Games

Portal

I 100% Tunic in 15 hours. I expected it to be longer and harder, considering it's not even in a real language and you have to translate it to solve most of the puzzles.

Nethack.

The first few dozen times I played it, it felt like it took forever to get anywhere. The most recent time I played, it felt quick and easy to get to the bottom. (I got stuck on something, though, and haven't been able to continue past the valley of the dead.)

Going back a ways here with Castlevania: Symphony of The Night. It seems like a fairly fleshed out game as it is when you get to the “final” boss but then you read a guide and find out “ending A” is only half of the game

Fallout 4. The amount of world exploration and itty bitty stuffs almost makes me lost myself in exploration, even though the story can be really short depending how you progress the content. On my first playthrough, I clocked at ~90hrs of play time and only just passed the 1/4 of story progression just because I sucked in sidequest and exploration.

Never thought I enjoyed the base building and assisting settlements aspects, Bethesda did great job on Visual storytelling speaking as Interplay/Obsidian Fallout fan.

Another case is STALKER Anomaly mod which can gives you theoritical endless playtime as long as you creative to build your own CYOA Stalker story. Though I don't recommend Anomaly if you're looking for the STALKER lore (as they're fan project) and should be treated as post-vanilla playthrough.

Final Fantasy 12

I had just come off of FFX while running through all the FF games that I could. With FF12, I got to a point where I had a solid amount of freedom and did a bunch of side quests and stuff. Then the next portion of the story takes you to this mountain, and I thought, ah cool, this looks like "new base" material. They lay out new information about the plot and then the next stop is to assault an air ship.

Kick ass, I think. This is probably roughly the story equivalent of the assault on Bevelle from FFX, you go in, fight your way through, a cinematic happens and the thrust of the story changes, new info drops, motivations change and are renewed just like in FFX.

Nope. You get to the boss on that ship, it's some dude you have little to no investment in fighting. You kick his ass, he transforms, easy fight, and the game just ends.

I sat in actual open mouthed disbelief. There was no way the game ended there, at what I felt was dramatically and game time wise to be the obvious mid point. And yet, there the credits rolled.

I was so disappointed.

Maybe not the length of the main campaign, but good luck 100%ing Cartherine, holy shit. Nevermind Full Body. There's like 8 endings combined + insane challenges and 64-stage game within the game. +100 hours easy, if not more.

Celeste. I was not expecting the core and farewell

No matter how much I've played it, I don't think I've ever got past half of the campaign of Sacred.

Now playing Elden Ring and even if I'm just starting out I'm constantly surprised by the amount of stuff in the world, most of which I only discovered the second or third time I visited the area it's in.

Miitopia. I wasn't expecting more worlds from such a simple game. I really enjoyed it though.

Universal Paperclip, was expexting day, weeks or more of gameplay and there were 4-5 hours of good gameplay. It was perfect.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

I knew it was a jrpg from the beginning, but the way the stories unfolded and piled up had me confused. There was a new question every chapter and it just bwcqme bigge and bigger. Awesome game

Astlibra: Revision

I'd put a conservative minimum first playtime at 60 hours... For slower, completionist, players? 80-100 hours.

If that first playthrough is on the impossible setting?... I don't wanna think about it. Lmao

Dragon's Dogma 2. IYKYK

Biggest surprise for length was Dragon Quest VII, the PSX version. Started playing it close to release, dropped it several times and finally finished it years later.

I'd played multiple games in the series before and I think the longest one topped out at 40 hours, so I really was not expecting a 100+ hour marathon like that was (although the very, very long prologue should probably have served as a warning).

I remember being surprised by Lufia 2 rise of the sinistrals. It was my first RPG other than a Zelda type game as a kid.

I never expected A Girl Who Chants Love At the Bound of This World: YUNO on the PC98 to take me like 80 hours to complete without a guide.

XCom2 the content just DOES NOT END.

And MGS Peacewalker. How they cramed so much stuff unto the tiny PSP disk is beyond me. The list of unlockables is insane.

Duck Detective. Charming game, but quite short.

Drakenguard 3, Nier.