How HowLongToBeat Helps You Decide If a Game Is Worth Buying

Updated

HowLongToBeat (hl2b.com) gives you community-submitted playtime estimates broken into three categories — Main Story, Main + Extra, and Completionist — so you can compare a game's time commitment against your available hours before spending money. It works best as a time-cost filter: if a 60-hour RPG won't fit your schedule, the site tells you that in seconds. It does not tell you whether a game is good, only how long it takes.

The three categories, and what each one answers

The site's own "How Game Cards Work" section defines them:

Category What it means Use it when
Main Story (Required) You complete main objectives, just enough to see the credits roll You want the shortest path through the game
Main + Extra You take your time, discover and complete additional non-required tasks You play at a normal pace and do some side content
Completionist (100%) Every achievement, medal, and unlockable You want to know the maximum time sink

A fourth figure, Combined, averages all play styles together.

The gap between categories is often the most useful number. On the site's popular games list, Red Dead Redemption 2 shows 51 hours for Main Story but 195 hours for Completionist — a 144-hour spread. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt runs 51½ hours main story versus 175 hours completionist. If you're a "finish the story and move on" player, the Main Story figure is your real budget, not the headline number people quote online.

How to use it for a purchase decision

  1. Look up the specific game on hl2b.com and read all three category times, not just the first one.
  2. Match the category to your actual play style. Be honest — if you always chase side quests, use Main + Extra, not Main Story.
  3. Convert hours into weeks. Divide by your realistic weekly playtime. A 46-hour Main + Extra game at 8 hours a week is roughly six weeks of your gaming time.
  4. Compare against alternatives. If two games cost similar amounts, the one with more hours per dollar may or may not be the better buy — a tight 13-hour game you finish beats a 100-hour game you abandon at hour 20.
  5. Check whether the game is worth it to you, which the site frames directly as "See if a potential game purchase is worth your hard earned money."

Reading the numbers critically

Playtime data is community-submitted, so treat it as a median, not a promise:

  • Small sample sizes skew results. Newly added games may show -- for some categories (as several Xbox Game Pass titles do on the homepage) because too few players have submitted times.
  • Your pace may differ. Difficulty settings, exploration habits, and whether you fast-travel all move the number.
  • The site updates constantly. Its homepage reports games added and updated in the last 48 hours, so figures for a recent release can shift significantly in the first weeks.
  • Completionist times are the least reliable for judging value unless you genuinely 100% games — most players never reach that number.

Beyond the time estimate

HowLongToBeat also lets you catalog your collection, import your Steam library, track a backlog, and compare your own times against other players. The backlog feature is the practical companion to the purchase question: it shows you the total hours already queued up, which is often the strongest argument against buying another 100-hour game right now.

Bottom line: use HowLongToBeat to answer "can I fit this game into my life, and what will it cost me in hours?" Use reviews, trailers, and genre preference to answer "will I enjoy it?" The site is a time-budget tool, not a quality score.