How Long to Beat Hades: 8–20 Hours to Escape

Your first escape from the Underworld takes most players somewhere between 8 and 20 hours. The full story ending — the one the game is actually built around — needs roughly 50 successful runs, which lands around 40 to 60 hours.

The reason for that gap is simple: in Hades, beating the final boss once is not the ending. It's the point where the story starts moving.

How long to beat Hades

Goal	Time
First escape	8–20 hours
Full story ending	40–60 hours
All weapon aspects + Codex	70–90 hours
Max heat (32 on every weapon)	100+ hours

The first escape varies the most. A player who clicks with the combat fast can break out in 8 to 10 hours. Someone learning the genre might take twice that.

What affects your playtime

A few things decide where you land in those ranges:

• The story is gated behind runs, not skill. After your first win the credits roll, but Persephone's arc and the family's reconciliation play out over many more escapes. You can't rush it — the conversations only advance one run at a time, win or lose.
• Death is progress here. Every run feeds Darkness, Keys, and Nectar into permanent upgrades, so failed attempts still move you forward. That softens the early difficulty wall but also means you'll log hours before the first clear lands.
• The Mirror of Night and the Pact of Punishment. Mirror upgrades make you stronger over time. Heat (the Pact) does the opposite on purpose — it's optional difficulty you stack for rewards, and chasing high heat on all six weapons is where the 100-hour players live.
• Weapon variety. Hades wants you to clear with each of the six weapons and their hidden aspects. Doing that naturally stretches your hours well past the story ending.

The big one is the story gate. Two players who both "beat" Hades can have very different times depending on whether they stopped at the first clear or stayed for the real ending.

Is it worth the time?

Yes, and the structure is the reason. Most roguelikes ask you to supply your own motivation to keep running. Hades hands you a reason every time: a new line of dialogue, a relationship that moves, a piece of the story you didn't have before.

The honest caveat: if you only want to see credits and stop, Hades is on the longer side for a single clear, because the combat takes real practice. But few players who reach the first escape actually want to stop there — the loop is built to keep pulling you back.

How it compares to similar games

If you're sizing Hades against the games it sits next to:

• Dead Cells lands close for a first clear, around 12 to 15 hours, with a much longer tail if you chase its Boss Cell difficulty tiers.
• Hollow Knight runs longer to "beat" — roughly 25 to 30 hours — because it's a hand-crafted Metroidvania you explore once rather than a roguelike you rerun.
• Rogue Legacy 2 is in the same family, around 15 to 20 hours for a first ending, with persistent upgrades that pull you back the same way Hades does.

Hades sits in the middle: not the longest single clear, but one of the few roguelikes with a real ending worth running toward. If its loop is what you're after, there are plenty more games like Hades built on the same die-and-improve rhythm. If it's the reset-and-try-again loop that hooks you, our best time loop games roundup covers the genre more broadly, from Outer Wilds to Deathloop.

If Hades' loop kept you running for 50+ hours, KUTO: The Lock of Time might be your next one. It's a time-bending Metroidvania where time powers are literally breaking the world — every ability you unlock is one more lock off the thing that ends everything. Wishlist it on Steam so you don't miss the launch.