I love RPGs, but I don’t always have time for them. Many of the greatest RPGs are also the greatest time-wasters, demanding upwards of 50 or even 100 hours for a basic playthrough. While it can be rewarding to undertake enormous adventures, it isn’t always feasible when other life obligations are in the mix.
Luckily, there are still some fantastic RPGs that you can beat in ten hours, as long as you stay focused on your objectives. These games are every bit as good as their longer compatriots, and you might be able to play ten of them in the same time that a single run of Persona 5 would take.
Dragon Quest 1
The Dragon Quest games aren’t known for being trim, and Dragon Quest 9 can infamously take 700 hours to 100% complete. At the start of the series, however, things were different. The original Dragon Quest (released as Dragon Warrior in the West) takes only ten hours to complete, as long as you’re playing one of the slightly streamlined ports from the Super Nintendo onward.
In keeping with its length, the original Dragon Quest is a bit simpler than its successors, with a single party member and a simple narrative arc. If you want to see where a great series started, however, this can still be a fun time today.
Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic
Arkane Studios is known for immersive sims like Dishonored and Prey, but the games that put the studio on the map also had an RPG flair. After the 2002 success of Arx Fatalis, Arkane delivered the comparatively streamlined Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, which packed a complete fantasy experience into a ten-hour runtime.
Dark Messiah wasn’t exactly received as a masterpiece, but time has been kind to the title. Decades later, it’s easy to appreciate the marriage between fantasy storytelling and Half-Life-style reactive gameplay, even if the RPG elements are lighter than other games on this list.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink
You’ll have to rush a bit to get through Granblue Fantasy: Relink in ten hours, but it’s surprising for a modern 3D JRPG to be anywhere close. Among a sea of competitors saddled with bloated stories and repetitive dungeons, Granblue Fantasy: Relink delivers its main story in a refreshingly short-burst package.
Of course, there’s still a lot to do after you wrap up the main story, and completionists can get over 100 hours out of the Granblue Fantasy: Relink experience. It’s a nice balance either way. If you’ve had your fill, you can move on to another adventure without leaving the main story threads hanging, but there’s still enough material to get your money’s worth if you’re hungry for more.
Haven
Despite its indie status, Haven doesn’t look like a ten-hour game at a glance. Rolling fields of grass bring the expanse of Breath of the Wild to mind, but it’s nowhere near as endless as Link’s grandest adventures. Instead, Haven focuses on an intimate story of two lovers, dialing its scope in to focus on a smaller scale.
It’s an unusually zen experience for an RPG, which suits its shorter length perfectly. The beautiful alien world and the chemistry between the two simple characters are enough to sustain the reasonable runtime, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of an RPG like Final Fantasy 7 or Baldur’s Gate 3.
Felvidek
It’s hard for an RPG to stand out as truly unique these days, but Felvidek is one that truly manages the difficult task. While the game brands itself as a JRPG based on its gameplay format, it comes courtesy of Slovakian developers and takes place in their home country. The protagonist is also as far as you can imagine from a typical JRPG hero, as he’s much less of a fresh-faced idealist and much more of a chronic alcoholic.
Not only is Felvidek under ten hours, it has room to spare, with a campaign that should only take five to seven hours to complete. Even if you don’t fall in love with the intriguing story or rich atmosphere, the art alone should be enough to sustain the experience for that long, as the game’s rough-hen, minimally chromatic world proves to be undeniably striking.
South Park: The Stick Of Truth
Obsidian Entertainment is responsible for some massive RPG adventures, ranging from the novelistic Pillars of Eternity games to the endlessly replayable Fallout: New Vegas. The most off-beat RPG in its catalogue, however, is South Park: The Stick of Truth, and it’s also the easiest to play through in a short burst.
The Stick of Truth is just as irreverent as the South Park show, so you can probably figure out whether it’s your cup of tea without needing to try it out. If you do commit, the main story shouldn’t take much more than ten hours, while going for a completionist run will bump things up to about 20.
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is an early title from NIS, the developer that went on to make the Disgaea games, but this strategy RPG is much shorter than its successors. Clearing this one under ten hours shouldn’t be a challenge at all, and the minimal amount of side content means that you can get pretty close to 100% completion in that time.
True to its name, Rhapsody has a musical theme, which manifests in the form of a great soundtrack and fun combat concepts. It’s fairly fluffy fare as far as RPGs go, but it’s the perfect way to kick back on a low-key weekend and unwind.
Cat Quest
Cat Quest bills itself with comically grand ambition, with its Steam page citing comparisons to games like Diablo and Skyrim. In reality, it’s a more modest experience, clocking in at a ten-hour runtime for completionist playthroughs and roughly half that for the main story only. That shouldn’t make you dismiss it, however, as the “Overwhelmingly Positive” review consensus makes clear.
Cat Quest is a fun, light-hearted experience, a basic prerogative that Cat Quest 2 and 3 maintain. Even better, the series has stuck to its guns in terms of length, keeping each entry well under ten hours for a standard playthrough. None are necessarily must-plays, but with such a low time commitment, there’s little reason not to give the franchise a go.
Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve is an unusual genre mix, blending the JRPG format with a solid helping of Resident Evil-style survival horror. Rather than attempting a typical RPG length, it opts for a runtime more in-line with the latter, and it’s easy enough to complete the story of the first game in ten hours flat.
Serving as a sequel to a Japanese novel of the same name, Parasite Eve takes players to a New York City Christmastime setting, but it doesn’t serve up a particularly jolly experience. Like Resident Evil 2, the weight of the world falls on a rookie police officer, as the protagonist, Aya, has to race to stop the parasite called Eve from effectively unleashing an apocalypse.
Final Fantasy
Like the original Dragon Quest, the very first Final Fantasy game is a good bit shorter than most. In its original form, it’s still likely to take you closer to 15 hours, but the Pixel Remaster version should solve that problem. Thanks to some quality-of-life adjustments, the updated version can be beaten in under ten hours with ease.
Unsurprisingly, this one is also a good deal simpler than the later entries, but it’s once again interesting to see where the series started out. It’s also a rock-solid experience in a way that some of the more divisive entries failed to replicate, so spending ten hours in the world of the first Final Fantasy shouldn’t have to feel like homework.