HBO’s incredible The Last of Us series has clearly generated renewed interest in The Last of Us games. Sales of The Last of Us game are up, and many fans of the show are wondering if it’s worth playing through the games as they watch the series (or possibly after). Of course, that renewed interest has also led to more people wondering just how long it takes to beat The Last of Us games.
As always, the answer to that question does depend on a few factors. Most notably, those who may not have as much experience with more modern games (or those who try to play the games with higher difficulty settings enabled) will naturally spend more time with the games than some other players will. Ultimately, most people wondering how long it takes to play the games really want to know how much time they should expect to set aside for them. There’s no universal answer to that question, though we can offer some hopefully helpful estimates.
Generally speaking, it will take most players about 15 hours to beat The Last of Us (or the PS5 remake, The Last of Us Part 1). For comparison’s sake, there will be nine hour-long (roughly) episodes of The Last of Us HBO show. If you’re hoping to trim your Last of Us playthrough down to around that 10-hour mark, you’ll need to crank the game’s difficulty down to the lowest possible settings and consider utilizing an online walkthrough to help you clear any progression hurdles. That’s even easier to do with The Last of Us Part 1 PS5 remake, which offers a difficulty option intended for absolute beginners as well as additional difficulty modifier options.
The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Remastered also include The Last of Us: Left Behind DLC adventure. That DLC extends the base campaign’s runtime by about 3-4 hours. So while you could trim down your Last of Us playtime even further by tracking down the DLC-free PS3 version of the base game, that probably won’t be a realistic option for many people. Besides, Left Behind is truly exceptional as well as an important piece of The Last of Us mythology. Based on previews of the HBO series, it also certainly seems like we can expect to see the events of that DLC play out in the show.
