A lot of RPGs from the western and eastern sides of the game industry tend to be very long. It’s become something of an expectation for arole-playing game to be stuffed full of activitiesthat allow players to fully immerse themselves in a game’s world. Relax, spend time with the characters, and grind so many side quests that the main story becomes trivial. It’s a tradition as old as the genre, and none uphold it more than thePersonaandThe Elder Scrollsfranchises.
It does not take much knowledge about either of these series to know that picking up any one ofthese long RPG entrieswill result in a time sink one won’t be free of for quite some time. Every full game covered by these two camps takes at least 30-40 hours to beat on a very focused playthrough, and players will typically take much longer than that if they take their time and/or enjoy what they’re doing. However, a question some are curious of between this pair of related-yet-different franchises is: on average, how long does it take to beat each one? The time-tracking website How Long To Beat holds some answers.
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The Persona Series
ThePersonaseries consists primarily of linear, story-heavy turn-based RPGs, where a player’s time is split between their normal life and spelunking through monster-infested dungeons. These games, and even some of their spin-offs, are full of cutscenes, side activities, and multiple treks through dungeons that extend the length of average playthroughs enormously. The fighting game and rhythm game spinoffs are certainly shorter, but these hour counts are just for their primary singleplayer campaigns, not including the multitude of side activities and difficulty options they include. Their average lengths are as follows:
Playing through all ofPersona, even if it’s limited to the most upgraded versions of the main games, would take a massive amount of time. CountingthePersona 2duology as one continuous game, that means that every mainPersonagame since thePersona2duology has the potential for a playthrough to last over 100 hours. With spin-offs included, thePersonafranchise is scraping up against seven hundred hours of playtime. That is quite the huge tally of playtime, especially for largely linear games, as there’s a ton of content which can easily be missed on first playthrough of olderPersonagames without a guide.
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The Elder Scrolls Series
TheElder Scrollsfranchise is comparatively a lot more compact and straightforward, assuming players stick to the main quest. There are five main games, some with DLC or expansions,The Elder Scrolls OnlineMMO, and the mobile card gameThe Elder Scrolls: Legends. LikePersona’s fighting and rhythm games, the times forOnlineandLegendswill vary wildly based on player engagement. However, unlikePersona, the same can be said for the main games as well. Their average lengths are as follows:
Once again, these games get quite lengthy after their first main entry. However, it bears mentioning that How Long To Beat lists the main story for everyElder Scrollsgame (save forLegends) as between twenty and forty-five hours long. This owes to theElder Scrollsgames being freeform and in no rush to have players progress through the main plot.Skyrimeven had a miniature expansion dedicated to giving playersthe chance to build their own house.
As these games are not eternally marching forward, they can potentially be explored for far more time than thePersonaseries — or far less. Regardless, players who take their time in every entry and then dive intoThe Elder Scrolls Onlinecould spend well over six hundred hours with the franchise, a number that’s nothing to sneeze at.
Comparing the Two
From looking at these statistics, it appears that beating the main story, and only the main story, of any given mainlinePersonagame takes at least twice as long as itsElder Scrollscounterpart.Personagames are, by nature, story-driven RPGs where players must live out a chunk of their protagonists’ everyday lives, making successive dungeon forays along the way.
Meanwhile,The Elder Scrollsgames are much more open in what they allow players to do, meaning that a player who wants to clear the main story of one and little else can do just that with minimal resistance. However, a player who gets thoroughlysucked into the world ofElder Scrollscan potentially spend as long, or even longer than in aPersonagame. The sheer volume of side quests, side dungeons, loot, NPCs, enemies, and the massive world itself can keep players coming back for more.
When it comes to choosing a series to play based on a certain length, there’s no clear winner.Elder Scrollsgames can technically be completed inless than half the time of theirPersonacounterparts, but that would involve skipping so much content that the experience is hardly worth it. On the other end of the spectrum, beating aPersonagame is a long, satisfying experience — but anElder Scrollsgame can last much longer, as those games only end when the player decides they do.
Which one a player selects is up to personal preference, as they will take 50+ hours per main game no matter which series is chosen. It’s rather surprising that these series have comparable hour counts at all, given their extremely dissimilar approaches to story progression. At least franchises that long are still able to serve good content for most of their runs.
