Are you wondering how long is Horizon Forbidden West? Depending on the chosen playstyle and how many side activities you do it can vary between 12-30 hours.
Horizon Forbidden West story took me 12 hours playtime to beat.
That playthrough was on the lowest difficulty focusing purely on story without doing any side tasks, excluding time of cutscenes and dialogues. With cutscenes and dialogues it’s around 20 hours on the lowest difficulty. This is for a “speedrun” type of playstyle, trying to get through it as fast as possible and not doing anything outside of the main story. There are 17 Main Quests, each one taking around 30-60 minutes (around 40 minutes average).
That’s 17 Quests x 40 Minutes = 12 Hours for all quests.
Horizon Forbidden West Story Length Estimates:
- 11-15 Hours Speedrun on Story Difficulty, skipping all Dialogue & Cutscenes, ignoring all side activities. Applicable to Speedrunners who skip everything.
- 20-25 Hours on Story Difficulty, listening to all dialogue and cutscenes, a little bit of exploration (~30% completion). Applicable to fast players who focus primarily on the story.
- Around 30-35 Hours on Normal Difficulty, doing a moderate amount of side activities along the way. This is how most players will enjoy the game and what will be applicable to most.
- 35 Hours+ on Hard or Very Hard (highly skill-dependent), would also require doing most side activities to level up so you stand a chance.
On story difficulty most machines can be defeated in a single hit with a legendary weapon, but on higher difficulties the machines have much more health and it will take a lot more preparation and strategy to defeat them. You’d have to do basically all side activities to level up and get crafting resources.
100% Completion / Platinum Trophy / 1000 Gamerscore:
- Platinum Trophy / 1000 Gamerscore takes 30 Hours, playing on Story difficulty and doing only trophy-related side quests – this estimate assumes you play on the lowest difficulty, follow guides for everything, save side tasks for after the story (you get a flying mount at the end that makes traversal faster), and do only what is mandatory for trophies. The platinum trophy requires about 50% overall game completion. If you skip all cutscenes / dialogues and rush through it as fast as possible it’s doable in about 22-25 hours. If you play on Normal difficulty it can take around 40 Hours, potentially up to 50 Hours if doing a lot more Side Tasks than needed for Trophies or playing on higher difficulties.
- To get 100% Completion in Horizon Forbidden West it takes about 50-60 Hours, playing on Story difficulty – this estimate assumes you play on the lowest difficulty “story difficulty”, follow guides for everything, and play at a relatively fast pace. The platinum trophy requires 50% completion and takes about 30 hours so you can multiply that time x2 for 100% completion. You’d have to do every single side quest, collectible, scan every sub-variant of every machine (their spawns are somewhat randomized so it requires farming them over and over again).
After the story you can still free-roam around the map and do any unfinished side quests, collectibles and other points of interest. The only missable thing is scanning the Specter & Specter Prime machines because they are quest-related and don’t have open world spawns (quests cannot be replayed). Other than that you can still find all machines and do everything else after the story.
How long did it take you to finish the Horizon Forbidden West story or to gain 100% completion / platinum / 1000 Gamerscore? Leave your times in the comments below.
For everything needed to 100% completion, check out our full Horizon Forbidden West Wiki & Strategy Guide.
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