Mass Effect 3: Game length Mass Effect 3 guide, walkthrough

On this page of our game guide you will find information on how long it takes to play through Mass Effect 3. You will learn how long the main storyline is, as well as how long it can take to complete all optional quests and explore the galaxy in 100%.

1. Completing the main storyline of ME3 should take you 20-25 hours. Mass Effect 3 is a slightly shorter game than its predecessors. Even despite that you still need to take part in many demanding battles. Time of the gameplay may be significantly extended if you decide to play the game on a high difficulty level.
2. Taking care of all optional quests and exploring the galaxy increases the total gameplay time to around 40-45 hours. There are quite a few side quests available in ME3, although most of them are relatively short tasks. There are just a few long side missions. Exploring the world map is more difficult due to the Reapers in ME3, but simple activities like checking out planets and moons are not very time consuming.
3. In the original release of Mass Effect 3 a lot of time can be spent in multiplayer mode and an additional motivation to play the battles in this mode is the increasing level of Galactic Readiness of your fleet, which is useful in the singleplayer campaign. In the 2021 remaster of ME3 available in the Legendary Edition, the multiplayer mode has been removed.
4. Mass Effect 3 has several major story add-ons. Each of the more expansive DLCs can extend gameplay time by up to 3-4 hours. We are primarily talking about the Omega, Citadel and Leviathan story expansions.