How long is the game for a casual playthrough?

[「Choobs」]

Debating picking this up. Never played it back in the day, wondering what the completion time is if I just go through the game without dumping time into grindy sidequests.

Mainly concerned with X but X2 estimates are also welcome.

[ehs03y3ol]

Ehhh... if you expect this game to have many sidequests... this game is linear as a rule... It has 0 exploration. The casual any% of Final Fantasy X is about 50 hours.

I don't remember how much X2 will take, but it's not so long either...

[Fyk0]

X-2 main story is short and the game split into chapters and each chapter has optional point of interest in different zones. If you do the bare minimum I think you can finish it like in 20 hours without speed running, maybe even less. Exploring each zone in every chapter (without trying to max every minigame) pushes it closer to FFX, which I recommend to do on first casual run top get the most out of it. And 100% run is a nightmare, requires multiple playthroughs and has extremely easily missable things, essentially requires you to play with guide open.

[「Choobs」]

Publicado originalmente por ehs03y3ol:

Ehhh... if you expect this game to have many sidequests... this game is linear as a rule... It has 0 exploration. The casual any% of Final Fantasy X is about 50 hours.

I don't remember how much X2 will take, but it's not so long either...

Ok thanks, I just heard that some stuff like the monster arena can take dozens of hours on its own, but def not gonna bother.

[Casurin]

For a casual playthrough i would put X at ~40-50 hours, superbosses without a guide ~150h. MonsterArena will take some time of that - it is a simple arena where you can fight monsters you have caught and special monsters - it gives the items needed to further increase the stats to be able to beat superbosses.

X-2 more like ~30h.

[Hinnyuu]

Publicado originalmente por Casurin:

X-2 more like ~30h.

X-2 is difficult to give an estimate for, because one of the game's mechanics is completion %, which is probably something relevant even to casual players - since a lot of it is neat scenes and story bits, rather than combat-based stuff.

If you just ignore everything and rush the story at its bare minimum... sure, you can finish pretty quick. But in a game like this that's kind of not really what I'd call a "casual" playthrough - in fact it's more the opposite, where the NON-casuals would rush for speedrunning, while the casuals would explore every Chapter and every zone and see all the characters and their storylines to completion.

So I guess it's the inverse of X, in a way, where rushing through gives you the story (since there's very little story stuff you can skip) and all the optional stuff is combat; whereas in X-2 a lot of the optional stuff is, in fact, story and not combat (though this version does come with the Creature Creator that has lots of combat, that does not actually factor into the completion %).

[GrimoireA]

Publicado originalmente por Fyk0:

X-2 main story is short and the game split into chapters and each chapter has optional point of interest in different zones. If you do the bare minimum I think you can finish it like in 20 hours without speed running, maybe even less. Exploring each zone in every chapter (without trying to max every minigame) pushes it closer to FFX, which I recommend to do on first casual run top get the most out of it. And 100% run is a nightmare, requires multiple playthroughs and has extremely easily missable things, essentially requires you to play with guide open.

Just want to clear something up here: You only need one play through for a 100% run but it is EXTREMELY frustrating due to so many little things counting towards your percentage rate. If you miss 100% you can new game+ to get the remaining missing % but even that may be too much in one go. A guide to give you 100% on a first play through means you'll have experienced the entire game, though to be fair the 100% is just a achievement and nothing more, you can get the true ending with a little less.

[Casurin]

Publicado originalmente por GrimoireA:

Publicado originalmente por Fyk0:

X-2 main story is short and the game split into chapters and each chapter has optional point of interest in different zones. If you do the bare minimum I think you can finish it like in 20 hours without speed running, maybe even less. Exploring each zone in every chapter (without trying to max every minigame) pushes it closer to FFX, which I recommend to do on first casual run top get the most out of it. And 100% run is a nightmare, requires multiple playthroughs and has extremely easily missable things, essentially requires you to play with guide open.

Just want to clear something up here: You only need one play through for a 100% run but it is EXTREMELY frustrating due to so many little things counting towards your percentage rate. If you miss 100% you can new game+ to get the remaining missing % but even that may be too much in one go. A guide to give you 100% on a first play through means you'll have experienced the entire game, though to be fair the 100% is just a achievement and nothing more, you can get the true ending with a little less.

And i would HIGHLY advise against that: It takes away all the fun that you normally get from playing a new game.
the game is designed around you playing through the story MULTIPLE times as there are sections where you can decide on how to progress. It was never intended to even be possible to do 100% in a single run but by random chance it just so happens to be barely possible when you follow literally hundreds of steps exactly and dont make a single mistake.

After finishing the story you can do newGame+ and keep your items for the next playthrough.

[Hinnyuu]

Publicado originalmente por Casurin:

It was never intended to even be possible to do 100% in a single run but by random chance it just so happens to be barely possible when you follow literally hundreds of steps exactly and dont make a single mistake.

Do you have a source for that?

Because it would seem VERY convenient indeed that a perfect playthrough with zero mistakes lands you on EXACTLY 100.00% purely by coincidence rather than by design ;)

[Casurin]

Publicado originalmente por Hinnyuu:

Do you have a source for that?

Because it would seem VERY convenient indeed that a perfect playthrough with zero mistakes lands you on EXACTLY 100.00% purely by coincidence rather than by design ;)

I am pretty sure you can get over 100% in a single run - there are multiple guids that do not do the same thing. Also it was not known for some time that 100% in a single run would even be possible.
And the game and marketing were centered around the choices and multiple playthroughs. I would be rather surprised if anybody could show any evidence that would even hint at 100% in a single run having ever been intended to be possible.

[Teratus]

Depends what you mean by casual..
For me I like going slow, completing side content, farming a bit to train my characters up etc.

I can easily take a good 50-70 hours to do a full playthough casually in most RPG's like this.
So I'd say a good average is 40-60 hours for a casual run.

[「Choobs」]

Publicado originalmente por Teratus:

Depends what you mean by casual..
For me I like going slow, completing side content, farming a bit to train my characters up etc.

I can easily take a good 50-70 hours to do a full playthough casually in most RPG's like this.
So I'd say a good average is 40-60 hours for a casual run.

Really I just mean a blind run with minimal grinding. Seems the consensus is around 50 hours.

[Hinnyuu]

Publicado originalmente por Casurin:

I am pretty sure you can get over 100% in a single run

You cannot, unless you count specific bugs with the Creature Creator that may on occasion award completion % that was already awarded previously (though that may be NG+ only, I can't remember). Which in any event of course only works for this version or the International, not the original release.

Discounting these bugs, you can get exactly a maximum of 100.00% in a single playthrough (which is precisely why you can't make a mistake, as ANYTHING you miss leaves you short).

Counting multiple playthroughs with NG+ you can get well over 100%, quite easily.

Publicado originalmente por Casurin:

Also it was not known for some time that 100% in a single run would even be possible.

That depends on what you mean by "some time". It was found out very soon after release, like as soon as people started investigating how things work etc. It's not as if this somehow remained a mystery for months or years - it did not.

Publicado originalmente por Casurin:

And the game and marketing were centered around the choices and multiple playthroughs. I would be rather surprised if anybody could show any evidence that would even hint at 100% in a single run having ever been intended to be possible.

That's not how it works.

The first assumption in design is intent. If you want to show something WASN'T intended, that's on you; the base assumption always has to be that it's there because they want it to be there.

And as I said: it's a BIG stretch to just assume the fact that it's EXACTLY 100.00% no more no less is coincidence rather than deliberate. That seems like a very extraordinary claim - which would require equally extraordinary evidence.

[Teratus]

Publicado originalmente por 「Choobs」:

Really I just mean a blind run with minimal grinding. Seems the consensus is around 50 hours.

Somewhere around that seems a good estimate. :)
If you're looking for a game to drop that kind of time in then it's a good choice.

Hell you got 10 part 2 adding onto it as well, that'll easily add another 30ish hours give or take.

[Hinnyuu]

I should also say, X-2 is one of the only games where I recommend to new players that they do it WITH a guide if all you're interested in is one casual playthrough. Because so much of the % mechanic is about story bits and details, most casual players will benefit more from seeing it all than they would from the mystery of exploration - because a lot of it is just sequencing and meticulousness, which aren't necessarily what many casual players are in for.

That being said, YMMV - always do what YOU enjoy most.

[Casurin]

Publicado originalmente por Hinnyuu:

The first assumption in design is intent. If you want to show something WASN'T intended, that's on you

Ok - let me turn that around: If you want to say it was not intended to take multiple playthroughs than it is up to you to show that the main-feature of the game was and unintended happenstance.