Sarge wrote:Well, most of them were less than 30 hours, anyway. I do know, though, that most of the 8-bit ones required a lot of grinding. That's what makes them a lot less fun these days. Interestingly, though, the best ones had their grinding up front. The original Final Fantasy, for instance, really smoothed out once you were past the Marsh Cave. Dragon Quest III and IV only had a few major chokepoints that required grinding beyond the start. The best 16-bit RPGs didn't really require much grinding at all; Chrono Trigger is one (but it is pretty easy overall), and I think Final Fantasy III falls into that as well unless you want to outfit your entire team with Ultima (which I did).
I'd say even the DS remakes of DQ games have some pretty mean choke-points at times. Thankfully it's usually just the final boss who will absolutely destroy you, more often than not Xp