This is definitely one of the games that took a huge amount of my time, considering I had to stop to translate text pretty damn often. It took me about 6-7 months (just shy of the US release) to fully complete the game on my own with the good ending. I know my final play time was around 100 something hours. For a game to hold my interest for that long, it HAS to be something special, because I can honestly say that I have a short attention span when it comes to games I don't find interesting. Like most RPGs though, it does have it's really boring "I never wanna play through this part again" points. The fighting doesn't get tedious, since it's not random encounters.