Why?

[Yoshi]

Ive been wondering why this game takes so long. I have 6 badges in about 16-18 hours and when I decided to see my pokemon on Pokemon Green I had 6 badges in 9 hours with a lvl 46 Charizard and I can't read anything on the game. Why does this game take so long? Is it the storyline or something?

[bignds]

Its a well constructed game, and naturally, the game will get longer as sequels to tend to build on previous efforts. Although, personally, i believe this wasn't entirely the case with Saph/Ruby/Em, because after the huge adventure that Gold was, having two different regions, we went back to one.

[ShadowMarth]

You're complaining about a longer game? GTFO.

[Wraith]

Personaly, if a turn-based RPG (its an RPG alright!) wasnt longer than 10 hours
I'd return it so fast!

[Lkr]

well, the GBA cartridges weren't that great for size, they couldn't fit a huge game on it, plus all of the then improved graphics. another reason is, its really hard to get national dex without fighting every trainer

[Wraith]

What are you talking about?
Have you played Golden Sun 2?
THAT WAS MASSIVE!

[Lkr]

Originally Posted by Wraith

What are you talking about?
Have you played Golden Sun 2?
THAT WAS MASSIVE!

theres a big difference in the coding that had to go into each. Pokemon had 300 different creatures that had to be programmed in.

[Miguel]

in the gameboy pokemon games the attacks and the way the hp gose down happens faster so battle are usally short

[leafgreen386]

edit: why the freak was my post converted to html and the paragraphs merged into one? This is seriously retarded, as quotes don't even show up in the text, not to mention the "auto-conversions" don't change presses of the enter key into line breaks for the html.

Golden Sun was indeed massive, but did you ever think the reason it takes so long is that you have SO FAR TO GO? I know I spend more time on the world map fighting random monster battles than I do in towns, dungeons, etc. Pokemon has a very short distance between destinations, and except in caves/surfing, you have the ability to avoid battles altogether if you want. And the repels in pokemon work 100%, as opposed the Golden Feathers and Avoid psynergy, which only decrease monster encounters. Battle animations can also take fairly long if you don't skip parts of them (like the summons), whereas in pokemon you can turn them off entirely. Conversations are something else that take a considerable amount of time in Golden Sun. The amount of dialogue in pokemon is much lesser.

If you look through the history of pokemon games, none of the worlds have been very large, not even johto. By the time you reach kanto, your pokemon have already gained a substantial amount of power, and clearing through the second world does not take all that long. The world of d/p has about the same number of towns/cities as regions; they just made everything slightly bigger (note that when I say "bigger" I mean the area you have to travel, not as far as the actual storyline goes). That and battle animations are the big reasons why d/p seems to take so much longer. Battles take far more time in d/p than they did in adv, and if you turned off battle animations (yeah, right, like any of us would) I think you'd find the game going not much longer than fr/lg (if you also turned off the battle animations in fr/lg, of course). And Wraith... pokemon r/b is beatable in sub-3 hours. Paper Mario: TTYD in sub-7. Mario and Luigi: Superstar Sega in sub-4, and there are still plenty of other speedruns of turn-based rpgs that I haven't watched. In fact, even Golden Sun is possible to be beaten in sub-10 hours - easily. I've only seen discussions of an actual speedrun, but one person did a "test" run, and judging by how much time they wasted, sub-7 hours is very much possible (they were at 6:47 when they reached venus lighthouse aerie).

[ShadowMarth]

Speedruns of TBRPGs sounds like one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. But I suppose. Either way, we're talking about normal people here, not people trying to get through the game at top speed regardless.