Metroid games have always encouraged a speedy completion rate, with multiple endings and other rewards based on your time, how many items you collected, or, in some cases, how few. It will take some testing to unlock all of Metroid Dread’s secrets, but for our review, I have two in-game logs to report:
- Metroid Dread took 11 hours to beat with 82% completion
- Metroid Dread took 13 hours to beat with 100% completion
The completion rate includes the many optional missile tanks, E-tanks to extend your life gauge, and other expansions. But there are caveats. First off, the completion times do not include time spent on pause screens. According to the Switch’s Parental Controls app, I’ve spent 23 hours playing Metroid Dread, achieving 100% completion. Why does that matter? Because the in-game map is on the pause screen, and you can spend a lot of time there solving puzzles.
Another caveat: The in-game completion screens also don’t include the time you spent before a Game Over screen. So if you fight a boss battle a few times, none of those attempts will be logged in your completion time until you beat the boss and save again. But there’s a caveat to these caveats, as the reviewer, I was also pausing to write my review and take notes — although I don’t think that added more than an hour to my count since I would put my system to sleep, effectively stopping the Parental Control clock most of the time.
From these two stats you can hopefully get a sense of game length, but how does that fit in with previous Metroids? According to our sister site, How Long to Beat, here are the stats for 100% completion:
- Metroid: Zero Mission – 4.5 hours to beat, 7.5 hours to 100%
- Metroid Fusion – 5 hours to beat, 8 hours to 100%
- Metroid – 6 hours to beat, 7.5 hours to 100%
- Super Metroid – 7.5 hours to beat, 9 hours to 100%
- Metroid Prime – 14 hours to beat, 18 hours to 100%
- Metroid: Samus Returns 11 hours to beat, 15 hours to 100%
You can go to How long to Beat and search “Metroid” to see even more games and stats for the series. The stats for Metroid Dread are just starting to roll in on How Long to Beat, so give them a few days for accuracy.
So how does Dread measure up? It seems to measure up with the longer Metroid games, including Metroid Prime and Metroid: Samus Returns. Check out our Metroid Dread review if you want to learn more before diving back into the cold reaches of space.