How long is Baldur’s Gate 3? The cRPG from Larian Studios is finally out of early access, with the whole game available to enjoy at last. With everyone (us-included) prepared to pour our lives into this game for the next few weeks at least, you may well be wondering how long the BG3 playtime is. After all, this is a seriously big RPG, with many hours of quests to complete, dialogue to engage in, and layers of depth to uncover.
To some extent, asking how long Baldur’s Gate 3 is is like asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’. If you just want to blitz through the main story, then you’re going to get a very different answer than if you’re taking your time completing every quest, talking to every NPC, getting to know all the Baldur’s Gate 3 companions and even encountering all of the many BG3 romances.
There’s also the fact that with its numerous choices which change the content you see, BG3 has a ton of replay value. Not to mention the fact that all the different Baldur’s Gate 3’s classes provide very different gameplay experiences, providing even more longevity to the game through repeat playthroughs. Needless to say, Baldur’s Gate 3’s playtime can go on for 200 hours if you want it to, and we haven’t even considered how you might play Baldur’s Gate 3 co-op to extend your time with the game.
So Baldur’s Gate 3 will be different lengths for different players, but the most concrete answer we can give is that Baldur’s Gate 3 playtime is between 75 to 100 hours. That’s the answer provided by Larian head Swen Vincke, anyway, who told IGN this was the average figure.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is split into three acts. During early access, only Act 1 was available, and this tended to take around 30-40 hours to complete, so that roughly tracks with a 100-hour playthrough. In actual fact, the later acts seem to be a little shorter than Act 1 – which has a lot of introductory set-up to push you through. Nonetheless, each act is packed to the brim with things to do.
Vincke says that players who take their time in Baldur’s Gate 3, and want to experience everything the game has to offer, will more likely take around 200 hours to complete it. A community update from Larian last month boasts that the game features 174 hours of cinematics, over twice the length of the whole of Game of Thrones (and hopefully with a better ending).
It also has three times more words of cinematic dialogue than is found in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If you’re not a cutscene-skipper (an act we don’t recommend for this story-focused game) that’s going to add a considerable number of hours to your BG3 playtime.
A final note. While most players spent a few dozen hours getting through Act 1 of Baldur’s Gate 3 while the game was in early access, the speed running community found it was possible, through exploiting the ‘Jump’ mechanic, to scoot on through in under six minutes. If it’s still doable in the final game, the fastest possible length to complete Baldur’s Gate 3 may be well under an hour.
We’re thoroughly cataloguing this DnD game, because – as our Baldur’s Gate 3 review testifies – it’s worth it. That means we can teach you the best Baldur’s Gate 3 feats or the BG3 max level, and we can even help you get to grips with Baldur’s Gate 3’s Mind Flayer powers.