January 2024 was bookended by the enormous RPG Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which was immediately followed up by Persona 3 Reload. If you want to keep up, that means putting 50-100 hours into each, collectively 100-200. That’s about eight days of gaming within just 33 days of the year, or 24 percent if we’re getting specific.

That’s not to mention the more manageable titles like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Palworld, Helldivers 2, and Tekken 8 if you want to keep up to date with heavy hitters in between RPGs. But good luck finding time, because we’re not done with the role-playing genre yet. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth just launched, which is another 60-100 hour behemoth, and it’ll soon be followed by Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Rise of the Ronin.

We can’t forget Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Legend of Legacy remastered, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Unicorn Overlord, or South Park: Snow Day!, all of which fall into the first quarter of the year. That’s a lot of RPGs, but things aren’t slowing down.

Thankfully, NIS America is saving Ys 10 for September. If another RPG had been dropped into the first half of the year without warning, I might have snapped.

Stumbling out of the early months of 2024 in a hot gamer sweat, our dreams infected with XP bonuses and party formations, we’ll be faced with Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, and Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance. Many developers are vying for our time with RPGs that, if you tried to juggle all of them at once, would leave you more worn out than a level one slime that somehow found its way into the Forgotten Capital.

Even more egregious are the RPGs published by the same company. Sega, in all its wisdom, launched Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Persona 3 Reload within a week of each other—200 hours of RPG dealing a one-two combo that left us struggling to stand before Cloud Strife dove into the ring with a buster sword-shaped steel chair.

RPGs are great. People love ‘em, lots get made, and plenty of fans buy them. But leaping from hundred hour behemoth to hundred hour behemoth to hundred hour behemoth takes its toll. The smart choice would be to focus on the big ones you don’t want spoiled, like Infinite Wealth and Rebirth, and leave the 1:1 remasters and remakes for another time, but I’m not smart. I’m all aboard the burnout train, crying as I pull into the next station where I’ll be stranded for weeks.

Later in the year, we'll be juggling Avowed, Blue Protocol, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, and Zenless Zone Zero, so get ready for even more time sinks.

We’re just three months into the year and I’m already longing for it to end, even if every single one of these RPGs has been a treat to play. But as it is, to stay in the loop, I’m not getting the full experience.

Rushing through all of the side content, barreling through the story, and finding myself under-levelled and underprepared by the end of each and every RPG I play is a bitter experience. Promise me 2025 will spread them out a bit more, yeah?

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