Completionism in RPGs....
 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and the handheld Castlevania games really lend themselves to this kind of thing, whether it's walking in and out of rooms for hours trying to get drops or souls, levelling skills in Portrait of Ruin, or obsessively trying to get lower and lower times on boss rushes. This is a little different than what you are talking about, I guess, but the games really make me a bit of a completionist when I usually don't care too much.

I'm just now starting to do this with every Final Fantasy that's before FFIX. I've only done FFI, and am currently on FFII.

As far as Final Fantasy I goes, it's not really excessive, but I posted about this in another thread where I spent a whole 5 hours looking for an Iron Golem in Final Fantasy I and subsequently, maxed out my level and money before finding it.

As for Final Fantasy II, power leveling (or "statting") is ridiculously tedious. I've logged past the amount of time in my Final Fantasy I Master Save because I kept trying to raise HP and MP. Speaking of which, Final Fantasy II is a weird one to have a complete game in. Especially when there's no distinct levels, stats going up in one area cause another area to stat down, inventory is limited to 63 items, Magic is limited to like 20 or so spells per person, and the fourth character consistently changes as the story progresses. This really is an odd game to go 100% for.

Hmmmmm . . . I've only done this once before in Final Fantasy VIII. Once you have access to the overworld map, you're supposed to go to the Fire Cave. Well, I chose to level up my guys on the beach where you can get 6AP for the GFs' abilities.

In the end, I got my main party to level 20 and my GFs had some pretty powerful abilities. Don't remember what the GFs' levels were but they were pretty strong.

I thought I was the only one who did that. Phew. Maybe I'm not so crazy after all.

(...no, wait, what am I saying? Of course I am.)

My crowning achievement in statting was getting my whole Force promoted at the Gate of the Ancients battle in Shining Force 1. It was the most tedious and mind-numbing thing I've ever done, and that was with frame-skip cranked up to the max on an emulator. I can't even imagine what it would be like to do the long way on an actual Genesis, where I have to watch all the animations, cutscenes, etc. Especially when it was Lowe's turn. *shudder*

Currently I'm trying to level my abilities in PoR so I can get past those frelling Frankensteins in the Cave of Evil. God damn I hate those things.

I've done that in a lot of RPGs with challenging bosses. In Final Fantasy V, I had to spend some time in one of the castles fighting Iron Giants since they gave the most experience points at that point in the story. After gaining about 30 levels or so just doing that, I was able to finish the game easily since the final boss wasn't that difficult anymore.

Completion=multiple endings for some games, so yeah, I go the route. FFX-2 has the 100% completion so you can get the "great ending," Suikoden has the 108 stars in order to get the "good ending," and Star Ocean 2 has 87 possible endings....

So, yeah, I try to play the complete game.

I completed Chrono Trigger so many times that I have 99 megalixers, and more speed, power, and magic tabs than I can use :p

I don't really stick around in one place just to level up unless I have to. But I don't spend hours to reach a ridiculous level of ridiculosity, making all my fights redundant. I usually get through things pretty quickly, so I'm often under-leveled for bosses (or the area), and that's when I'll halt progress for an hour or two and just train. Even in training though, I'm more focused on gaining abilities rather than having that level number go up. Anyway, taking your Final Fantasy XII example, I had to do this at two points in the game for about 2 hours each just to get through some areas. :p But even in the end, I only put just over 50 hours into the game. =/

Only got 100% for FFX and that was cos a friend of mine managed it within a week, so I thought I could do it faster; I did.

Now that I'm no longer a 'kid', I really can't see myself investing so much time just to achieve 100% in RPGs these days where there is an absolutely insane amount to gather and lots of walkthrough reading required (case in point FFXII). Actually I can't even see myself reading walkthroughs for anything these days, especially when msg boards are so much more accessible and up to date.

FF VIII, I got every GF and everyone damaging point is 9999 (I spent ~160 hr,lol)
I'm planning to complete FFXII too which I've played ~ 180 hr...anyway I may give up in fishing minigame since I'm really really and really bad at it.:)

I used to play rpg's a lot after I finished the last boss. Nowadays though, a lot of the extras don't really appeal to me anymore. It's great to have optional bosses and such, but when they have nothing to do with a subplot or don't give me anything useful I just don't waste time on it.

A lot has to do with age. When I was in my teens, I had a lot of free time and less money to buy games. Nowadays, it's just the other way around. I have a job and a house and just have less time but more games to play.

It really depends on the game. I usually don't spend a lot of time in just one place, but every once in a while one of those games show up.

I would have to agree with Spidey that FFXII is one such game. I spent fucking ages killing mobs for LP to fill up the license board easily. I did a lot in Estersand early on, and later on for ages at the Nam-Yensa Sandsea. I actually finished the License board there.

I believe Nam-Yensa Sandsea is around 35 hours in the game or something? I think I ended the game at around 110 hours.

There were a lot of other things in FFXII that kept you busy in one place for ages, and that's collecting all the monsters in that region, and that includes the rare monsters that always had certain triggers for them to show up.

Getting rare drops from making a X chain, getting the map complete, setting up the "ultimate" gambit, trying to get the best Quickening to unlock, etc. There is so much content in that game. You can't help but get sucked into it.

FF XII also contributes to my pickiness. I haven't progressed too far in the actual story (Urutan-Yensa sandsea) because I was too busy trying to get chains and lp, since it feels very gratifying when you can hit a monster once and you instantly get 1 lp since it's so weak. Since the effort exerted is minimal, in this situation, and others like it, I like to develop my skills well in advance of furthering the plotline.

The same logic applied to FF V for me. I tried to master the skills that I could in each class immediately after I got them, so that I wouldn't waste time later trying to go back to the comparatively worse classes. Afterwards, I mastered every job before trying to beat Exdeath.

Of course I have never had a truely perfect game although I always go for it, or something close:

- Valkyrie Profile, Beat Iseria queen 13+ times, then tried to get best equipment for every single einherjar, and attempted to beat the hamsters at least once.
- Legend of Mana, Level 99 character, my tempered weapon wasn't 999 attack though, I settled for 300ish. Golems still sucked.
- Radiata Stories, got every character on the human path. Even waited for an hour or more in RL time combined, just to get Claudia!
- Final Fantasy VI, learned every spell, got every esper (Ragnarok, and evolved Odin to Raiden so that doesn't count) attempting to scrounge up best equipment, etc.
- Final Fantasy IX, Had to do all of the sidequests before I wanted to beat the game. Everything and every skill, short of Excalibur 2.
- Final Fantasy X, slowed down a bit here. Didn't dodge thunder 200 times, or become a blitzball master, or beat Shinryu, but I got the Magus Sister at the least.
- Wild Arms, Wild Arms 3 - Every side quest complete. I wanted to milk my favourite series for what it was worth.


So really, I go for the hard quests but not so much the really hard quests when I feel like my time would be invested more efficiently.

For every single game I've played, I started out as a completionist. But after about three-quarters of the game, I just give up and finish it. How can you guys stay motivated all throughout the game to finish everything?

If I really enjoy the game and have fun playing it, I usually try to do everything I can as long as it isn't mind numbingly boring. If grinding levels or really annoying mini games are a part of that I usually just don't bother.

I have to agree with some of you about FF12. During the game I completed all the hunts I could, but I didn't try to get all the skills and stuff. Near the end I did just about everything though.

I used to be a crazy completionist, but now I just can't do it anymore. And I blame it on FFXII and Rogue Galaxy. When I do sidequests, I want something from it. Sidequests historically have been beneficial, with a few exceptions, like ultimate bosses which only yield bragging rights. When I play a sidequest and only get a measly, useless item, I just throw the game down.

Used to be one. Now I realize how silly it was to level up all characters to lv. 99, and morph some enemies to sources in FF VII only to fight the final boss.
Although I have to say that at some point completionism has its fun; especially in Wild Arms 2, where sidequests are abundant.

Additional Spam:
All in all, such a waste of time, but a lot of fun.

I've never been one to begin with... Although my only current ambition to get 100% is Persona 3. RPGs, normally, don't hold my attention that long, when it's something that I've invested 50+ hours into, I might as well go for it at this point. Although I still have a long way to go... I only have about 30% of the Compendium complete. <_<

In Earthbound I have a tendency to acquire the second PSI Special by the Happy Happy Village and the third in the desert before Fourside by fighting caterpillars. I also make sure to get the Sword of Kings on every playthrough, no matter how many Starman Supers I have to fight. Finally, I always try to have Ness at level 97 or so by the time I complete Magicant so that the final experience points take him to 99 along with the extreme stat boosts you get.

I did a lot in Legend of Mana, including getting a Land Dragon to level 99 using a diet plan that I came up with myself. Calculating the innate stat boosts of certain monsters, I came up with other plans, but I never raised another monster to that level. Since it's part of the same series, I also have a file in Secret of Mana where I got everyone to 99 and maximized every spell. I tried to acquire every rare armor drop for each party member (Power Suits, Faerie Crowns, etc), but I probably missed a few.

I also played through Chrono Trigger more times than I can count, and Star Ocean 2 is another game where I got caught up trying to do everything (something I always did was to use Reverse Side to make big bucks once I reached Linga, since you could buy paper there) but I think my completionist days are over. These days I'm lucky if I can finish an RPG, much less try to do everything in it.

What would surprise me would be if someone actually got water and wind to level 99 to use that Timegate spell of Feena's in Grandia. That seemed an insane task.

Oh boy. Anyone who was following the FFXII thread late last year probably saw my slow descent into madness while I played that game. I squeezed every last drop of content and enjoyment out of that game, probably because it lends itself to that kind of thing.

I had a good time, and save for the hideous difficult to obtain Danjuro, I got all those secret weapons, did all the hunts, got the Wyrmslayer sword (hideous NES sound, crappy weapon), and a boatload of other things.

I do that in most RPGs I play, to get the most out of them.

I can think of a bunch of games that I did exactly that (found everything, leveled up to max, ect)

Shenmue
Shenmue 2
Tales of Symphonia
Tales of the Abyss
Chrono Trigger
Chrono Cross
Star Ocean
Star Ocean the second story
Star Ocean : Till the End of Time
Grandia
Grandia 2 (was there anything TO do besides go through?)
Grandia Xtreme
Xenogears
Xenosaga
Xenosaga Episode 2
Valkyrie Profile
Valkyrie Profile 2
Zelda Twilight Princess
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII (haha... 9,999HP in 10 hours... this game was broken!)
Final Fantasy X

hell I could go on all day if I count games older than Star Ocean... haha

I used to do everything in every game I played back in the day. But to be fair, I was young and poor and couldn't buy every game I wanted anyway.

I don't do it much anymore, unless I absolutely adore the game I am playing. I did everything in Wild Arms 5 and that's about it this year for RPGs. The social links in Persona 3 were too tedious to do them all in a single play and there haven't really been any other huge RPGs released this year. Odin Sphere had basically nothing in the way of extras, so yeah.

This is literally how I play every rpg. I just feel obligated to do everything in the game and its kind of sad because it sucks up so much of my time. When I play a RPG I want to do everything possible so that I can enjoy every aspect of the game. I tend not to level up for the fun of it. I just want to do all the sidequests/get all the best weapons/get every ending and fill up a collectors book if the game has it, anything along those lines.

I have a lot of respect for people who have full conquered star ocean 2: The Second because I personally think that has got to be one of the hardest game to full conquer with 82 endings and filling the entire song picture and anything else along those lines.

sometimes if a sidequest gets too monotonous I usually pick up another game and play it until my interest gets rekindled for the other game that I'm in the process of fully conquering.

I've recently fully conquered:
Grandia III
Shadow Hearts: From The New World
Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories



In The progress of fully conquering:
Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin
Tales Of The Abyss

The first RPG I remember I was power-levelling was Secret of Mana, but my 250+ hours FFX savegame tells me that someone went wrong there, too.

I also start out trying to complete everything in an RPG, but usually just lose interest towards the end of the game..some things just take too much time and effort which I gradually don't have..and yes age definitely contributes to it. The only RPGs that I spent hours levelling up and completing those side quests were FFVII and VIII- in VII I levelled my main party up to lvl 99 and completed every side quest to beat Emerald weapon (that son of a bitch took me 2 tries), then in VIII I did the same thing to beat Omega Weapon.

Not many RPGs nowadays make me wanna go all out to complete every side quest available..not even FFXII unfortunately.

Final Fantasy XI

This game near destroyed my life, and it was when I discovered I was a true completionist. SMN75, BLM75, BRD75, RDM75, THF75, and I still continued until I lost my account cause I took a year off. Had CoP, ZM and AU completed, had nearly every quest available completed, and had capped fame everywhere (and all the summons).

I just started a new character on Seraph...

I think the only game I've ever fully completed that's worth talking about is FFX. Zelda 64 was probably the first 'RPG', but it wasn't as time-consuming without all the stats and such. Btw, by fully completing FFX, I meant the International version, dual sphere grids too :) These days, I can't see myself playing any game more than 24 hours ie. 1 day's worth; it's just a waste of time.

When I play an RPG, I play it for the story. To me, the challenge level makes the game rewarding where my efforts lead to more story being revealed. So, for example I would not bother with a sidequest if it only involved a boss fight that didn't gain me a unique, useful item or reveal more of the story-line or develop the characters a bit more.

So, I guess I would have to say that for the most part I am not a "completionist," as I see that as a button-mashing waste of time. Now, on the other hand, doing something like getting the pirate's treasure in Might & Magic VI required locating all the monoliths and putting together the word puzzle that could be found on them. The pirate's treasure yielded powerful, useful items, and it actually took some skill/puzzle-solving to acquire vs. simply power-levelling. Another example would be Zelda: TP. I beat the Cave of Ordeals because I wanted the item (I forget what it was now though?) but after I beat the game there was zero reason for me to round up the remaining Poe's souls.

I'm hearing some sentiment in this thread that when we were younger/the genre was still evolving (i.e. every single game was about levelling) there was more completionism simply due to the nature of RPG's back then, and I agree. Might and Magic VI basically ate up a year of college for me - I logged somewhere around 500 hours. That would only be about 1.3 hours per day for a year, so that's probably not an exaggeration. I just couldn't do that at this point. For me, Zelda: TP dragged on for an exhorbitant amount of time (or at least it seemed to). Shadow Hearts was just aobut the right length. I think for me, an RPG coming in around 35-40 hours is just about right.

I used to be a completionist though that was when I was a child and had time to spare. These days, I am more of a 'Run and gunner' that tries to get through the game with only the bare essentials. I find that this makes the game shorter and still more challenging and exhilirating for myself. I can't stand going 5 hours out of my way to grab a spear, or armour and I generally won't nowadays.
I don't even like leveling and I am proud of the fact that I rarely did for FFXII and really had no problem with making it through the game, completed in a shade over 50 hours. Its more of a natural run, to kill only who you must but it requires a lot of strategy and quick thinking as you move from place to place. I enjoy this type of gaming far more.

I fear for you... :gonk:

@Metal Sphere: Awesome avatar and signature dude.

And about completionism, I myself have a fair share of this, only with a few games though. From the top of my head I can recall FFT, FFI&II Dawn of Souls, FFIII (DS), FFIV-VI Advance, VII and VIII, Valkyrie Profile (didn't got that far to get items for einherjars I never used though) Lenneth, Chrono Cross.

Yeah, I'm a SE whore as you guys can see.

Useless fact:
At the age of 18, 100 hours in a game means 0.02% of your life.
In other words, 50 (100 hour) games = 1% of your life!

Of all of the RPGs I play, I don't know if there have been ANY that I've gotten 100% completion on. I typically play through a main quest, and if I discover any sidequests it's all for the better. Some sidequests are just so obscure that I couldn't imagine ever finding out about them without a guide, and my pride/stubborn nature keeps me from using a guide in games :/

I have fully completed every RPG I ever played, even the horrible ones that you don't honestly want to play anymore but for the sake of getting it over with you do. I cannot honestly say why I do it; I suppose it is just because I hate losing. For me, missing out on something in a game is losing an experience that I could have had. Of course, if I never knew about the existence of the event then it would not grind my gears so to speak. Somehow they have a way of coming to my attention though. :gonk:

The Tynar Rouge on Agrias' birthday (Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions) was an experience that was worth throwing away 70 hours of work and restarting the whole game for. It doesn't hurt that it is arguably one of the most broken Female Only accessories in the game.

Lipstick, not just for looking good anymore.

"Completing" RPGs is actually something I've only done recently. When I was younger, I'd play games several times over, but I'd pretty much do the same things every time. Chrono Trigger is probably the only exception, and that's just because of New Game + where ever accomplishment you made in the previous run carried over. This was also before the Internet, so finding out many of the secrets that made an RPG complete was more dumb luck than anything else.

These days when I play an RPG, I get a guide and just find *everything* I can. Thanks to emulation, I can also go back to older games and try several new approaches (save states help a lot, as do infinite save slots and debug menus). For example, I've gone back to Breath of Fire II and found several new items I never knew existed, fought enemies I had never seen before, and accomplished stuff like beating Barubary with just Ryu and getting all characters to level 80+ and finding hidden spells. It really adds a lot to the game when you put extra time into it.

I've also *mostly* completed Lunar: The Silver Star on my newest play-through. I saw the hidden bathing scene (never could buy that soap early enough), gotten all items, and nearly have every character to level 99 (once Kyle gets to 99 you can do a cool glitch where you play as Nall for a round). Stuff like this really breathes new life into older games, I think, but I only do it for games I *really* like. It's not a time thing, I can make time for good games, it's just a personal preference.

When I was younger, I had the tolerance to do this sometimes.

- I maxed out all characters in Chrono Trigger
- I maxed out all characters in Legend of Legaia (To unlock Juggernaut which was... underwhelming)

Those 2 do not fit the exact description of what you're looking for though, so I'll add the fact that every time I play Final Fantasy Tactics, I aim to get nearly every job right in the beginning of the game. One time I also maxed my characters at level 99 in the process.

In Star Ocean 2, there's this point fairly early in the game where you can go to a area with advanced enemies you weren't supposed to be able to kill at the time. Of course this can be exploited to benefit you though. I don't remember how far I went with it, but I muscled my way through the rest of the first disc without breaking a sweat.

In Odin Sphere, Mercedes simply breaks the game. As soon as I unlocked the Pooka Village, I maxed out her HP. Her down + attack lets her score HUGE chains and bonus monies everywhere.

That's all I can remember at the moment.