Final Fantasy XVI is in some ways a radical departure from the hit Square Enix RPG series’ past and in other ways pulls from its rich history to create a very old-school feeling adventure. So where does it fall in the pantheon of Final Fantasy game lengths? The answer is somewhere in the middle.
According to a poll of just over a dozen current players over at How Long To Beat, players who mainline the story can finish in just over 20 hours if they rush it, but it’s more likely to take around 30 hours on average. Dabbling in some of the game’s side quests and special monster hunts will take a bit longer — somewhere around 40-45 hours. And a completionist playthrough ramps things up even more, with two players reporting a 100 per cent run taking around 65 hours.
That lines up with what Final Fantasy XVI reviewers have been saying as well. Kotaku’s reviewer tried to do everything and hit the 70 hour mark. Three IGN staff writers hit 29, 40, and 60 hours respectively, with the middle person doing about 25 optional side quests and a handful of the game’s special hunts. Square Enix’s own developers previously suggested a regular playthrough would take 35-40 hours while a completionist run would take between 70-80, a pretty conservative estimate in hindsight.
So where does this rank Final Fantasy XVI compared to other games in the series? Final Fantasy XV was a brisk 28 hours for the main story but over 50 for a more leisurely playthrough, while Final Fantasy XIII was nearly 50 hours for the main story and over 100 for a completionist playthrough. That’s fairly consistent, with the seeming exception being that Final Fantasy XVI’s endgame might not have that last item or boss that requires an endless grind to obtain or beat.
In fact, most early Final Fantasy games were quite short, combining in around 20 hours for the main playthrough and 30 hours for the completionist run. It wasn’t until Final Fantasy VI that the games started really blowing up in length with longer stories and lots more additional side content. Of course, Final Fantasy XVI is still only a week old, and as more players log their times to beat the game it’s likely we’ll see its overall run time increase a bit once the sample size is bigger.
For now, it looks like a shorter game by traditional RPG standards but still a long one compared to action adventures like God of War: Ragnarök. And only 11 of those hours are cutscenes.
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