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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: how long to beat and how many quests

Giovanni Colantonio
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With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom out now, players are strapping in for what could be a long adventure. Breath of the Wild is a famously enormous game for completionists and its sequel is only bigger in that regard. Those who want to do everything there is to do in Hyrule might have a long road ahead of them.

But just how long much of your time can you expect Tears of the Kingdom to eat up? While that’ll depend entirely on individual playstyles, we have some rough data from our own playthrough that’ll give you an idea of how massive the open-world title is.

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How long is Tears of the Kingdom?

Link holds a Purah Pad in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The first thing to know is that Tears of the Kingdom is a bigger, longer game than its predecessor. It has more main story missions, plus two new extra areas to explore. That should set some immediate expectations. According to How Long to Beat, a main story-focused playthrough of Breath of the Wild ranges from 28 to 50 hours, meaning that Tears of the Kingdom will likely take a bit longer.

In my playthrough, I rolled credits at around 60 hours. That was with me completing around 100 shrines and only doing a small handful of side-quests initially. Though players can certainly speed through the game much, much faster, note that the game’s final boss battle is especially challenging. You’ll want all the hearts you can get to prepare for it, so rushing isn’t advised. Certain story quests can also be skipped entirely to get to the ending, but that’ll have a major impact on how difficult the ending stretch is.

The adventure can get much, much longer depending on how much you want to accomplish. If you’re looking to complete every shrine and light up each lightroot in the underground area, expect to spend closer to 100 hours playing.

A full 100% run is a lot harder to predict due to the massive number of side-quests available, plus extra exploration in the underground and the usual Korok seed hunt. How Long to Beat notes that Breath of the Wild can take up to 194 hours to fully complete and we already get the sense that Tears of the Kingdom will surpass that height. Expect to be playing for at least 200 hours if you want to do every single thing possible in Hyrule.

How many quests in Tears of the Kingdom?

Ganondorf screams in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

While time estimates are a little hard to predict for a game with so much freedom, there are some more straightforward metrics we can share. Here’s a breakdown of how many quests are in the game.

  • Main quests: 23
  • Side adventures: 60
  • Shrine quests: 31
  • Side-quests: 139

That list is significantly bigger than Breath of the Wild‘s checklist, which has 15 main quests and 76 side quests. You’ll see a staggering difference if you add both game’s quests up. Breath of the Wild has 133 and Tears of the Kingdom has a whopping 225. That might make a bit more sense of the sequel’s $70 price tag.

So don’t expect to blow through Tears of the Kingdom in a weekend, or even see the conclusion of its story in that time. You’ll want to set aside at least a month of dedicated playtime if you want to get your fill of it. Realistically, you’ll probably want to pluck away at it gradually through the rest of the year.

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Giovanni Colantonio
Giovanni Colantonio
Section Editor, Gaming
Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…
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All Passive Abilities

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Wind Razor
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