Play the game in an emulator that has a shortcut for fast-forward. It makes a world of difference when it comes to "enduring" overly long cut-scenes, load screens, repeated spell animations, endless combat encounters, etc.

I wish modern games would have the same feature!

Fair point, I was playing on MiSTER.

This is very frustrating, but I'm not sure it's a problem only with classic JRPGs - recently I sat down to play Bayonetta 3 and it had a similar problem (along with.. others).

FF7 really had this nailed - flashy, mysterious cut-scene to first battle in, what, 3 minutes?

> FF7 really had this nailed - flashy, mysterious cut-scene to first battle in, what, 3 minutes?

Except when you use the Knights of the Round summon, then you go grab a coffee while waiting for the animation to finish :).

It the same with Spiderman: Miles Morales. There are some cut scenes you cannot skip. Worse they they are cut scenes that don't actually affect the main story arc.

This makes replays painful as the story isn't particular interesting and in some places actually quite nauseating to watch (Miles is constantly conflicted on very straight forward things), but the game play itself is quite fun. I've looked for a mod for this game where you can skip all cut-scenes but it doesn't seem to exist.

Most of the Final Fantasy games have been like that, which is why I've (most of the time) been a fan since since FF4/2. I can't remember how many times I've been turned off by a game when it starts with the protagonist being woken up by his mom, followed by endless wandering around town.

It often gets worse. I stopped playing Final Fantasy X (on the PS2) because there was a boss battle where there was a 10 minute un-skippable cutscene between each stage of the battle and if you died you had to re-watch each one.

FFX’s balance is awful if you go straight from point to point and don’t take some long grinding breaks. You’ll hit exactly the kinds of boss-walls you mention, and yeah, the cutscene placement is simply abusive.

Last couple plays I’ve used zig-zag approach when traveling through random encounter zones, effectively ~doubling distance traveled, and encounters. Stretches those out, but removes most of the separate, dedicated grinding.

(Not defending the game design that makes this necessary, mind you)

The boss battles weren't that hard. The issue was the un-skippable cut-scenes.

Generally. I don't like playable dream sequences or artistic filler sequences in games. I feel like there are a lot of people that working in gaming that couldn't get into Movies/TV and as a result try to insert that sort of story telling into a form of entertainment where it doesn't belong.

The best in game story telling IMO was the Doom 2016 game, where the physicality of the character was done through the short sequences where control was briefly taken away. Unfortunately they undid this (mostly) in subsequent sequels .

On the switch there were only two of those walls that I hit, I didn't really do any grinding outside of those points. It turned out the first one had a trick to beat it, grinding didn't actually help that much, and the second was the final boss...

I think at that point I'd call it and mark that one as "finished it".

I don't think I will ever play a JRPG again. In fact it was the last one.

These days I want my games to be actual games.

Look, complaining about unskippable cutscenes is one thing. Everyone has that complaint about FFX, I even know what boss you're talking about because it's so infamous. But saying that JRPGs aren't "actual games" is ridiculous. They are games, whether or not you personally enjoy them.

I am not saying they aren't games. What I am saying is that I enjoy stuff now that has basically no plot and let's me get on with the game.

Half of Final Fantasy X (and I think a little later they released a movie both for Final Fantasy VII and the standalone movie the Spirit Within) was Square showing off how good their CGI animation was, which at the time was very good.

CGI cut scenes went from "this is a cool thing I see between levels" on the PS1 to "this is a tedious interruption".

JRPGs are like movies that you can interact with. If you don't enjoy the cutscenes then it will be a drag.

I did play FFVII when it came out and I was extremely impressed and couldn't get enough of it. But I could never get into other JRPGs later.

> 10-13 minutes if I remember correctly from booting the game to actually being able to do anything besides mash buttons to try and skip the cutscenes.

Genuinely curious - if you don't care about the story then why play an RPG? When you're speedrunning - sure, skip all of the cutscenes, but when you're playing casually - why would you want to do that?

I could ask you a similar question: why play an RPG if you don't care about playing? Go watch a movie.

The point of many posters, I imagine, is that there is too much non-playing parts all at once, it's not strictly about them not being skippable.

This is especially damning when the long unskippable cutscene is during a boss fight or something which you might fail afterwards and cannot save.

> This is especially damning when the long unskippable cutscene is during a boss fight or something which you might fail afterwards and cannot save.

Some games have started to get this right, either by making cutscenes you've seen skippable, or by just automatically skipping straight to the battle if you've already been through it once. I suspect one reason it didn't happen on older games was the need to explicitly save, rather than autosaving.

Unlike a movie, when done well, the combat/grinding add to player engagement because it places the player in direct charge of the characters' growth from a nobody to a legend. You can't get that from a movie.

I agree with your take here that he should care about the cut scenes/story if bothering to play, but this has gotten especially bad in newer games where they try to shove you right into the game before you can tweak settings. I never played through Bravely Default on 3DS because the opening scene used the English dub instead of the original audio, and I had to skip it to access the settings and change languages, then there was no way to rewatch that opening scene. I've similarly avoided their other games like Octopath Traveler as I suspect they have the same issue. It seems like an accessibility issue. I don't think they should ever stop you from getting to the settings first thing. I am not entertained by them trying to be overly cinematic. I don't think it would kill them to wait until you hit "start new game".

Starting off with 10min of exposition is too much and it’s lazy. You don’t even know if you’re going to like the game yet. Do some en media res story telling and get on with it.

Most games I don’t care about the deep exposition. I’m fine with a vague notion and then starting from the main character’s insertion into it where the gameplay starts.

Not letting the player skip it is just hubris.

10 minutes is a long time now? Is this what TikTok does to a person’s brain? Cartoon Network typically had 11 minute episodes, so you’re complaining that you don’t even have the attention span of a child.

For me, it isn't about not liking the story, but about having to watch a movie when I want to play a game. Don't show it to me. Let me do it.

I play RPGs for the fun of turning time and grind into more advanced abilities (eg going from getting slaughtered by dragons in Skyrim to being the one doing the slaughtering).

There are few games where the story has mattered to me, and even basically no games where the cutscenes did.

Edit: the presence of story and cutscenes in a game I enjoy is basically correlation and not causation (for me).

Oh I do care about the story, but please don't front-load the credits and make me sit through them.

Dopamine only hits when the numbers go up. So no min/maxing when the cutscenes are playing

Yes, and for as much as that's an annoyance, games are far worse now. This has infected everything AAA, not just JRPGs. See: the God of War reboot, Tomb Raider, etc.

Narrative is one thing, but at least with 90s JRPGs you could go through dialog on the field screen at your own pace, generally. It doesn't take long to get to the action.

> 10-13 minutes if I remember correctly

Mmm played any Kojima games? :)

You can typically skip most dialogue and cut-scenes in the MGS games. Also quite a number of the cut-scenes are interactive and can actually help you in game play (codec numbers are show, clues etc).

MGS-4 though is has ridiculous cutscene length.

MGS4 would be like 10% shorter if you had a mod that just cut every line in a cutscene that’s someone repeating someone else’s previous line, but as a question.

I never finished it. So I wouldn't know.

Nope, MGS was big on Playstation when I was growing up and the whole stealth gameplay does not appeal to me.

I haven't seriously tried playing it again since it came out but it didn't appeal to me either and my friends all thought I'd lost it. I also remember the clerk at Electronics Boutique being gobsmacked when I wanted to return it.

I do generally find stealthiness to be engaging and great fun _as a component of game play_ but as the main draw and, especially, from the jump I just found it to be frustrating and annoying. Maybe I'd feel different these days, though. I'll try it again some day.