The developers of Final Fantasy 16 revealed that it will take players roughly 35 hours to beat the game’s story and 70-80 hours to do everything else alongside it.
In an interview with Famitsu (translated by Twitter user @aitaikimochi), director Hiroshi Takai and producer Naoki Yoshida said they thought out the play time for Final Fantasy 16’s story mode to take into account that gamers have busy lives outside of video games, so they wrote it in a way that allows players to do just the bare minimum if they’re too busy to do any side quests. The team aimed for 20 hours at first, but the extra content they put into it brought the story time to 35 hours.
“When the game development was just starting out, I had the idea in mind that gamers these days are really busy with other things, so I wanted them to be able to at least aim to complete the story,” Yoshida said. “I thought making the game something you can complete in about 20 hours would make sense, but more and more just got packed in.”
“[Final Fantasy 16] is a story-driven game that will take you on a roller coaster trip,” Takai said. “You’ll see the entirety of Clive’s way of life, and the game will probably take about 35 hours to clear. If we include side content, it’ll be double that amount.”
By “double that amount,” Takai means that the gameplay time for side content is between 70 and 80 hours, depending on how much players take on — and there is a lot to do. To hit the max playtime Yoshida and Takai referenced, players will need to complete side quests, max out abilities, acquire all the accessories, and complete every monster hunt.
In addition to the story mode and side quests, there will also be the New Game+ mode dubbed Final Fantasy Mode, which will allow players to carry over stats from the previous game file to the new one. The difficulty level for Final Fantasy Mode looks to be the equivalent of Proud Mode in Kingdom Hearts, meaning it will take you even longer to beat everything. And for players who want even more, there will be a leaderboard allowing folks to compete with other players around the world.
Final Fantasy 16 will be released June 22. For more, check out our hands-on preview with the game, or what we know about Final Fantasy 16’s world.
Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications, including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions, and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.
