How much playtime do people get out of Secrets of Grindea?

[Own]

I add pretty much anyone who asks for someone to play Arcade, simply to ensure that if I have to find 4 people in a pinch I have some names available.

Which lead to me looking at my 'List of friends who play SoG' with interest. Teddy once said, admittedly humbly, the game had about 4-5 hours of content in it. How does my friends list measure up?



559.3 hours...? The heck are you doing, leaving it running AFK overnight 24/7 so summons will kill slimes?

 

[Ardeof]

130 hours here, and it's getting to that: "Grinding just to get a Priest Helmet" kind of gameplay. I just go on occasionally, get a couple of essences here and there. Still a lot of time/updates to go, so I chose to casually get the item instead of doing hardcore grinding.

Suggesting there's 4~5 hours of content is a rather vague generalization, and quite inaccurate. If played on Normal Mode, perhaps yeah. Even then, getting those misc items for Story Mode and completing the quests in Arcade Mode is a lot more than 3~5 hours. A Speedrunner would take a lot longer than 5 hours to 100% the Story Mode.

 

[Own]

Suggesting there's 4~5 hours of content is a rather vague generalization, and quite inaccurate.

He was admittedly underselling it a bit, I just find it amusing to have a number of examples many times over that for contrast.

Though, I don't believe many people would consider grinding for drops or cards necessarily 'content'. Content is usually considered things like story, side-quests, minigames, prizes for achievements, etc.

The difference between grinding a Pumpkin Mage for a Magic Shawl VS fully S-Ranking the arena for a crown. Growing your Arcade town or unlocking skill-based S-Rank rewards VS accumulating Essence to buy hats.

 

[Ardeof]

Content is usually considered things like story, side-quests, minigames, prizes for achievements, etc.

I guess I think differently. I consider Story Mode at the bottom of the value of a game, along with quests and achievements. If a game isn't decent and has a fun playstyle, there's no point in adding story or quests and whatnot. It'd add distractions to the game itself. It's the same reasoning of why I absolutely despise Cinematics in games. I consider cinematics to be a temporary "bandaid" to a more direct problem, which is an absolute lack of conversation design in games.

Edit: Also, that amount of time and resources spent on a Cinematic could have been spent on improving the game overall, or learning how to implement something more efficiently. etc

 

[Teddy]

I think my estimate was to run through Story Mode on Normal for the first time, doing a minority of the side content! It was probably before the festival arc, too. I usually lowball the estimates a bit, but I try to add a disclaimer that you can get more playtime out of the game if you 100 %, play on Hard Mode, do Arcade Mode etc. The reason I try to be conservative is because players that highly value getting a good $/hour ratio are probably better off waiting for the full game

Now, to address the title, let's use the not-super-accurate-but-kinda SteamSpy! It says the playtime is 10:24 (average) / 07:39 (median).

So the majority of players get 7.5h or more of playtime! That's a bit more than I had expected honestly. I guess that's going through the story, getting wrecked by Hydras for a while, and doing a decent chunk of side activities?

 

[The G-Meister]

Just in case you were wondering, that 559.3 hours is hardly much AFK time I could probably estimate about 30-40 hours of it, which is still just under 10%, but that leaves me with over 500 hours. I've completed story mode 5 times, 4 times 100%, plus another 2/3 incomplete characters, all on hard mode... And you know how long it's taken me to beat Arcade xD That's just because I like to play casually, and with my own builds. Currently I've got another battle mage and a Beastmode run going (that gauntlet room in the temple of seasons is literal hell in Beastmode, I kid you not.)

I just like running different and interesting builds, while also experimenting with and finding bugs, as well as doing the occasional bit of research. I've done two mages, a battle mage, and now almost 3 1H ers. The 2Her is yet to come (although I have been getting a bit of practice with it recently.)

 

[Own]

I guess that's going through the story, getting wrecked by Hydras for a while, and doing a decent chunk of side activities?

I reckon the Hydra problem will be fixed if/whenever Evergrind gets a signboard for notices, or the blacksmith gets a pop-up bubble saying "New wares inside!" or something when you return from the Flying Fortress. The Hydras are the first time when not upgrading past Carrot Sword / Wooden Shield / Apprentice Wand / Claymore actually matters in terms of survivability.

Half an hour spent fighting them with awful equipment, dying over and over. The boss is balanced, but it can't be balanced to people with bad gear.

I wonder if the problem stems from the fact that in RPGs, you usually buy gear in Town 1, then you buy better gear in Town 2, then better gear in Town 3. It's extremely rare for town goods to upgrade through progress, might that be why no one bothers to check back in...?

 

[The G-Meister]

It depends. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword which I've been playing through recently does to same thing, where Skyloft is essentially your "hub town" with all your upgrades, potions, refills and gear repairs centralised in the Bazaar. Having said that, it's also your home town, and you get bombarded with people telling you to "stock up" before you go out on a journey, whether it's your sidekick or your headmaster. Although I'm getting sceptical so far (thinking it's not gonna get anywhere near the length of the challenges in Twilight Princess) it's little things like the shops being a centralised place, the fact that you can sit down on any chairs you find, and you can spear pumpkins with your sword and throw them around that make the game stand out and make it fun to play.

Anyway, less digression. It's probably a good idea to tell people to kit up somewhere along the line, whether it's Dad, Bag, Naniva or even the blacksmith himself. It's probably more that people aren't told about it than it being different.

 

[GarlicJelly]

I reckon the Hydra problem will be fixed if/whenever Evergrind gets a signboard for notices, or the blacksmith gets a pop-up bubble saying "New wares inside!" or something when you return from the Flying Fortress. The Hydras are the first time when not upgrading past Carrot Sword / Wooden Shield / Apprentice Wand / Claymore actually matters in terms of survivability.

Half an hour spent fighting them with awful equipment, dying over and over. The boss is balanced, but it can't be balanced to people with bad gear.

I wonder if the problem stems from the fact that in RPGs, you usually buy gear in Town 1, then you buy better gear in Town 2, then better gear in Town 3. It's extremely rare for town goods to upgrade through progress, might that be why no one bothers to check back in...?

Yeah, having something that tells the player that the shops now have new items would be really nice. I would be using the Iron Sword for the whole game while speedrunning if Own hadn't pointed out to me that you can get better items as soon as you finish the Flying Temple.

 

[The G-Meister]

I think new gear after the FF was only a more recent addition right? It's no wonder if you never realised if you've been around as long as you have

 

[GarlicJelly]

I think new gear after the FF was only a more recent addition right? It's no wonder if you never realised if you've been around as long as you have

It's not that new I think. The items were in the shop before Seasonne (or however you spell it) was added. I just don't think I realized that the items were available after the FF since they were so much better than the equipment before and I guess I assumed that the items wouldn't appear in the shop until later.

 

[Ardeof]

I reckon the Hydra problem will be fixed if/whenever Evergrind gets a signboard for notices, or the blacksmith gets a pop-up bubble saying "New wares inside!" or something when you return from the Flying Fortress. The Hydras are the first time when not upgrading past Carrot Sword / Wooden Shield / Apprentice Wand / Claymore actually matters in terms of survivability.

The problem with Hydra is it pretty much scales in HP 1:1 per player. If a person isn't performing well, it puts more weight on the more capable player. With 3 players, it requires 3 players to be playing at a level capable enough to defeat the Hydra. It is possible for a very experienced player to carry 3~4 players, but it is going to take 1~4x as long as soloing the Hydras.

The boss itself is fine. The players need to learn how to learn.

 

[tkld178]

I have 210 hours, obviously mostly through arcade. I've also played story a bit, but I don't have any friends who have this so I don't do multiplayer(though I assume with my laptop that might not work out so well). Seeing as this game is the only game I like to play right now I will probably get a lot more too.

The hydras are the first hard boss on normal and on hard probably 3rd? boss you meet after sentry and gun-d4m that are actually hard. Gun-d4m might be a little difficult on normal but I'd say it does not really compare to the hydra fight. On normal it is the first fight that forces you to be patient and really learn the boss and pay attention to what it does. On hard gun-d4m and sentry also do this but still can't really compare to the hydras fight mainly because there are 3 of them and at almost any given time 2 are attacking and the 3rd is soon after preparing to come leaving limited time to attack along with the effects of one hydra typically on the field to complicate things.

One strategy is to get the frostling boots and keep it on winter and just be a little more careful and the fight becomes easier.

 

[The G-Meister]

I think they design they had in mind for the hydra fight was that each season got progressively more dangerous, until it was unbearable, and you had to switch. Winter is still by far the easiest, as there's some cheap spots where the beam doesn't hit. If you stand there and perfect guard the other two, the fight becomes a piece of cake. Managed to S rank it with no damage on my second fight there in Arcade.

 

[tkld178]

Winter is the weakest but that is if you can dodge, the frostling boots basically negate what he is but if you don't have them it can be a pain, especially if you are a mage build with low mobility it gets hard to attack and still be able to dodge everything. That and getting hit by the ice beam at the wrong time makes it impossible to dodge the others no matter your build.

I learned to do it with only winter because I did not really like dealing with the other seasons. I remember when I first did them and frostling boots got rid of and not just give you more control on ice.

I was just doing them on hard and they attack so fast, you get like 3 or 4 hits in before you have to dodge the next one or the beam. Perfect guard does nothing to them on hard, you get no extra time at all. Very challenging fight.

 

[The G-Meister]

If you perfect guard the heads, you knock them back instead of them knocking you back. With that in mind, as long as your guarding is up to scratch, you can take the whole fight with /beastmode on and still take no damage. As long as you know where to stand, you shouldn't need boots at all.

 

[tkld178]

It's sad to say but I'm not that great with the shield, so I just tend to ignore it and because i don't really practice with it I can't really rely on it so i just rely on moving out of the way. I should try to fix that at some point.

 

[The G-Meister]

The whole point of bees and the flying fortress is they get you to use the shield as a major mechanic, because that's what it is However, it doesn't look like the game's done a massively good job of this, otherwise you'd be using your shield more often. I guess there's some room for improvement somewhere then.

 

[tkld178]

Well for the bees I was using the 2h so I would whirlwind them or move to the side and attack them while they were low. I think I ended up forgetting there even was a shield for a bit. You also don't really need a shield on normal(which was my first play through) so I just never ended up relying on it. I should probably do a run where I only can perfect guard.

 

[The G-Meister]

I'm exactly the opposite - wherever I'm not using a perfect dodge to replace a perfect guard, I'm perfect guarding