If you want a good short SRPG try Luminous Arc from Atlus, I'm like 15 hours in and I'm almost at the final boss. For an SRPG it's got a lot of character development and it's pretty fun too. The only real downside I can see is that you start to become so attached to the characters it becomes increasingly harder to choose only 8 characters for each battle.
Well I haven't blamed them for anything since their second G4 forced set change.
BTW: Makai Kingdom is awesome too. It took Phantom Brave's no grid system and fixed it.