When a game truly grabs players, it’s only natural to wish it lasted for hours on end. Fortunately, some devs pack so much content into their games, primarily open-world titles or RPGs, that even the main story alone can easily take over 50 hours to beat. Brimming with adventures, characters to meet, battles to endure, and events to live through, the longest games out there are as lasting as they are memorable.
Longest Open-World Games
Even the most sophisticated gamer will be bewildered by the sheer scale of these games. These are the open-world games that take the longest to beat.
Below, we’re looking at some of the longest main stories ever made in the realm of single-player games, ones that allow sticking with just one game for over a hundred hours. For this, the focus is strictly on main story length, excluding any optional content, and prioritizing titles with relatively general player polls from HowLongToBeat for better accuracy. On top of that, only single-player games (one per series for best variety) with traditional, fixed narrative campaigns are eligible, meaning no MMOs, sandbox, simulator games, or anything like that. With all that out of the way, here are the single-player games with the longest main story campaigns.
10 The Last Remnant
Main Story: 63 Hours
Square Enix’s attempt to modernize its JRPG roots, The Last Remnant, arguably didn’t live up to its ambitious goal of becoming a respectable successor to Final Fantasy, but it represents an important cornerstone of the genre, with a truly lengthy main quest. Following a brave hero looking for his missing sister amid a secret war over magical Remnants, players are immersed in a highly cinematic personal journey across the world of Eulam for over 60 hours, with dozens of extra hours for side quests and activities.
The Last Remnant is quite unusual in its structure, with story beats delivered in short bursts, surrounded by large stretches of battle encounters and mandatory guild tasks that seemingly slow down the pace of the main quest, which not everyone appreciates. As a result, the entire campaign feels rather segmented and disconnected, rather than offering the familiar, steady narrative momentum found in more traditional JRPGs.
9 Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Main Story: 63 Hours
The more fragmented and experimental Xenoblade Chronicles X aside, the rest of the series, including Xenoblade Chronicles 3, represents the classic JRPG narrative set in a breathtaking world of Aionios. Xenoblade Chronicles games proudly stand among the biggest open-world JRPGs available, with equally generous main story offerings that take over 60 hours to complete, and even more open-world content that dedicated fans can continue to unravel for months, enjoying exciting hybrid combat and a rewarding liberation layer.
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Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is one of the most narratively cohesive entries, with a lean, continuous plot to make The Last Remnant blush, revolving around groups of heroes trying to end the endless world. This allows for a multi-perspective journey, complete with emotional character development and deep philosophical themes amid the ultimate quest to search for truth.
8 Metaphor: ReFantazio
Main Story: 65 Hours
Metaphor: ReFantazio is a large-scale RPG saga in the best sense of the word, rich in events, themes, characters, and conflicts — yet even this game doesn’t hold a candle to the Persona games’ length. Still, just to get an understanding of what players are getting into, ReFantazio’s epic tale is so enormous that the game’s prologue alone takes longer than some full 10-hour-long games. The main campaign takes around 65 hours on average, taking players on a journey across the entire kingdom of Euchronia in a quest to lift the ancient curse, gradually unlocking new routes to previously unavailable places, cities, and regions.
Inspired by several recognizable elements from Atlus’s previous games, including a calendar-driven narrative for major events, Metaphor: ReFantazio adopts an approach blending action-heavy dungeon-crawling segments with more peaceful exploration of large cities and getting to know their inhabitants, all with a distinct day-night cycle and classic turn-based combat.
7 Divinity: Original Sin
Main Story: 67 Hours
Before its colossal success with Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian created its more budget-conscious predecessors with the Original Sin games, which might not be as cinematic and polished but offer comparable CRPG depth and reactive worlds from an isometric perspective. With its classic exploration-driven structure, Divinity: Original Sin is a very sizable adventure, one that easily takes inexperienced players well over 70 hours to complete its main objectives alone.
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Set in the realm of Rivellon, Divinity: Original Sin’s main story isn’t as central to progression as, say, Baldur’s Gate 3’s, with much of the playtime spent in sandbox problem-solving rather than linear story-driven sequences. Still, with plenty of choice-driven investigations, branching quests, and complex battles bolstered by environmental reactivity, it remains a tale well worth experiencing not just for those curious about Larian’s earlier legacy.
6 Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
Main Story: 68 Hours
Following in the footsteps of the Pathfinder CRPGs, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader offers the same fairly traditional and recognizable narrative flow, backed by freedom in exploration, decision-making, and chapter-style progression. Rogue Trader’s campaign can be completed in roughly 70 hours, but fans of the Warhammer 40k universe can expect more than double the playtime if they aim to see and do everything.
Just as in the Pathfinder games or Baldur’s Gate 3, complex turn-based combat takes a large portion of overall playtime in Rogue Trader, but that doesn’t mean the game is light on decision-making, building alignments and alliances, or even realm management akin to Kingmaker. After all, the adventure in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader unfolds across the multitude of systems in the Koronus Expanse, brimming with danger, adventures, and dark revelations.
5 Baldur’s Gate 3
Main Story: 72 Hours
One of the most traditional, cinematic, and sprawling games of such enormous length, Baldur’s Gate 3 is so big it could keep players entertained for months, especially if they’re in no rush, exploring everything on offer. The game’s main campaign alone can easily take 80 hours or more, thanks to its slow-paced combat and abundant dialogue at every step around Faerûn and its Sword Coast region, as players try to rid themselves of their Mind Flayer tadpole parasite.
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Even for hardcore RPG fans, each of these massive titles can easily keep players hooked for at least a month.
In the realm of CRPGs of comparable scope and ambition, few can hold a candle to Baldur’s Gate 3. With its tight narrative progression, clear act structure, and perfect mix of old-fashioned mechanics and modern execution, Baldur’s Gate 3 offers a reactive world, lively characters, and a choice-based approach to storytelling, meaning players can experience wildly different playthroughs every time they restart their adventure.
4 Record of Agarest War
Main Story: 74 Hours
Record of Agarest War is a fairly unique blend of Final Fantasy Tactics-style RPG and strategy, boasting an unusual multi-generational narrative. The reason the game’s “main story” takes 70 to 80 hours on average is its lineage layer, known as the “Soul Breed” system, which requires players to constantly develop lasting relationships throughout each of the five chapters, birthing heirs who inherit stats and abilities from their parents based on players’ choices and continue the story from their perspective.
While Record of Agarest War is positioned almost like a dating sim, such a description is a bit misleading, as the dating aspect isn’t as large or important in the grand scheme of things. Instead, it’s merely a neat trick to deliver a continuous storyline across multiple generations on the continent of Kraltarla. Still, it’s hardly a traditional RPG narrative and more like a saga rarely offered in the gaming medium, so players willing to give it a go should adjust their expectations accordingly.
3 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Main Story: 76 Hours
It’s hard to imagine a relatively modern CRPG that feels as true to the genre’s pillars as Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The game’s faithful approach to almost every aspect might even be too much for some players, as it caters to patient gameplay, yet old-school RPG fans would probably feel right at home.
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Open-world games often boast a lengthy completionist time, but even the genre standard pales in comparison to these lengthy 100+ hour campaigns.
With an epic narrative with clear chapters set amid the so-called Stolen Lands in the River Kingdoms, Kingmaker’s main story is notably longer than that of Wrath of the Righteous, which prioritizes side content instead. In large part, Pathfinder: Kingmaker owes its colossal length to the kingdom management layer, which enriches its traditional, continuous journey-based narrative. On the other hand, because of this, Kingmaker’s main story may feel a bit dragged out, with too much politics involved rather than the exciting adventures some players might expect.
2 Dragon Quest 7: Fragments of the Forgotten Past
Main Story: 78 Hours
Dragon Quest 7: Fragments of the Forgotten Past is easily the longest in the classic, long-running JRPG series, using an anthology format to deliver a sweeping epic story that feels like several standalone mini-campaigns. Following the main path without distractions, players can expect the game to last almost 80 hours, interspersing combat encounters and Kingdom of Estard exploration episodes between the classic RPG narrative beats.
With its unusual, fragmented narrative structure (which is aptly reflected in its naming), Fragments of the Forgotten Past is built around isolated, self-contained arcs in different time periods. The Dragon Quest series is known for its conservative approach to storytelling, so nothing too unusual here; fans can rest assured that even with its slightly different angle, Dragon Quest 7’s timeless hero’s journey on a quest against the ancient evil will be told in the most satisfying way.
1 Persona 5
Main Story: 98 Hours
Here it is — probably the longest single-player narrative-driven game ever, or at least one of them, for sure. Even before Persona 5, Atlus delivered some truly sprawling Persona games capable of taking players into another world for dozens of hours. With Persona 5, the studio’s arguably best game to date, Atlus managed to outshine every other epic JRPG before it, with a main story alone clocking in at around the 100-hour mark.
Set in modern-day Japan, Persona 5 follows the series’ signature calendar structure, where each school day plays out separately, with main events divided over a full year. As such, the game stands as a neat mix of action-based dungeon crawling and a life-sim narrative of sorts. With its continuous adventure centered on Joker and the members of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts as they explore the mysterious realm of the Metaverse, Persona 5 is also highly segmented by design, but that never bothered true JRPG fans.
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