How long is The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom? The length of TOTK varies from a few hours to whole weeks or months depending on how you play, with massive amounts of quests, content, secrets, stories and more besides all spread across, above and under Hyrule! Getting 100% completion is something that will take you a very long time, but that's not necessarily reflective of a standard playthrough - Tears of the Kingdom isn't one of those games where you can beat the main story and find you're only a couple of side quests away from having the whole thing done, this is one of those games that's pretty much all side content, with only about two missions - the tutorial and the final boss - that you technically have to complete. I'll explain in more detail below as we cover the thorny question: how long to beat Zelda Tears of the Kingdom?
Zelda Tears of the Kingdom length and how to long to beat explained
- Just Story: 45-55 hours
- Standard Playthrough (story plus some side quests): 55-70 hours
- 100% Completion: 100+ hours
- Speedrun: Under 5 hours
Clearly these are some pretty big - and pretty variable - numbers, but having played the game to the end ourselves, we'll explain it all below.
Just Story: The story of Tears of the Kingdom itself is a big one, spanning the whole of the game map, with many dungeons, bosses and secrets to uncover. To do all the main quests that lead up to the final confrontation, plus the minimum amount of necessary side content, we estimate as taking between 45-55 hours, maybe lower if you're an incredibly skilled player.
Standard Playthrough: A standard playthrough will probably be somewhere between 55 and 70 hours, though could be a lot longer, as we consider that to be "all the main quests plus enough side content and exploration to never feel underleveled". Again, that number will shift depending on individual skill and how empowered you want to be for the essential stuff and just how much fun you're having!
100% Completion: If you want to do everything in Tears of the Kingdom, that'll take an incredibly long time - 100 hours at a minimum, and probably much longer. There's a huge amount of content in this game, from the hundreds of hidden Korok seeds you'll bring to the iconic Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Hestu character, to finding all of the Bubbul Gems, and more besides. That hundred hours is frankly a low-ball estimate - you should probably expect to be closer to 150 hours by the time you've exhausted it all, unless you're pretty efficient and have a lot of walkthroughs to hand.
Speedrun: If you want to reach the end credits as fast as possible, like in Breath of the Wild, you can head to the final boss of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom straight away after completing the tutorial and finding all the Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Sky Island Shrines. Admittedly the game won't tell you where the final boss is until you complete the main quests, but they are still there and you can still reach them early to complete the game whenever you want. This is the hardest option, but it is feasible - so those with supreme Zelda skill will be able to beat this massive game in under five hours, having seen almost none of it along the way.
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