How Long Does It Take To Beat Dragon Quest 11 On Switch?
A year after releasing on PC and PlayStation 4, Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Elusive Age has finally come to the Nintendo Switch. Of course, an upgrade to a JRPG isn't complete without an even longer title, so the Switch version of Square Enix's eleventh Dragon Quest adds a few extra words for good measure.
If you want DQ11 on Switch, you'll be looking for Dragon Quest 11 S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition. That's a long title. And do you know what else is long? The game itself.
We had to hold off a little bit to wait for additional reviews to come in, as it seems many who critiqued the updated version of Dragon Quest 11 for Switch had trouble getting through the game in its entirety. Fortunately, one outfit – The Mirror — finally did it, and provided us with a completion time we can now use to give you a sense of the game's length. Believe it or not, it does not appear that the Switch version of the title adds much time onto the campaign length of the original. So with that in mind, we actually feel comfortable referencing the original release for a completion time.
According to our voodoo math, it'll likely take you somewhere between 50 and 60 hours to complete Dragon Quest 11 on Switch.
The Mirror stated that the main story in Dragon Quest 11 S was a roughly "forty to fifty-hour" affair. And that actually comes pretty close to what most players reported for the original Dragon Quest 11 that released on PC and PS4 in 2018. The How Long to Beat average for DQ11 is 56 hours for the golden path campaign, which doesn't include side missions and extras. And given that the reviewer at The Mirror likely played the original, it makes sense then that they were able to complete the Switch version a little bit faster.
Of course, much like the 2018 release, you can greatly extend the amount of time you spend with Dragon Quest 11 on Switch if you so choose. On average, it takes completionists around 125 hours to see and do everything in Dragon Quest 11, and the Switch version — which supposedly adds dozens of hours of additional content — could raise that number even further. So you'll definitely get your money's worth out of Dragon Quest 11 on the Nintendo Switch if you care about your dollars-to-playtime ratio.
Otherwise, it looks like not much has changed in terms of how long a typical DQ11 playthrough will take you, whether it's the original release or the new Switch version. Expect to devote between 50 and 60 hours to the story in Dragon Quest 11 S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definite Edition. And curse Square Enix for making that title so ridiculous.