the multi-hour grinds or the frustrating challenges. I remember when I played Persona 3, I got all but one arcana maxed out, since the requirement to max everything on first playthrough was super strict. And I decided that was okay, because replaying an entire long game like that just for maybe 10 minutes of sidestory cutscene that doesn't affect the main plot is just... not worth it for me.
I usually enjoy going for the 100%, but as time passes and I grow ever older, I find myself agreeing to this. Like for example, the point of a lot of tasks being superfluous or boring, I couldn't agree more. Considering the most recent JRPG that I've finished - being Hajimari/Trails into Reverie, I have clocked a little over 200 hours on my 100% playthrough, and I have to say that the end bits were getting very tedious and I felt myself getting burnt out from the game. It's a bit ironic that when the game finally decides to give you that "sandbox" to play with everything you can/want, you start longing for an end. Ultimately I suppose it's because as you said, once a person has seen everything the game has to offer, any extra content is just more of the same with an extra difficulty to it. Without any extra twist, it's simply not interesting anymore. Personally for me, the main reason I ever 100% games at all is probably for the sake of self-satisfaction, so that I can say "I've done it, I've beaten everything there is in the game and I have seen everything!". Somehow just having that in mind really helps me get a peace of mind and make me feel like I can move on, that I've gotten all the enjoyment I possibly could've gotten from a favorite game. Needless to say, if I don't vibe the game to begin with, I will definitely not bother finishing it fully either. All that being said, I do think I should adapt your mindset a bit more, because at the end of the day, you are right that the most this is going to give me is that dopamine hit for about 10 seconds at the end, and after that it's just bragging rights, but who's gonna care? Being able to save the time invested into 100% one game could be better used elsewhere, and I think that the older you get, the more you start valuing time as well. Being more economic with one's time and minding where is it going is definitely a good thing. Overally, I've enjoyed the vid and your take on the topic. I like that you mention the games to which you can relate the issues, so it's more simple to realize the shortcomings of certain titles.
I learnt that I am not a Completionist the hard way. Got Xenoblade Chronicles 3D on the DS, said DS bricked itself when I was struggling at the midpoint of the game so I just gave up on finishing it. Definitive came out and I got it immediately. "This time," I said to myself. "I would do it 'right'." Said 'right' ended up being 373 of the games 480 quests. 31 of which were directly tied to the main story, the rest absolutely weren't. I never finished Future Connected because I was that burnt out on the game by this point, a real sticking point to me as I equally never finished Torna or even started Future Redeemed which make up a series of choices I hope to rectify eventually. But I won't be losing sleep over a missing achievement or two again after all of that fuss. The only JRPG in recent memory I've played more than once was Atelier Rorona, and that was with one playthrough years ago plus two last week. With the latter being only because I was THAT engaged with the game at the time. Lost sleep by playing it into the night, thankfully on the weekend, but still. I loved it start to finish, and got all but two of the core endings. Without even touching Overtime too. Called it a day by that point, and I will forever be happy with that.
This is 100% me i play for the story and do mimimal side content. I can 1 quest or all of them. I will do them till i stop having fun. I even do the crazy things and drop games after 50 hours or so if i stop having any fun before getting to the end.
I still haven't unlock those bikinis in Xenoblade Chronicle 2. Already forgot all the game mechanics. Ys game are the most fun to complete. Combat mechanic are simple, quick and direct. It has that arcade feel to it. No mechanic system on top of another, then another and another. Even after a long hiatus you remember how to play.
This is why I created three PSN accounts - one for games I will get 100% trophies on, one for games I will get the platinum in but not complete, and the third for games I will never platinum because some of the trophies are just not fun for me.
I usually do side content in games and years later I might replay them If I loved them so much, but I dont usually 100% them because it is usually tedious, if it is tedious then I am not gonna do it
I agree with the comments in this video. For me, it's a case of do I gnaw the scraps of chicken from this 99.9% eaten drumstick, or do I pick up a fresh drumstick and sink my teeth into that. No competition really. Rarely does a JRPG offer anything worthwhile after you've finished the main story.
The one big main reason why i rarely complete the game 100% is time. I just don't have the time to try 100% it, sometime it is just take too long to do and and there is other game from backlog that I want to play. I will try to do every sidequest I can but will skip the quest that require lot of time.
Couldn't agree more. I don't play JRPG to complete the game, I play to experience the journey.
I am the complete opposite, I play all RPGs for 100% completion, if I don't think I will I wouldn't even waste my time or money, for me the story is just an added bonus, if it's good then cool if not then fine, as long as the gameplay is good and addictive then I'm all about completion
@mathewhosier9739 Yep, I gotta do all the secrets cause I feel it can tell more of the world's past, more character development etc. I don't like to miss out on content that might answer some questions I might have....wild arms is PACKED with secrets.
Me too pal
@@bioboost12 if it’s related to discovering more about the game then sure i’d do the same. but if it’s only for achievements/trophy, i don’t think it’s worth my time bcs at that point it’s closer to being a chore than entertainment
This kinda casual approach to JRPGs is how I can back to back trails games without burning out, im 6 games deep on trails and still having a good time
Maybe it's because I have slight OCD but I could never be satisfied without getting 100%, especially on a trails game, the most fun I had last year was completing trails into reverie
Same here! Finished all games in one year :)
I had to agreed, i just finished Cold Steel 2 for the first time and while i liked it, no way i'm playing it again to get the Black Records. I wacthed it on youtube and that's it lol.
the trails series is the only jrpg i could 100%. the story is engaging i cant miss out on anything at all!
@@davidj.medinag.6524 That hiding a important scene behind a full replay was (in my humble opinion) one of the biggest mistakes Falcom made with this game. Especially because most players are not even aware they miss something important by playing the game only once. I can get around games that need a second play-through as another character to get the full story (like Scarlet Nexus) if those games are fun to play. But I agree that I never go for a 100% complete, because I could not care less about a trophy or an achievement. I simply don't see any value in that. I play games for fun, and not as a way to keep me busy...
I play a game until the credits roll. Sometimes I replay the last part of a game to see another outcome or out of curiosity (what happens if), but I almost never replay a full game without a very good reason.
Of course I sometimes replay games years after I played them just for fun, or out of a feeling of nostalgia (Example: I replayed the Quake II remaster many, many years after I played the original on a now ancient PC).
I bounce between your stance and wanting to get the 100%/platinums. For me, some games the platinum feels like I'm experiencing everything the game has to offer, which is great. For others, like you said it's more a tedious checklist to get through (like Nier Replicant). Overall though I enjoy trying to complete games within reason but there are definitely times where once credits roll I say I'm good and move on too.
The older I get the more I agree with this! These days I’ll typically choose just one or two extra things to complete that interest me the most and call it a day. Xenoblade is a good example of this. I went through the full Colony 6 reconstruction because I really wanted to see its conclusion but I didn’t bother with the hundreds of other kill x number of monsters side quests. Even then it was still pretty tedious farming for materials.
I'm 39 and the older I get the more I want to 100% my favorite RPGs
@@mathewhosier9739 I am 69 and I play games for fun. 100% complete feels too much busywork for me. I do not care about trophy's or achievements, and hate doing repetitive tasks over and over again to get those (for me) useless things. Don't get me wrong - I am fully prepared to put hours and hours into a game (I played the full Trails series and am now playing Trails Into Reverie until Daybreak will be released coming summer), but I stop when I finished the game (and all interesting side content), and all that is left are repetitive tasks, only needed for a trophy or achievement.
The only reason I go after the extra stuff in Xenoblade is for the EXP. Xenoblade is a bit unbalanced in that regard, but at least they give you a pass time.
I want to thank whoever made the flags in Assassins's Creed 1. That collectible was so fucking boring that it forever made me despise completing games and thus saved me thousands of hours over the years.
I platinumed some JRPGs, but that doesn't mean that I 100% them all. I think I only really 100% Ys 8 and 9.
I remember having a falling out with my friend years ago regarding Witcher 3. I just wanted to enjoy the story and just go without previous knowledge. He got mad that I was not using his guides etc... It seems different people value different things when gaming. Someone just fun and exploration of both world and story and others some sense of completion.
Few years after that I got into another argument with different friend where he mocked me for not going for trophies or playing on easy difficulty. I had my comeback with "I see no value in this, it is not worth my time"... and in the end it was just normal discussion between friends but again, showed me how it is so different for everyone.
I fall into the category like you do. I love story the most. Be it game, movie or comic... The story and characters is what matters to me. Sure I am glad for good graphics, good effects in film, good artstyle in manga, but in the end, I love the story. I have no problem playing on easy difficulty and ignoring achievements that are not relevant for me. What is relevant for me outside of story is obviously side content that expands the lore of the world, character stories and stuff like this. I am willing to spend time doing boring things if it rewards me with what I want to know. I will explore the map, even where there are no quests, just to find more lore from npcs etc. But when something is just "do this shit for 2 hours and you get some achievement", naaaah. I spent 220 hours on Cold Steel IV while story is like 60 or 70, but I did it because I love Zemuria lore and every NPC and side quest there gave me something more.
So yeah, completion for me is when I get all the stuff game has to offer ragarding main story, side stories, character stories and world lore.
I feel exactly the same. I use a guide for most of my falcom games just so I do not miss any sidequests. I am personally someone who really hates minigames, so most FF games are not for me. FF 7 would be interesting to play one day but it has way too many miniagames and I do not want to do those. Trails has amazing side content and I would hate to miss those quests, because they enhance the world and characters. And I also used a guide for Ys 8 so I could get the true ending. I also did Danas side dungeon, but I never want to do that one again because the puzzles got really annying after a while. They were good, but I would not want to play the game again to do those puzzles. I can not wait to play Cold Steel 3 when I get to it. I just need to finish some other games first. I hope we both just keep having fun with our games. Fun is the most important thing in my opinion.
@@Nikita_Akashya Yeah, when I started trails I was so surprised how well done NPCs are. No hate to like Tales series, but there talking to npcs was usually worth nothing outside of quest givers. In trails, every npc has a story and I like that. For example Honkai Star Rail is kinda similar to this, where talking to npcs is actually pretty cool. Also yeah, lets just have fun our own way.
While I would never force a friend to follow my guides, but I am definitely a completionist, but I don't use guides but instead build my own as I play, theres nothing fulfilling about using someone else's guide, finding your own way to 100% is the fun part
The only rpg I beat 100% was Radiant História: Perfect Chronology. Nothing in that game feels like is there just to make it longer, almost every side quest is to develop main characters and make a future to the true end, which was really cool!
I ended playing it for 80 hours and was great.. I could have beaten in 30 If I wanted.
I tried to do 100% of my favorite game, Xenoblade Chronicles, and I couldn't, because there are some impossible challenges and a lot of side quest which I dont really mind. So always I play it I try to just enjoy and don't focus on what I don't like to have a good experience with the game
I really enjoyed the combat of Xenoblade 2, Torna, and was defeating the super bosses, but the I realized I would have to grind to defeat them so I gave up
I don't 100% every game just for it's own sake. But I love exploring nooks and crannies of open worlds, and if the game rewards me with collectibles (esp books, diary pages etc that add to the lore) I'm happy. I also enjoy companion quests that deepen the story behind other characters in the game. I'll see how many trophies I can earn on my first playthrough and see if the plat is doable. But I'm more interested in seeing and experiencing everything I can, while leveling up at a good pace I(hate grinding).
This is a great point to bring up. For myself, I don't really care for trophies but I do try to do contents that would potentially be part of the story such as extra content or cutscenes. As much as I love JRPG's (my favorite genre btw), sometimes they make it so hard for gamers to enjoy content by making them do repetitive stuff for hours in return for these extra contents. I could just watch UA-cam, but for me that just doesn't feel like finishing a game so I end up doing them anyways because of my habit of "not wanting to miss anything". Sometimes I feel like I delve too deep into JRPG characters that I want them to have the best possible experience as much as they can along their journey with me XD
Yeah, the point of 'when you stop having fun' really hits for me. I forget precisely which game it was that killed my desire for completionism -- I want to say it might've been Tales of the Abyss -- but I just don't care once things start to feel like a chore. It's basically why I don't like fighting games on principle; getting skilled enough to have fun is too much of a chore. I do like trying to see everything a game -- and especially a JRPG -- has to offer, but there comes a certain point where I just cut myself off.
I do find it somewhat interesting that you have such a strong philosophy of 'one playthrough only'. For my part, I've found that a lot of my favorite games I'm glad to play again and again, even with knowing all of the story beats and such. It's kind of the same as books to me; I'll reread some of my favorites when the fancy strikes me and enjoy them just as much knowing what'll happen. Not to say your philosophy is wrong -- and I can certainly appreciate the time investment involved in repeat playthroughs is nontrivial -- just an interesting difference of perspective.
As ever, thanks for the video!
I'll definitely do everything I can in a JRPG (side content etc.), but I'm not afraid to cutting it off when it starts to get tedious. That's helped a lot for me getting through a backlog.
Ive been slowly breaking this mindset. Years of MMOs and open world fatigue make me subconsciously try to 100% every game at the start until i go "youre doing it again". Been enjoying a lot more bigger jrpgs because of this
Great job making quality JRPG content from the heart. This is as real as it gets.
There are some really brutally intricate things that some of these games ask you to do and much like you said, a number of these situations would not be known to the player unless you were told it by someone else, watch a UA-cam video on that particular section of the game or pay direct attention to a walk-through. I guess I don’t mind that these things exist within the confines of these games but these really hidden things being tied to 100% completion is unfortunate and frankly frustrating. I agree with a lot of what you said. Thanks TKN!
Your section with Vesperia resonated with me as I'm playing the original FF7 currently for the first time. It feels like a game made for a kid who gets it as their only game for christmas and then replays it a dozen times over the year to find all the ridicilous secret it has to offer.
I’ve actually had to readjust how I played games. I used to need to see everything, and I don’t even know why. It usually made the games less enjoyable. Like people saying the Trails in the Sky games were around 45hrs each. It took me over 200hrs per game…. It’s not feasible to keep that up, and really it’s not fun. So I went through the trilogy again and just stuck to the main quest and it was just so much better. Games like Xenoblade I tried doing a lot of the side quests but most aren’t well written enough to justify it. I grabbed them, and If they got completed fine, but I wasn’t going out of my way and i actually started finishing games!
I completely agree with all of this. I think an interesting angle/take might be to address the economic side of things, how people feel monetarily compelled or forced to wring every drop of content out of a game because they can't afford to or won't spend as much money on games.
Yeah that's usually where I land. Though I do generally use a guide to get what side quests I can my first time through.
Occasionally I'll replay a game years later or play through the Tales games with my brother. And you're right, it's very frustrating how obscure those side quests can be, especially in the earlier games. Recent trends of marking all side quests is so much better.
I think even by early standards Vesperia was quite unforgiving. The fact you would have such limited windows to go to a completely innocuous location for side content made it feel almost player hostile.
A lot of things here I agree with, I've been playing games for about 27 years since I was a kid booting up Super Mario World on SNES. It's very rare that I go for 100% let alone the Plat in any game which also includes JRPG's. My 1st one was Blue Reflection a few years ago mainly because I love that game and the Trophies tied to completion I was doing naturally so the few that weren't I didn't need to go to a lot of lengths to get them. One thing about that game that was frustrating was one of the Trophies was glitched. If a game fits within that I might take the dive. I simply don't have the patience or time to spend another 30hrs or more to get a shiny image when I could spend that time possibly finishing another game; to hit that point home further is Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure which takes less then 15hrs to finish. No salt for those who go the extra distance, everyone has different ways of enjoying games.
Yep. Couldn't agree more. There are a few games where I've gone for completion - nier:automata and ff12 zodiac age come to mind. But, generally, all i feel from trophies and completion is stress and frustration. I get so scared of missing out on something that the game becomes an endless "hold on, let me google if i can safely move on yet" for me. For example in the trails games. And recently horizon forbidden west is really frustrating me with all the useless stuff to do. This video is a good reminder to just let those map markers be, play the main story and character moments, and then just stop when I'm done.
Totally agree with you here. I'm the same.
Completely agree, I got into an argument at work with a couple of girls who were angry with me for finishing Hogwarts Legacy, I did the main quests and the character side quests but none of the collectable side quests. They both spent like a couple of months doing absolutely everything. There are so many games that come out that I will probably never play, cannot waste my time doing boring tasks. I usually finish the story, if the side quests seem interesting I'll play them, if not I'll just focus on completing the story.
I have a couple friends that are like that, I've never understood the appeal of searching those types of open worlds. If I can just read it on the wiki and get the same experience as if I found it in game it's probably not worth my time checking every corner for hours.
The only games I can 100% platinum are relatively short action games, despite rpgs being by favourite genre. The time investment to platinum an rpg is way too much for me.
I thrive on 100%ing RPGs, its my favorite thing to do
Depends, some action games are incredibly hard to 100% so it'll take a while. Case in point the Ninja Gaiden trilogy
Im so jealous, I wish I could be like this. Although, I have been trying to play the switch more because of no trophies or achievements.
Although, I have been doing better. I just gave up on FF7 Rebirths platinum.
Like I say, we all play in different ways. I play in the way that's best for me, you do the same. We all have our own styles that work for us.
Just don't pay attention to trophies 😂 that's what I do. If I get one, cool, but I'm never active looking to see how to get them
I bounce between the two, really. I tend to look at the list (PS4) and then decide if I want to go for the platinum or not. Recently it's become more of a desire to see the story through without stopping due to how large my backlog has become lol. And as you said there is no bad way to enjoy a game as long as you enjoy it!
This is incredibly timely…currently finishing up Persona 5 Royal (which I’ve loved, all in all) for the first time but man the last handful of hours is such a slog between wrapping up social links and heading into Mementos for little-to-no reason
Mementos is the worst part about that game by a distance.
I never get the urge to complete them, except for the Persona series. The games are just so good I want to play through them again to get the extra content.
Very cool interesting upload mate. Agree wholeheartedly with this. I for one am way too proud to use guides. I love the sense of accomplishment in beating games (to the credits I mean) without any help or tips. Many platinums clearly are designed with guide use in mind. Unlike yourself however I am more a gameplay guy over story guy so I did end up playing SMT 5 for about 100 hours and will likely play vengance too as I loved its combat and exploration way more than its story. It all depends. Love harder difficulties too. For me though overall when those credits roll I have beaten it.
Yes ! This is me ! I only 100 percent games that I’m super excited about a game , love it have a lot of history with the series or game , shadow the hedgehog, sonic advance 3 , megadimension Neptunia vii on switch , Danganronpa daecadence ( main story only ) and Megaman battle network legacy collection and Apollo justice Ace attorney trilogy , Senran Kagura burst and god eater 1-2-3 just a few on my list
I am a semi-completionist (75 to 90%). I like to do as much as I can in a first playthrough, but I won’t play games a second time and stop if it becomes too tedious or difficult. The only exception to that were atelier games, because I messed up in Totori.
My tradition with Xenoblade Chronicles is getting everyone to level 99 and beating the Superbosses. If I do that, I feel complete and satisfied even if some side quests remain.
I think you touched on it briefly - people actually play with a guide on their first playthrough out of fear they'll miss something. That lends itself to 100% games.
That's the thing, I'll never get satisfaction from playing through with a guide.
I really appreciate this perspective. I feel like so many people feel that in order to properly play a game, you need to do absolutely everything it has to offer. For me, as I get older I care less about doing that. I want to experience these worlds and journey’s but, at some point I just don’t care about the side stuff anymore. I recently finished Ni No Kuni for the first time. At first, I was delighted to engage with the side content. Toward the end, it didn’t feel worthwhile and I beelined the last bit of story as quick as I could. I saw the story end and haven’t regretted any of the side content I skipped.
I'm a work in progress. I agree with basically every single damn word you said, and conceptually I always have. I do NOT like long games, I actually roll my eyes when games are advertised as long with even more side content piled on. But somehow I always feel a terrible pull to be a completionist. I never really looked inward until now, but I think for me it's that yes, I agree with TKN here. It's about fun, and I'd like to take the wheat, ditch the chaff, and then move on to the next one. But I think maybe something in my formative years shaped my impulse. I've been an RPG fan for over 30 years - and I grew up POOR. This meant I got a few games a year if I was lucky. So milking every single last nook and cranny out of a game in the 90's was exactly what I'd do. For me I think it's a scarcity mindset, even though I'm not poor anymore, and more games (that I want to play) release in a year than I can ever plausibly keep up with.
This was a lovely video, TKN, and a reminder well worth mulling over. I'm endeavoring to be more like you here.
The way I see it, the 20 hours needed for certain achievements could be used on my next game. I know what I'd rather be doing!
@@TheKisekiNut Agreed! I'll get there. I'm working it ~
So, weird take: I feel so much of this yet do much of the opposite. I have a habit of completing games as an unintended consequence of getting sucked into a game world's deep lore. I also really like to replay games. Despite that, so much of what you're saying resonates with me. Especially as I've gotten older. Strongly agree with setting your own goals for a game. The player's enjoyment should always take priority. Very cool Jinzo by the way!
Thanks for the video!
I used to be a completionist back then, I even have the desire to do so still today, but I rarely do, only if I having fun, I look at all my platinum throphy, ok I got one, from Skyrim! But like you say, game is for having fun, I don't care anymore if my backlog is huge, I play what I want and once I am done with a game, I put it down, well I usually finish then at least. Right now, I am having a ton of fun to replay my gaming memories!
07:50 This is why I'm not a big fan of Suikoden. Finding all the heroes without a guide is almost impossible.
I used to do MOST content but now that im older im even more patient so now i literally do EVERYTHING now. I love it.
Although I tend to be more of a completionist these days (I love getting the Platinum trophy for my favorite games), I do agree with one the individual points you make here... primarily, I despise when developers use hard mode and ridiculous challenges as part of that, especially when they only add hours to play time instead of adding content. Getting a rare item that makes the hard mode easier doesn't cut it. Getting a story detail I otherwise might have missed is great.
I'm playing through FF7 Rebirth right now, and it's a mix of both. A ton of annoying mini games with payoff that only benefits the hard mode difficulty challenges. BUT, there are also a ton of little story beats that come with many of those things too.
What I wish games would do is follow the Horizon Zero Dawn approach. Have a base set of trophies that are attainable to the masses for the Platinum... and have a separate set for the 100% difficulty completionists in the form of a NG+ list. I'll forever have 90% on those games, but I still have my Platinum that I feel represents a good 100% marker.
I felt the same about Persona 5 Royal's platinum trophy.
It's reasonable and perfectly attainable in a single playthrough (the only complication being knowing how to trigger the third semester).
Contrasted with the Thieves Den's completion list, which is a nightmare for non-hardcore completionists that requires a guide and at least two min-maxed playthroughs. I'm glad it's there for them, but no player should ever feel forced into the challenge and tedium involved.
Blue Reflection Tie was the easily one of the most fun RPGs I've ever played. The music as well is still to this day in my top 3 of all time.
I’m totally the same way. The main goal is “see the credits” then I usually make a short list to-do list of what I’m still interested in, + usually only finish half of that
Theres nothing more fullfilling then knowing you have done everything a RPG has to offer, gameplay, progression and content are the three most important elements of any RPG imo
I feel the same with you bro. I almost never really feel the need to really get everything in a Jrpg. I tried getting multiple endings in Shin Megami Tensei 4 & Good lord. Maybe it's because i'm older now but my patience to sit through hours of gameplay & either recapturing new demons and raising them to be viable or spending a fortune of ingame funds to re-buy my endgame demons. However theres not enough flow of income until the endgame so I have to redo the entire game legit and grind everything all over again. Good lord, I was so exhausted after completing it the first time that the thought of grinding again multiple times just made me give up. Lol, I just went online to watch the other 4 endings that were about 1-3 minutes each & good lord. It wasn't even really captivating. SMT4 had fun combat and dungeon exploration, but jeez speedrunning it is so boring. Just felt like I was grinding a game to change the ending credits to 1 of 5 variable colors. Just felt so underwhelmingly tedious when trying to do a full 100% run of a Jrpg.
I can't say the same for other games though. Like Devil may cry, Musashi, Megaman X, Dynasty Warriors & Games of that nature. I suppose those games didn't require me to start over from scratch for a new playthrough so there's that too. The 100% of these games just offered content that enhanced or changed current playthrough unlike jrpgs that simply changed a cutscene or a few words to give you a Stanley Kubrick type of vibe that costs for about over 4x the time you completed it the first time. Just so underwhelming. Just as exactly as you said. 10 seconds of high, then you realize you could have played or didcovered 2-3 other amazing rpgs in that time. Smh
I am with you on this one, and I am somewhat of a completionist. But not to get a platinum, but I like to experience all the content/story the game has to offer. Like doing all the secret stuff, completing all the quests, and seeing the story/character development the game has to offer. For this reason, I despise RPG games with multiple endings and choices/romantic options that hide character development behind it. This is one of the reasons I won't ever play Persona games, a lot of tactical RPGS like to force this crap on you and Nier games are the bane of my existence. I don't want to play a game multiple times ever, these are not short games, and to make people play them multiple times to see all they have to offer is sadistic. I hate the excuse of "oh, I just played through it once and then look up what I missed online" not because it's a bad idea but if 90% of the people do that then what is the fricken point of making people deal with this nonsense in the first place. Not to mention in most games, the multiple endings/choices etc. are actually detrimental to the game's over all story. Most games just put this stuff in because some popular game did it, or to add padding to the game. This is the one hill I would die on when arguing what's good for JRPGs.
I like watching people go over how they 100% some games and the detail they go into is fascinating. I could never do it but respect for those that want to get everything.
This is definitely a very grounded approach. I’ve avoided so many JRPGs or just not had fun with them while attempting to follow a detailed guide of missables.
I will say that while a story can get me going to the canonical ending, if the gameplay is solid and there’s a challenge there, then I will keep playing. Using your Kingdom Hearts example, I actually found that beating the game without changing equipment very interesting. I set it to the easiest difficulty along with attempting the speed run trophy and it was harder then expected. I also just love KH’s combat, so I could just infinitely keep playing without a story and be very content. And then all those secret bosses. The worst trophies are just the ones that are combat mini games where you are forced to lookup a guide on how to optimally complete the challenge. Maybe a better player would sit there and actually figure that all out on their own, but I’m not going to spend time doing that if there’s already an intended way to do the challenge that people know.
Effectively forcing people to play with a guide is the worst. Challenges should be easily repeatable any time and something that you can work toward mastering. Stamina based challenges are just boring.
Anyway, thank you for this video! I might seriously try to pick up more JRPGs again and not go for the platinum. I had started my run through of the Megaman Battle Network Legacy collection last year and got burned out trying to go for 100% on just the first game alone. The games are amazingly fun, but the 100% process is just tedious. I wish developers would just stop putting in tedious tasks that they know some poor chump is going to do just because they added it in.
i'm trying to adopt a stance more like yours! my main goal is to experience as many cool stories as possible and have as much fun with them as i can without losing energy. i use backloggery to keep track of my games and reviews of them, but i think the distinction between "beat" and "completed" made me feel a little pressured to complete as many games as possible (especially because when your stuff is completed on that site, there's big shiny letters that make my monke brain happy). maybe ill just change my personal standards for those terms a bit - beat is just credits and done, completed is doing as much extra as i think is worthwhile and fun to do :]
I'm with you mostly. I never cared about trophies/achievements but recently I started to like getting them for some of my favourite games but only if they didn't take too long or became a chore. I did it for FFVII Remake, I just had to!! but with Rebirth...man I can not be bothered especially when it comes to mini games that I can not be bothered with or don't enjoy. Like you say "when the fun stops, stop!"
I have to admit though it's hard to stop when it's a game you really love! I did have a mental battle with stopping on Rebirth BUT it got to the point where I was about to turn my amazing joruyey into a dread by the end so I stopped :)
Plus I am sooooo far behind in my jrpg games because of doing too much in my games lol. I get addicted to MMORPGS or Survival Crafting games where I can build my own bases. Trying not to at the moment because I want to play so many more games and I am not getting any younger haha.
I've still got all the Trails games to play, those alone are going to take me a long time!!
Great points here! And totally get it!
Never been a completionist myself and I'll never be haha. As someone who has limited time with life/work etc it just suits me more not to be. Plus sometimes I feel if I were a completionist I could actually ruin the game for myself, I don't want an awesome game to be tainted by me just having a wee rager Tae ma self cause I Cannae beat something like find 50 badgers for Jimmy in Kupo Town. Hahaha!
Definitely! I know that I would end up hating a few of the games I've played if I went for completion.
I agree with this and i rarely do bonus tasks in RPGs which aren't story related myself. I play games, especially RPG to beat them, to see whole story and go to the next one. Life is too short and games are too many to spent extra hours, sometimes dozens of hours, on mundane tasks to get this 100% completion in one game.
I agree with half of your reasons. I agree with that the story is a important aspect of what you will enjoy the game most. But to me if the feature of the said game is a interesting one and it had a achivement i will finished it, even when sometimes you must be grinding or fight the same enemy over and over again.
When it became so boring, i will play other game and finished it again after playing that other game.
I enjoy playing game that way, sometimes even double amount of time average people play said game 😅. When it's finished i really feel the statisfaction from finished and unlocking all the feature of said game. 😁😁
When I was younger I wanted to complete games as in experience everything the game had to offer. I did consider myself a completionist even.
Then trophies/achievements became a thing and ruined that. All achievements was the obvious bar for completion, but many of them were so dumb and time consuming I would never do them.
So then completion to me became somewhere between doing all the real content and just rolling credits. How much I do varies game to game.
I rarely even finish the main story of most games 😅 I stop when it drags on or when I feel like there is no enjoyment anymore
I was never a completionist but my brother was and he gave up back in 2014.
I cant be a completionist in any game and being a completionist in jrpgs is far far far harder then other games
I 100% agree. One, story is most important for me. Two, I'm doing the things I find fun within a gamw. Some games, that is just a little bit of the side stuff. For a game like Rebirth it was all of it first time through the narrative sans a hard mode run. Which I'll do when I feel the need to revisit the story.
Before I even fully dive into the video I can already agree with this. For me, I don't complete any game unless it's set up like that, and most of those are 1 and done for me anyway. I don't complete games because I like to enjoy my time thoroughly with games and it helps if there's replay value. Luckily JRPG's, most of them almost always have replay value, especially when it comes to customizing and allowing me to build however I want to build.
Onward to the video now.
I agree. I dont really look at achievements and stuff because they're usually just more grind, or simply unreasonable. But I like playing jrpg games beyond the main ending. If I really love them, I'll play it twice. But depend on the game, I'm more combat/gameplay focused. The reason I play Monster Hunter, GBF Relink and PSO2 so much
for the most part i agree with you, once i see the credits roll the game is done and so on to the next but there are some exception if ive enjoyed the World, Characters, Lore, Etc (FF16, FF7R) i find myself looking though the trophies to find an excuse to spend more time with the Characters and world.
I need to take this approach with more games. I always end up looking up the trophies before I even play to decide if I want to even spend the time with a game. Some games I definitely have fun getting to 100%, but those are more arcadey type games where the point of the game is to play it again and again. I can't be doing it with rpgs that take hundreds of hours to complete
I've only ever "completed" one game and that one was more of a side-effect of trying to unlock all the units in SD Gundam G-Generation Cross Rays. (The DLCs didn't add trophies and I haven't finished all of those challenges because I've never been a fan of sticking my junk in a wood chipper, the difficulty does not scale well in that game. At all.)
That said I do sometimes chase specific trophies, not for completion, but because I enjoy a game a lot and don't want to be done with it even if I've already completed the story.
I agree with you. Almost every time I have tried to replay an RPG to get a different ending, I end up bored and leave halfway through.
And that has led me to always learn beforehand if a game has a true ending and the requirements for it (thanks to all the people out there capable of telling the requirements without spoiling the story!).
Of course, I get very annoyed by games whose true ending can only be obtained in a new game plus
Agreed with your top reason…..we play for the story. I dont need to do every hidden thing to get a 2min side cut that I can watch on YT
I'm pretty sure the only JRPGs where I went out of my way to beat all sidequests and extra activities were the Trails games. Short quests, fun/interesting/emotional little side stories, not that hard at all, valid rewards. In pretty much all other games, I just stack a bunch of sidequests and grab the rewards of the ones I just happen to complete by chance while going through the main journey. Minigames are smth I play once, just to see how it is, and then usually forget about then right after (except for Trails again, with Vantage Masters, cuz its genuinely fun, and Pom Pom Party, which I revile and despise, but has decent rewards and fun interactions with the characters). Other then that, the only extra content I always go for in most JRPGs are superbosses, because I do enjoy the challenge (Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep excluded, screw Mysterious Figure)
Honestly I've never completed even my very favorite JRPGs. I play them to have fun, not to force myself to do every single thing.
I adore Persona 3, but I'm not gonna replay it just to follow a strict schedule to max every social link. I'm not gonna keep playing my favorite Tales game, Tales of Berseria, after beating the game just because I still haven't gotten some of the RNG ship minigame items.
I've always been someone who just plays as much of a game as I enjoy. If I wanna play more after finishing the game then I will, but if I feel done with the game when the credits roll then I'm done with it.
Also the mention of specifically pulling a Jinzo from a Pharaoh's Servant pack hoooo boy I felt that one right in my nostalgia.
I approach games with this mindset but with simpler rules. If it's easy enough/not much of a grind, I'm getting all the achievements at least (which doesn't always equates to in game 100%) + if I like the game enough. Otherwise I'm just enjoying the bits I can enjoy. Example with Dishonored 1 which has all those grindy dlc, well I'm skipping them. The sequel though? (2 and Death of the Outsider) getting all the achievements actually makes me like and appreciate the game so much more.
I would argue that a lot of JRPGs don't feel like they take that much longer to 100% (trophy-/achievement-wise) than they do to reach story end compared to other games. I haven't actually played as many as I'd like to though, so I'm mainly talking about Gust games. And Ys.
I try to 100% everything I play, but I put off playing games that require meticulously following a guide the whole way. I do sometimes reach points in the completion process that make me say "yeah, I'm not doing that", examples being collecting all the objects in Katamari and the smithing trophies in Ishin Kiwami.
The koi koi stuff in Sakura Wars isn't too bad if you've sustained sufficient brain damage through completing RGG games, which include koi koi. They also involve playing through the game on the hardest difficulty, which I think is fun in NG+. It usually takes 5 hours tops to get through while skipping cutscenes and side content, knowing you've seen it all. All that's left is a mostly mild-difficulty combat challenge.
Exept for some very few games I am exactly the same. I even go so far to play on the easiest difficulty because I don't see the point in challenging myself just to experience a (hopefully) awesome story :)
“Shulk with a realistic hand isn’t real, he can’t hurt you.”
Shulk with a realistic hand:
Agree totally. I play until I'm satisfied or i get tired. I got 70 hours i think im Xenoblade 1, i didn't even rebuilt the colony nor did human side quest.
In Dragon quest XI, I'm halfway act 3 since a looooong time ago, and I'm satisfied, maybe I'll finish it someday, or not, still happy with how much i played.
This video is really hitting hard in light of FFVII Rebirth being released recently. Yes, in that game, a lot of what Rebirth has in content feels tacked on and made ridiculously hard for the sake of being ridiculously hard. The minigames, the post-game content with superbosses, it all very quickly loses the ability to spark joy. Throughout it all, there's a subtle kind of pressure for players to complete everything. Which is why my blood pressure went up quite a few times as I went through the frustrating parts. The Trails series on the other hand, that same pressure is quite tame in comparison.
Great video. At the same time, it must be very hard to be a JRPG completionist, having a full-time job and making UA-cam content. For me, I rarely 100% a game, I'm more of a 80%-85% completionist.
Even if I only did YT, I heavily doubt I would ever be a completionist anyway.
If I get ending credits good enough for me. I have backlog to tackle. If I want to revisit later if I wish
I have higher chance of doing everything if it interesting tho. Like additional side story not like finishing xenoblade 100s of fetch quests. I also look into time/enjoyment vs reward too.
I like getting platinum in a game, but only games I really love, so there's lots of games I've played where I didn't do everything because I merely enjoyed the game but didn't love it, I enjoy doing that.
But I think its totally fine that you just do the main story and then peace out, we're all different and we shouldn't feel any pressure to do something in a game that we don't enjoy.
Come on bro, complete the game bro, dont let us down bro 😂 i personally enjoy 100% my jrpgs like trails and ys and any game i enjoy (which is majority of them since i only buy games i enjoy lol).
There are only a few games in general that I really really wanna savor the experience; dig deep into the story and everything in it. For most games though, I just want the story. I switch to easy mode, or “story” mode. And beat it in waaaay less time the average player.
Definitely the opposite of me in games! Although, if I have completed 100%, I usually won't play it again.
I very rarely complete a JRPG due to the grinding or multiple playthroughs required. I'm usually good to go after a single playthrough (FE 3 houses being a notable exception). But I'm torn with SMT 5. I originally bought it on switch upon release, but due to gameplay issues, and the hardware, I decided to stop playing after 10ish hours, just deciding to wait for an eventual "Definitive" version on a different console... but I didn't expect a completely new route that itself is 70 hours.
Even though I like to explore my games and see a good amount of their content, I don't often go out of my way to be a full 100% completionist myself, not just rpgs but other genres as well. For example I'm willing to do all the substories and take on the superbosses in Yakuza games, but I'm fine with skipping out on the likes of mahjong and koi-koi.
I always try to do everything, as long as it seems (somewhat) reasonnable. For me, it's mostly a great excuse to stick to a game that I like, really.
I like your last point about a "personal 100%". In most cases i don't like either story% or 100% as my "spec" for a JRPG or JRPG-adjacent game. In FFX for example, I've never beaten Penance, and I never played a version that even had the dark aeons implemented, but I still don't think I would have really sunk my teeth into what that game had to offer without getting all the aeons and at least most of the ultimate weapons. The earlier stages of the monster arena are a nice proving ground for those skills, but actually getting through to beating Penance is so much more than just digging into the earlier part of the harder-than-the-story content.
Commonly I like my target for a game with good writing to be doing all the tasks that have solid writing attached or can be reasonably expected to be so...but an interesting scene gated by a bunch of uninteresting content is still not exciting to me. I can just watch the scene online instead. (Looking at you, Cold Steel 2...) This is another frustrating thing about Xenoblade 1, there is a lot of interesting writing, much of which is scattered around rather than easily compiled into a YT video, gated behind the grindfest quests.
Your Tales of Arise segment at the end brought out a related thought I have had before when playing some of the recent Tales games. Some of these games (Arise especially) really feel like their late story stages were designed to be a springboard for their postgame, rather than to be good in their own right. That kind of feeling really burns me out fast, to the point that I rarely even set foot in the postgame dungeon of a Tales game anymore.
i don't aim at the platinum trophy for every single game i play, but for games i really like, i strive to achieve it because i think they are the ones that deserve more of my time
for example, i played Valkyrie Elysium, somewhat liked it but not to the point of wanting to complete it at 100%
the Trails games, though, i always get the platinum trophy when it comes to them, i sincerely like playing a game i loved more "arcade-ly" to do everything as soon and efficiently as possible
when first playing CS1 and 2 i even wrote down everything i needed to do in every single day to get everything and eventually achieve the platinum trophy, even unnecessary things like getting all weapons for every character and so on
Some games just aren't worth 100% completing and many JRPGs are just that. Not worth it. You just end up disliking the experience because it becomes a time sync. If I have to play a game on a walkthrough just to get a platinum what's the point? Plus playing a game multiple times for the purpose of going through mundane requirements is more of a chore then it is any fun.
I only like to do one quick playthrough because I want to play as many games as possible. We only have so much time in life!
My approach to any game isn't about "Should I complete it?". It's "Is it worth completing it?", like what exactly leads to completion? Is it just some dumb side thing that ticks a mark or is it a full additional worthwhile content? Alot of older games tend to add random side options, such as the old FFs where random things are locked behind odd situations or decisions, that following a guide for completion is mandatory. Meanwhile KH2 added full new bosses in the data memory segments that felt worth it.
Exactly - a lot of the stuff tied to 'completion' has no value at all.
I'm of the same opinion. I play the games and i do try to complete as many sidequest as i can, but the retrieval quests annoy me to no end.
And generally, i skip the mini games, i don't like them, even when they are necessary for the story. FF7 Rebirth, for example, i got sick of all the mini games it has (even to collect fungi)
I'll only platinum or 100% if the game is fun enough post-story for me to do so and if I genuinely enjoy the game enough to do it. Otherwise, it's on to the next journey :)
I only do completion runs on my favorite JRGs. FFIX, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 and Persona 4 and 5 are all games I've played multiple times and have done completion runs in once each. Heck, I've beaten FFIX on every platform it's come out on just because it's my favorite game.
blue refelction 2017, blue reflection tie/second light are ez platinum triophies. but yes, i also am not a completionist. despite loving soulsborne, i only got the plat for Bloodborne TOHE.
I don't go for 100% of one unless I really love the game. Like I'm going for the platinum for ff7 rebirth cause that game is incredible. Did the same with remake too and will probably do it for part 3 also. Really loving Unicorn Overlord so might go for that one. Most JRPGs are just too long to bother with it
A long time ago I used to do my best to 100% games I got, but as time has gone on I have come to not go for 100% unless I have come to very much enjoy the game or its platinum isn't too taxing. Xenoblade I do go for 100% because I enjoy the games, and I do go for all the side quests (unless the quests are horrible) and superbosses if I am in tune with the system and it doesn't require dozens of hours of grinding. Final Fantasy X is a very good example. I was content beating Omega weapon but the stuff you have to do just to have the stats to fight the super superbosses was way too much and I got bored. For the platinum, if the game requires beating the game on NG+ or on some uber hard mode I don't go for them as I would prefer to enjoy my time instead of having to grind.
I tend to 90% or so complete most JRPGs. I like to get the entire storyline and all the side story bits for characters, but I can't be bothered for the multi-hour grinds or the frustrating challenges.
I remember when I played Persona 3, I got all but one arcana maxed out, since the requirement to max everything on first playthrough was super strict. And I decided that was okay, because replaying an entire long game like that just for maybe 10 minutes of sidestory cutscene that doesn't affect the main plot is just... not worth it for me.
I usually enjoy going for the 100%, but as time passes and I grow ever older, I find myself agreeing to this. Like for example, the point of a lot of tasks being superfluous or boring, I couldn't agree more. Considering the most recent JRPG that I've finished - being Hajimari/Trails into Reverie, I have clocked a little over 200 hours on my 100% playthrough, and I have to say that the end bits were getting very tedious and I felt myself getting burnt out from the game.
It's a bit ironic that when the game finally decides to give you that "sandbox" to play with everything you can/want, you start longing for an end. Ultimately I suppose it's because as you said, once a person has seen everything the game has to offer, any extra content is just more of the same with an extra difficulty to it. Without any extra twist, it's simply not interesting anymore.
Personally for me, the main reason I ever 100% games at all is probably for the sake of self-satisfaction, so that I can say "I've done it, I've beaten everything there is in the game and I have seen everything!". Somehow just having that in mind really helps me get a peace of mind and make me feel like I can move on, that I've gotten all the enjoyment I possibly could've gotten from a favorite game. Needless to say, if I don't vibe the game to begin with, I will definitely not bother finishing it fully either.
All that being said, I do think I should adapt your mindset a bit more, because at the end of the day, you are right that the most this is going to give me is that dopamine hit for about 10 seconds at the end, and after that it's just bragging rights, but who's gonna care? Being able to save the time invested into 100% one game could be better used elsewhere, and I think that the older you get, the more you start valuing time as well. Being more economic with one's time and minding where is it going is definitely a good thing.
Overally, I've enjoyed the vid and your take on the topic. I like that you mention the games to which you can relate the issues, so it's more simple to realize the shortcomings of certain titles.
I learnt that I am not a Completionist the hard way. Got Xenoblade Chronicles 3D on the DS, said DS bricked itself when I was struggling at the midpoint of the game so I just gave up on finishing it. Definitive came out and I got it immediately. "This time," I said to myself. "I would do it 'right'." Said 'right' ended up being 373 of the games 480 quests. 31 of which were directly tied to the main story, the rest absolutely weren't. I never finished Future Connected because I was that burnt out on the game by this point, a real sticking point to me as I equally never finished Torna or even started Future Redeemed which make up a series of choices I hope to rectify eventually. But I won't be losing sleep over a missing achievement or two again after all of that fuss.
The only JRPG in recent memory I've played more than once was Atelier Rorona, and that was with one playthrough years ago plus two last week. With the latter being only because I was THAT engaged with the game at the time. Lost sleep by playing it into the night, thankfully on the weekend, but still. I loved it start to finish, and got all but two of the core endings. Without even touching Overtime too. Called it a day by that point, and I will forever be happy with that.
This is 100% me i play for the story and do mimimal side content. I can 1 quest or all of them. I will do them till i stop having fun. I even do the crazy things and drop games after 50 hours or so if i stop having any fun before getting to the end.
I still haven't unlock those bikinis in Xenoblade Chronicle 2. Already forgot all the game mechanics. Ys game are the most fun to complete. Combat mechanic are simple, quick and direct. It has that arcade feel to it. No mechanic system on top of another, then another and another. Even after a long hiatus you remember how to play.
I'll do a bit more if enjoying it but don't really bother ,last rpg I got 100% was ffviii..
This is why I created three PSN accounts - one for games I will get 100% trophies on, one for games I will get the platinum in but not complete, and the third for games I will never platinum because some of the trophies are just not fun for me.
I usually do side content in games and years later I might replay them If I loved them so much, but I dont usually 100% them because it is usually tedious, if it is tedious then I am not gonna do it
Koi koi is really simple, love it in yakuza too
I agree with the comments in this video. For me, it's a case of do I gnaw the scraps of chicken from this 99.9% eaten drumstick, or do I pick up a fresh drumstick and sink my teeth into that. No competition really. Rarely does a JRPG offer anything worthwhile after you've finished the main story.
The one big main reason why i rarely complete the game 100% is time. I just don't have the time to try 100% it, sometime it is just take too long to do and and there is other game from backlog that I want to play. I will try to do every sidequest I can but will skip the quest that require lot of time.