The Best JRPGs That Can Keep You Busy For Months

Key Takeaways

• JRPGs are known for their extreme length, offering gamers months of gameplay for their money.
• Games like
  Bravely Default 2, Shin Megami Tensei 5,
  and
  Persona 5 Royal
  each offer almost 100 hours of engaging gameplay.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
  and
  Disgaea 6
  provide over 200 hours of content with multiple story paths and mechanics to explore.

JRPGs are known for a lot of well-beloved tropes, but their extreme length is maybe their best-known characteristic. For a long time, JRPGs were made lengthy to give players the best value for their money, and that ethos has stuck around to the present day, scaring off some, but making the genre all the more appealing for gamers who want to spend months working through one epic adventure.

Whether it’s classic JRPG journeys through an epic fantasy world or a school-simulator game that works through an entire school year, these games all have hefty run-times and deep endgames that make them well worth picking up for any JRPG fan looking for value for their money.

8 Bravely Default 2

50–90 Hours

If the relatively new Bravely Default series had one mission, it was to revive the old-school JPRG formula for a modern age, bringing with it all the story tropes, dense mechanics, an in-depth job system, and engaging epic stories. Bravely Default 2 refines the formula even further, making it the equivalent of catnip for every JPRG fan out there.

While the game’s story is a good time that follows traditional JRPG narrative tropes of trekking across the land for magical objects, what really shines is Bravely Default 2’s signature combat system, where players can store actions to unleash all at once at a strategic moment. That simple idea carries almost a hundred hours worth of gameplay; it’s that satisfying to pull off.

7 Shin Megami Tensei 5

46–97 Hours

As the somewhat underrated brother to the Persona franchise, the Shin Megami Tensei games are generally underloved, but JRPG fans appreciate that this series is the true originator of the Persona games and usually has more hardcore JRPG tendencies too.

These modern JRPG tendencies were fully brought to bear in 2021 with the most recent release of Shin Megami Tensei 5. Players must fight through a post-apocalyptic Tokyo that is being ravaged by literal angels and demons to try and determine whether the old world should be destroyed, or a new world should be created in its stead. It’s classic JRPG fair that has almost 100 hours of solid gameplay in it.

6 Dragon Quest 11

58–130 Hours

Though the Final Fantasy franchise may be the best-known JRPG franchise of them all, JRPG fans know that the Dragon Quest games are the real king of the genre. The series remains incredibly popular in Japan, known for their often brutal difficulty and incredibly long storylines that can keep players busy for months.

That remains true with Dragon Quest 11, which sees the titular hero embark on a new, long, and colorful journey through a fantasy world filled to the brim with quests, monsters, and XP to grind for. It is a great encapsulation of everything that makes Dragon Quest great, brought to the modern era, making it a perfect choice for a JRPG fan looking for their next month-long fixation, with even more content waiting once the game’s beaten.

5 Persona 5 Royal

101–142 Hours

It’s difficult to overstate the sheer immensity of Persona 5‘s influence on the JRPG world, both in launching the genre to new levels of mainstream attention and introducing a whole new set of fans to the world of JRPGs. It’s a good thing that not only is Persona 5 one of the best JPRGs ever made, but Persona 5 Royal, the redux version, somehow makes it even better.

Taking the role of a high-schooler who becomes a Phantom Thief to literally steal the hearts of their targets (it makes sense in context), players are treated to an epic yet intimate odyssey through the eyes of a school student who must juggle their time between tough dungeon-crawls and slice-of-life personal adventures. It’s a great game on all counts that rewards completionists with a meaty playtime, and offers plenty of side quests and optional content to stuff its runtime full of activities.

4 Final Fantasy 12

61–159 Hours

Final Fantasy games have earned a long-held reputation for crafting high-quality longform epics that invariably involve saving the world from an apocalyptic threat. Those stakes are built up to over long campaigns filled to the brim with interesting characters, but no campaign has ever quite been as long (in the single-player entries) as Final Fantasy 12.

Particularly with the Zodia Age, which adds even more content, Final Fantasy 12‘s open-world hubs are filled to the brim with side quests, adventures, and opportunities for XP grinding, resulting in a very lengthy game that concludes in suitably epic fashion. Though it’s not one for newcomers to the franchise, Final Fantasy 12 delivers in spades for the hardcore fans of the genre.

3 Fire Emblem: Three Houses

50–211 Hours

At first glance, Fire Emblem: Three Houses actually isn’t that long, clocking in at about 40-50 hours for a first playthrough. However, things get really complicated when considering the wildly different paths players can take through the game. If a player is looking to maximize their time with Three Houses, then many other paths through the main game willvary the content and story and are absolutely worth exploring.

If players replay through the different variations of the story, depending on their faction alignment, that initial playtime balloons massively. Luckily, the gamplay of Three Houses supports this extended playtime with rock-solid mechanical depth and an engaging story full of missable characters and narrative opportunities that all add emotional depth to the evolving and divergent narrative.

2 Disgaea 6

22–200+ Hours

It’s notoriously difficult to explain or introduce a Disgaea game to someone new to the series, because it sounds a little absurd that power leveling and grinding could be so much fun. But it really is, and Disgaea 6 may be one of the most pure and outstanding iterations of the entire franchise.

Based on a grid-map, the player’s party takes turns beating a group of enemies. Simple, right? Well, things get complicated when stats and abilities get involved, as well as gear, team composition, stat boosts, the Dark Assembly, and a menagerie of other deep mechanics that can be pushed to their absolute limits, resulting in absurd damage numbers. This game takes well over 200 hours to get anything close to a completionist run. It’s addictive and a hell of a lot of fun, even for first-timers.

1 Final Fantasy 14

100–1000+ Hours

Granted, placing an MMO at the top of this list may be cheating, but Final Fantasy 14 has earned its spot in the Final Fantasy canon by pulling itself out of oblivion after an underwhelming initial launch and returning as one of the most popular MMOs in the world, one that actively competes with the biggest competitors in the genre like World of Warcraft and Destiny 2.

Naturally, as an MMO that has received countless updates and brilliant expansion packs, the amount of content in Final Fantasy 14 is massive. Once a player considers playing again as a different class or character, then the playtime goes way up again. Some gamers can exclusively play this game for years and almost never repeat content. That’s how long it is, and it’s no doubt one of the longest JRPGs ever made.