How Long is Kirby and the Forgotten Land?

Part of what gives Kirby games their universal appeal is that they’re very adaptable to your gameplay preferences. If you just want a quick, leisurely adventure, a Kirby game can totally be that for you, but if you want some additional content that may take a bit of skill and lab time to figure out, it’s got that as well. This is also true for Kirby and the Forgotten Land, as it can be both a quick and cuddly adventure (at least until the last stretch), or you can get really deep into the nitty-gritty of it. So, exactly how long is Kirby and the Forgotten Land?

How Long is Kirby and the Forgotten Land?

If you’d like a quick breakdown of potential time scales, here’s what your playthrough may look like, time-wise:

• Bare minimum story content: 8 hours
• Typical story content and side content: 10 hours
• Typical story and side content, plus post-game: 13 hours
• Full 100% completion: 20 hours

Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s core adventure is made up of six worlds with around five stages in each, including a boss battle, as well as a seventh world that’s just one long stage. If you were to stick exclusively to these stages, only rescuing the bare minimum of Waddle Dees from each stage to open the way to the boss fights, completing the main story would probably take you around 8 hours in total. 

In addition to the completion of the main stages, though, there’s a lot of side content. Every stage has a handful of secret objectives that reward you with additional rescued Waddle Dees, expanding the services offered in Waddle Dee Town. Some of these objectives are a bit obtuse, and will more than likely take a few run-throughs of a stage to complete.

Alongside that, there are the Treasure Road challenges, small time trials themed after Kirby’s various Copy Abilities and Mouthful Modes. Completing these challenges earns you Rare Stones, which are necessary for upgrading your Copy Abilities, which you also need to find the blueprints for in the stages. If you put in a little extra effort to clear these challenges and finish as many secret objectives as you can be bothered to, that’ll probably tack another couple of hours onto the playtime, bringing us up to 10 hours.

After you beat the main game and the credits roll, there’s an additional post-game world with seven additional stages, plus boss fights. These are more challenging levels and fights, and there’s a secret boss at the end of all of it, which yields the true ending if beaten. Completing the post-game will likely take you at least another two to three hours, bringing us up to 13 hours.

We’re still not done though! Even with all the story stuff dealt with, there’s a veritable galaxy of minutiae to master. All of the Treasure Road challenges have best time pars to clear, you’ve gotta rescue all of the Waddle Dees from all of the stages, find the special extra collectibles in the post-game stages, and fully upgrade all of your Copy Abilities. That’s not even mentioning all of the distractions in Waddle Dee Town, like the fishing, cafe, and maze minigames, all of the tournaments in the colosseum, locating all of the secret Present Codes hidden around town, and obtaining all of the figures from the Gotcha machines. If you wanna go for broke and make it a full, 100% completionist run, your grand total playtime could get as high as a whopping 20 hours.