How long is Baldur’s Gate 3? Main story length & completionist run

Jessica Filby
Baldur's Gate 3 story

There’s no doubt that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive game packed full of companions to meet, multiclass builds to try, and hostile enemies to battle.

With a huge chunk of Faerûn to explore, you’ll want to know exactly how much time you can sink into the game in a single playthrough — so here’s a breakdown of how much time the main questline and a completionist run will set you back.

How long does BG3 take to beat?

According to HowLongToBeat, Baldur’s Gate 3 takes around 113 hours on average to beat.

The main campaign is sizeable but if you delve into a good amount of side quests, and additional activities you’ll easily clear the 100-hour milestone.

Main Questline length

If you’d prefer to just experience the main questline in Baldur’s Gate 3, you’ll be spending closer to 68 hours with the RPG.

There are three acts throughout the campaign overall, as well as a short prologue at the start of the game. Acts 1, 2, and 3 are all huge in scope compared to the opening prologue, which is why the playtime is so sizeable even when you ignore side quests.

Completionist playthrough

If you really want to experience every single thing Baldur’s Gate 3 has to offer, though, you’re looking at about 163 hours of journeying through The Forgotten Realms.

A Steam screenshot featuring Baldur's Gate 3 playtime.
You can put hundreds of hours into Baldur’s Gate 3.

With the average length of the main campaign, that means there are almost 100 hours of side content to experience, including quests for the different companions that you can do to increase your bonds with your party members.

None of these are required to finish the main story, but they’re well worth experiencing as you’ll get plenty of loot, unique rewards, and experience for doing so.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s playtime compared to other RPGs

Baldur’s Gate 3 undoubtedly has one of the longer playtimes when compared to other RPGs on the market, although some competitors overtake it when it comes to completionist hours.

We’ve provided a breakdown of how its playtime stacks up next to some competitors in the graph below:

A custom graph comparing Baldur's Gate 3 completionist hours to competitors.

As the graph above shows, BG3 easily overtakes Cyberpunk 2077 and Dragon Age: Inquisition when it comes to completionist playtime.

The Witcher 3 and Skyrim rival its length much more, however. It can take 170+ hours to complete The Witcher 3, and over 200 to finish everything in Skyrim.

That’s all there is to know about how long Baldur’s Gate 3 is. For more on the game, check out our build guides for the Monk, Wizard, Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue.

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