How long is Metroid Prime 4 Beyond? Time to beat explained

Samus stares at the camera in Metroid Prime 4 — (Image credit: Nintendo)

How long is Metroid Prime 4 Beyond? Well, it's time to beat shouldn't surpass more than a dozen hours for the majority of players, a surprisingly short experience for a modern AAA metroidvania. Metroid Prime 4 has been in development for a long time, but that doesn't mean there's some hundred-hour saga waiting for you, though playtimes will differ depending on what you hope to achieve. If you want to know more, here's the length and time to beat for Samus' latest adventure.

How long to beat Metroid Prime 4: Beyond?

Samus blows up a swarm of mechanical bugs in Metroid Prime 4 — (Image credit: Nintendo)

Metroid Prime 4 will take between 8-12 hours to complete the main campaign and story mode and 10-18 hours to 100% the game, i.e., finding all items, scans, collectibles and content.

This comes from our own Oscar Taylor-Kent, who has played through the game as part of our Metroid Prime 4 Beyond review, and can confirm those times directly. As a metroidvania game, there is inevitably a certain amount of backtracking and exploration inherent in Metroid Prime 4, and puzzles and challenging combat encounters that mean that your time to beat will vary somewhat. However, the time frames laid out above should cover the vast majority of players. This game itself was accused in our review of being guilty of a certain amount of padding too, such as in the need to farm all the Metroid Prime 4 Green Crystals.

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Samus scans a console in Metroid Prime 4 — (Image credit: Nintendo)

This is admittedly shorter than many players might be expecting, though it's in keeping with the franchise. Metroidvania games as a genre tend to be incredibly long in this day and age – 18 hours won't even get you through the first act of Silksong – but Metroid as a series has always been slimmer and smaller as experiences, which does make sense for a horror-adjacent game.

If you're going in for yourself, find out how to navigate the Metroid Prime 4 Volt Forge, the first truly challenging area of the game. Or check out how to get the Metroid Prime 4 Psychic Boots and unlock the double jump!

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.