How Long to Beat Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori and the Will of the Wisps takes most players 8 to 12 hours to finish the main story. Going for full completion — every collectible, all Spirit Trials, and the side quests — adds another 5 to 8 hours, landing around 15 to 20 hours total.

That's a tighter spread than most games on this list, because Ori is a guided Metroidvania rather than a run-based roguelike. Your time mostly depends on how much of the optional content you chase.

How long to beat Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Goal	Time
Main story	8–12 hours
Story + most side content	12–16 hours
100% completion	15–20 hours
Speed run	Under 2 hours

The main story is the steady number. The optional content adds the variation, with the Spirit Trials being the part that can stretch a completionist run the most.

What affects your playtime

A few things move your number:

• Side quests and collectibles. Will of the Wisps adds a hub town with NPCs who hand out errands, plus map fragments, life and energy upgrades, and Spirit Shards to find. Chasing all of them is most of the gap between a story clear and 100%.
• The Spirit Trials. These are 10 timed racing challenges scattered across the map. Finishing them is quick; gold-ranking them is the hardest thing the game asks, and it can eat hours on its own.
• Combat skill. Will of the Wisps leans harder on combat than Blind Forest did, with weapon-like Spirit Shards and real boss fights. Players who struggle with the bosses will add time the story numbers don't show.
• The escape sequences. Ori is famous for its high-speed chase set pieces. They demand precision, and a few failed attempts on the hardest one can cost a chunk of time.

The big one is the Spirit Trials. The story and casual exploration are smooth; the gold medals are where the real difficulty lives.

Is it worth the time?

Yes. Will of the Wisps is one of the best-looking and best-moving Metroidvanias made, and 8 to 12 hours of it is a complete, well-paced story. The movement alone — wall jumps, dashes, grapples chained together — makes traversal feel good in a way few games match.

The honest caveat: the difficulty spikes in the combat and escape sequences are sharper than the gentle opening suggests. If you came purely for a relaxing exploration game, a couple of moments will test you. The Spirit Trial gold medals, in particular, are for players who like a real challenge.

How it compares to similar games

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

• Hollow Knight is much longer — roughly 25 to 30 hours for the main story — with a far larger map and harsher optional content.
• Celeste is shorter for a story clear, around 6 to 10 hours, but its 100% completion is harder and longer than Ori's.
• Blasphemous lands around 12 to 18 hours, slower and more methodical than Ori's fast, flowing movement.

Ori sits at the approachable end of the Metroidvania scale: shorter than Hollow Knight, smoother to play, with optional content that's there if you want the challenge.

If Ori proves short can still be rich, a pointer in the same direction: KUTO: The Lock of Time — full disclosure, we build it, so give it extra scrutiny. Its map follows the Ori school rather than the roguelike one: hand-built rooms you reopen later with Time Keys like slow-motion Dilation or the Leap dash, while runs carry the meta-progression forward between sessions. It heads into Steam Early Access in Q1 2027.