What Game Took You the Longest to Finish?

[Arnoxthe1]

Ninja Gaiden 2 took me two years to complete, not because I got bored with it and put it down but simply because it was so frustratingly difficult that I repeatedly had to stop playing it to stop myself from going insane and putting a hole through my TV.

Good god I loved the hell out of it though. I still can think of no better example of how to learn patience. I played through the last section of the game in one night, all the way through from the top of the mountain to the final boss battle because I had reached a zen level of acceptance of fucking up every few minutes.

I KNOW RIGHT!!??

In the end, I finally just stopped playing it and vowed to never play it again. I loved the core combat system and the weapons but they really screwed up with some of the enemies and bosses. Most notable the Incendiary Shruiken Ninja, Even Tomonobu Itagaki said that the balance in the game needed to be seriously worked on.

I've gone back to Ninja Gaiden Black, and although it in and of itself is an awesome and massively replayable and balanced game, it still doesn't have the super fluid and fast core combat of NG2.

 

[fenrizz]

World of Warcraft: Over 1500 hours spread over 2 of my characters, hell even my bank alt had hours with 2 digits in the end.
Glad I jumeped ship on that game!

Second place is probarbly Fallout3: New Vegas with around 150 hours.

 

[Brownie80]

Currently it's GTA IV. I never beat the campaign in that game, so I'm doing it now and HOLY FUCK END ALREADY. I had the same problem with GTA V in that it overstayed its welcome. Just end it sooner, please. RDR was like 16 or so hours for me, and that wasn't too long. Obviously I get more distracted in GTA and murder people along the way, but they should really make the campaigns shorter. Most people don't finish them anyways, so focus on more mission variety.

I believe GTA IV has 98 missions. GTA V only has 69 missions. However I read GTA:SA has 104 missions so there's that.

OT:
I believe it took me about 2 weeks to finish AC II. I never thought that game would end.

 

[go-10]

for me it's probably Final Fantasy X, I felt I needed to max everyone's sphere grid before beating the game. So it took me a LONG time to finish it. The last number I remember talking about with my friends at school was 612 hours

 

[Imper1um]

MGS4. Seriously, that game... I must of had 65 hours of play time. One night, It looked like I was in the final stretch on Disk 4 (the final disk) at about 8pm. I think about it, and nod, and decide that I could probably finish MGS4 tonight. I mean, most of the stuff is tied up, how could the game extend beyond 2-3 hours?

I left the room at 8am.

--------
As for total time played:

Oblivion: Save 1: 1,320 hours. Save 2: 455 hours. Save 3: 120 hours.
Skyrim: Save 1: 855 hours. Save 2: 455 hours. Save 3: 200 hours. Save 4: 85 hours.
(Note: both games also count when I 'rubberbanded' for skill increases)
World of Warcraft: Approximately 185 days of play time over 8 characters. Left right after Ulduar.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: 195 days of play time over 12 characters. Left in February.

 

[putowtin]

I've got a Fallout: New Vegas save at roughly the 220hr point
A Dragon Age Origins at roughly 48 hours (keep walking around hoping to find the "Superman" rock)
Oh and a Skyrim save at 199hrs... need to get back into that!

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

At this point, I think Dark Souls at around 60 hours. I have a short attention span.
Although I suspect Dragon Age is going to take WAY longer than that. I mean, I'm at the 50-hour mark now and I'm still fucking around in the shitting deep roads.

I bloody hate deep roads...

 

[Fractral]

Playing more or less continuously, Persona 3 took me ~80 hours over about 3 months to finish. Persona 4 took slightly less, at around ~70 hours over 2 months.
If it counts, it took about 2 years for me to finish FF13. I petered out about half way through chapter 11 and it wasn't until FF13-2 came out that I got around to finishing it, with about 50 hours on the clock.

 

[Fijiman]

That would be Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Skyrim, as I have yet to finish any of them.

 

[Lilikins]

Longest 'daywise' I honestly cant tell, I have enough free time in the evenings after work, so I wont be going 'Im a busy busy man and have work 24/7 etc etc so can only play 15 minutes a day' but I just sorta pick them up and play in the evenings then whenever I feel like it and can.

Longest 'playtime' excluding modded games (skyrim/fallout 3 etc), would probably go to Disgaea 1. Seeing as when I play a single player game I never read up on tactics/walkthroughs/character builds etc etc and prefer to figure out everything for myself...if memory serves I finally beat Uber Prinny Baal clocked in at around 180ish hours. An honorable mention also goes to Dragon Warrior 7, which was also 150+ hours.

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

In terms of sheer amount of hours, Persona 3 definitely takes the cake at about 110 hours. All the Final Fantasy games I've finished have taken at least 40 hours, some getting close to 60 (I believe Final Fantasy VII took me that long due to me trying to do some extra stuff before tackling the final boss). I would add Oblivion here as well, but determining what "finishing" that kind of game means is entirely subjective. I do have a character who has done all the guild quest lines and has clocked around 150 hours, but that also involved copious amounts of screwing around.

I have a lot of games that have been interrupted by years-long "breaks" between starting and finishing them. Take for example Final Fantasy IX, which you could say is taking me upwards of three years to complete. JRPGs in general are just such lengthy and involving ordeals that I find it hard to keep at them at times, especially since I play so many of them. I've been meaning to get back into Tales of Xillia, which I got for my birthday back in October, so it doesn't become part of this list in the future. Another notable one is A Bug's Life, which I played intensely as a kid but never actually finished on my own until a few months ago when I downloaded it again on my Vita. So if you wanted to look at it that way, it took me a little over a decade to finish a children's platforming game from the PS1 era.

 

[DugMachine]

The N64 Zelda games took me years to finish because of stopping and restarting and picking them up again.

In terms of hours played, while you can't "finish" WoW I've logged over 300 days across all my characters. Pretty disgusting and it's only going to keep going until it finally ends. If it ever happens.

 

[lylemcd]

Ultima 1 for the Apple II. I played it in high school so around 1985. But never beat it, I don't know if my copy was glitched or what. Fast Forward over a decade, I played it in Emulation and finally beat it. So over a decade to finish the game.

 

[sageoftruth]

Persona 3 FES. That game just takes forever. When comparing it to Persona 4, I agree with Spooky's statement that 4 just plain paces itself better. Even when playing Persona 3 straight through with no interruptions, the game take such a long time to finish and some of the events even create the illusion that the game is even longer than it actually is. Then there's the final boss who also takes forever. I think literally I spent hours fighting that guy. It didn't help that I kept recasting stat buffs. Once that was done, there was still the expansion. Now, I have finished it.

It had a great story, and I'm glad I played it, but I think I'm done with it. Meanwhile I'm itching for a replay of 4.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

if i recall correctly, it took me 90 hours to finish persona 4, and i loved nearly every moment of it, why cant atlus re-reléase the game on PC?

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

Hard to say.. I don't always pay attention to how long it takes to beat a game.. I put in around 50 hours to Beat Naruto Shippuden Ultimate ninja Storm 3 (story, side missions, challenge mode, etc.) i'll have to add more time now though since i haven't beating the full burst DLC boss battle against Kabuto yet since it's too hard to win. Yakuza 3 must taken me at least 35..40 hours to beat everything. I don't know how much time i put into Persona 4 Arena, but I know it was a long time.. must have been at least 25 hours... the longest that I know of though is probably PErsona 3 FES on PS3 (that I downloaded off of the PS store) i probably poured in a good 100 hours into it since i took my time.

 

[Eamar]

I put well over 100 hours into my first playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins. Still my favourite game of all time.

In terms of number of days though, I routinely leave games and come back to them months or even years later. I can think of at least one game that I've been playing on and off for nearly three years now, with no end in sight.

 

[jdogtwodolla]

pssh... I'm still going on 16 years and counting to beat Super Mario Bros.

I guess if you want somewhat actually dedicated play session time then GTA4 probably took me over a week or 2 to beat. Not in game hours, just dedicated playing days.