1765: Hours of Entertainment

One of the best things about the Japanese games I tend to play in preference to anything else is simultaneously one of the most frustrating things.

I’m referring to the question of game length.

In an age where the public are seemingly ever more likely to rate interactive entertainment in terms of a “money per hours” ratio — look at the drubbing Gone Home got from certain quarters who felt that $20 was too expensive for the 2-3 hours of gameplay it offered — it should be abundantly clear to anyone who plays them that Japanese games, for the most part, consistently offer the absolute best value in terms of bang for your buck on the market.

Take Senran Kagura Burst, for example, which I finally pummelled into submission and 100% completion over the weekend during downtime between activities. This is a game that is essentially a spiritual successor to the arcade brawlers of yore — games like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Asterix: The Arcade Game and The Simpsons Arcade Game, to name but a few favourites from my own youth.

Unlike those brawlers, however, which typically tended to be no more than four or five levels long — they needed to theoretically be completable on a single coin credit and in a single sitting, after all — it took me in excess of 50 hours to complete all the levels in Senran Kagura Burst, and there’s plenty more I could do after completing all the levels once: try for an A-rank on all of them; try and level up all the characters to 50; try and unlock all the characters’ “balance” modes through using them in different ways; try to complete all the levels in the challenging “Frantic” mode; try to beat all the bosses with special moves; and try to see all the bosses’ special moves without dying. Were I to tackle some of those additional challenges — and I’m not ruling out the possibility, as I enjoyed Senran Kagura Burst one hell of a lot — I’m sure that could easily put a significant number of extra hours on the clock.

Notably, though, a lot of this “extra” stuff is optional. You can romp through the main storyline of Senran Kagura Burst, ignoring all side missions and some of the clever things you can do with the characters, in probably about 10 hours or so, if that. (Most of that time will be reading the game’s lengthy visual novel sections, which are skippable after you’ve completed that mission at least once.) And in doing so, you’ll have had a satisfyingly complete experience from start to finish — particularly as the game’s structure effectively feels like you’re getting two (rather similar) games for the price of one thanks to the story unfolding from two different, parallel perspectives that meet up at various points.

The same is true for many other Japanese games, with RPGs being the clearest example. Your average Japanese RPG these days will take anywhere between 20 and 100 hours to clear first time through, assuming you don’t just plough straight through to the ending, and that you take on a bit of side content and spend a bit of time fine-tuning your characters. After that, though, you have a choice: set it aside, satisfied that you’ve seen the conclusion to the story, or continue playing in the hope of enjoying everything else the game has to offer — often referred to as “post-game”. Many modern RPGs also offer a “New Game Plus” mode, in which you can carry across certain things from your previous playthrough into a new run — the exact things you can carry across vary according to the game, but often include things like character levels, unlocked skills, equipment, secret areas uncovered and all manner of other goodies. This tends to turn you into a satisfyingly unstoppable powerhouse at the outset of your second playthrough as your buffed-up character cuts through enemies like butter, but is often necessary to take on some of the biggest challenges the game has to offer. Some games even withhold their toughest bosses and dungeons until post-game or New Game Plus, providing you with an incentive to continue playing even after the credits have rolled.

Even seemingly “short” Japanese games have a massive amount of longevity, too; take your average “bullet hell” shooter, for example, which typically follows the arcade machine structure of theoretically allowing someone to clear it on a single credit and in a single sitting. The true challenge of these games, however, comes from perfecting your game — achieving that single-credit clear (often known as a 1CC — 1 Credit Clear), beating your last high score, topping the worldwide leaderboards. The latter aspect in particular can become enormously competitive, and in the case of many shmups, requires you to fathom out an initially Byzantine-seeming scoring system in order to take maximum advantage of it.

And this isn’t even getting into the truly, directly competitive titles such as fighting games, which have potentially limitless replayability if you’re actually any good at them. (I am not, so I tend to play through the story mode, if there is one, and then be done, perhaps with an occasional two-player local match with friends if they’re up for it.) Or driving games with ongoing online competition. Or all manner of other joyful experiences.

I’m not saying Western games don’t offer any of this longevity — anyone who’s super-into Call of Duty’s multiplayer mode is doubtless raising their hand and going “Um…” right now — but for my money, and particularly in the single-player space, Japanese games can’t be beaten for value in terms of how much entertainment you’ll get for your £40.