Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (2004, PC remaster 2014), time taken: 75.5 hours over a one month period.
I have to say, I really enjoyed this game, which was a big surprise to me as I'd never played a jRPG before and I normally don't last very long at all in games where the enemies respawn when you re-enter an area. So on two counts the game has taken on two of my biggest RPG phobias and won through with fanfares and a ticker tape parade.
Which is amazing considering the game only really has two main gameplay elements, a railroaded story with barely any room for choice or consequence, and combat, lots and lots of turn-based combat against a whole host of different enemy types. You can find yourself an hour later in what seems like minutes just from clicking conversational speech bubbles one moment and an hour later from simply walking a few meters and engaging in five or six combat encounters.
However there is more to the game than just that, anyone who says "that's all there is" is vastly underselling the different things you do in the game from moment to moment. It does have puzzles, not many, just a couple or so, but they're in the form of riddles and I had no clue and they both beat me completely. I used a walkthrough for the first & then felt a sense of willing submission for the second & let the game go on without completing it. Both of these toughies are completely optional, just as are some of the more puzzle-like quests.
There are interesting dungeons to explore, both optional and required. The optional ones are more like Wizard's Towers that you gradually ascend to find great optional loot, whereas the required ones still contain lots of optional areas that are worth exploring. As the game progresses some even benefit from getting out your pen and paper to map them, which is always a good sign. They're not massive & obtuse, just complicated enough to give your natural memory and sense of direction a good work out.
There's also food items you both find and buy. These can be converted into pack-lunches and dinners via a recipe system which converts your food into a gigantic variety of healing potions, in addition to the game's normal healing potion variety. I was playing on normal difficulty and so never really used them, but I can see how on harder difficulties people might like to take more advantage of them.
There's also a fishing mini-game at one point, which made for a very nice break from main game, and it comes at almost exactly the half-way point, so sort of like a little intermission.
And it's all the little things, many, many little things that are all great and all numerous which all add up to the sum that is greater than it's parts. The incredible detail of the art, where every house you go in is as finely detailed as a hobbyist's scale model even if that location has no in-game value at all. The incredible detail given to each and every NPC, even the random street walkers each have their own line/s of dialogue that are unique to them and their situation, and will even change as each plot-progression occurs, even if that NPC has no in-game value at all.
The writing itself has genuine soul. At first I really didn't like what I was seeing with the characters, "here come the horrific cliches, OMG, am I really going to have to put up with these people all game!!??", but no, they are not cardboard stereotypes, they are all people with carefully defined characters, plot-arcs and barrels of emotion. At some point everything just clicks and the usual situation is reversed, no longer is one excusing the mostly bad writing with moments of magic, one is excusing the rarely bad cringey moments by no longer caring about them in the sea of quality.
The combat can get repetitive occasionally and although the game does permit grinding there's no great incentive to grind and no combat encounter types really outstay their welcome, even if a couple here and there do come close. I tried to defeat each available enemy at least once and rarely did I have to repeat any encounters and I didn't need any additional grinding to comfortably beat the game on normal difficulty and even here I probably took on more encounters than I needed to.
So, with nothing dramatically negative to say, would I give this game a solid 10/10? Of course not. Is it a perfect cRPG? Of course not. Is it one of the best games I've ever played? Sure is. Is it good at being a cRPG? Very nearly, but not quite. As is the usual curse of story-driven games, it denies one the ability to have a character creation screen. Further to that one can't even use a different weapon. In fact, all weapon and equipment upgrades are a matter of simply upgrading the numbers on each item via a new identical item with better stats and a different name. You will never have a flaming sword, just a sword with a higher base value. And you'll never have the choice of convering to two-handers or to ranged etc.
Like most good games, and good RPGs, it focuses really hard on what it's good at and simply jettisons those aspects which it can't do. What it does it does at a good 9 to 10 out of 10. What it lacks cannot be quantified by a score, it can merely be mentioned as a lack.
Upon finishing the game I was given the chance to save my game-state upon completion, which I did, as you can start the second part of the epic trilogy from the exact character build and a few story/gameplay choices that you ended the first with, which, again, shows the huge and positive dedication to detail which went into these games and I for one will be playing the second part at some point in the near future, life willing.