Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (2016) is the fourth installment of Naughty Dog’s immensely popular third-person shooter game series, Uncharted.
It is the final main series game, but it also has a standalone expansion pack called Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which was released in 2017 on PlayStation 4. A remastered edition called Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection includes both Uncharted 4 games and can be played on PlayStation 5 as well as Windows.
The first 3 parts of the Uncharted series were pretty short in terms of gameplay, taking about 9 hours to complete, depending on difficulty.
Uncharted 4 takes an average of 15 hours to beat, if you’re playing the main story of A Thief’s End; The Lost Legacy takes about 8 hours. To finish the Legacy of Thieves Collection, keep aside at least 20 hours. A completionist run of all 3 will take you double the time mentioned.
Of course, the difficulty you play at will also increase or decrease the number of hours it takes to finish Uncharted 4. Let’s discuss how long each of the games are in detail.
1. How long does it take to beat A Thief’s End?
The main story of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End takes 15 hours to beat, plus 2 hours to complete the extra content. Completing 100% of A Thief’s End will take 30-32 hours. If you play on easy difficulty and rush through the game, it can be beaten in 23 hours.
However, if you jump into UC4 without having played UC1-3, you might struggle significantly with its game mechanics. The puzzles in the main storyline can be quite tricky. With 22 chapters to get through – plus a prologue and an epilogue – the main story itself can take you about half a week to complete.
Plus, A Thief’s End has close to 200 collectibles and 56 trophies, so getting through all the checkpoints with all items is going to be pretty time-consuming.
A leisurely 100% completion of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End can take you up to 50 full hours, which makes it longer than any other Uncharted game.
2. How long does it take to beat The Lost Legacy?
The main story of Uncharted 4: The Lost Legacy takes about 6-8 hours, plus an extra 1.5-2 hours to finish all side missions. A completionist run should take a total of 16-17 hours but can be done in 13 hours if you rush it.
Since The Lost Legacy is a DLC for UC4, the world of UC4 is expanded too, making the game a hit among fans in terms of amazing graphics and visuals for its locations. Some players, especially PS5 players, have spent more than 25 hours exploring The Lost Legacy, simply for its crisp art designs.
That said, the pacing of Lost Legacy is much tighter than A Thief’s End, so even if you love hanging out and exploring the setting for photo-ops, it’s still a considerably short game with a mere 8 chapters.
3. How long does it take to beat the Legacy of Thieves Collection?
The main story of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection takes close to 21 hours to beat plus about 3 hours to finish the extras. To complete it 100% will take you anywhere between 40-60 hours, depending on whether you’re doing a leisurely or speedy run of the game.
Remember that the Legacy of Thieves contains remastered editions of previous Uncharted 4 games, which is why it will take you longer to complete it than both UC4 games combined.
Both, A Thief’s End and The Lost Legacy, are linear games, so it’s natural to do a straight playthrough of Legacy of Thieves and be able to finish the main story in about 19-20 hours.
However, I suggest doing a complete 100% run of UC4: Legacy of Thieves Collection since it’s the best way to experience the content of Uncharted’s two best games in one neat package.
The semi-open world can actually be quite enjoyable if you have the time and patience to explore it, especially on PS5.
Take full advantage of the kickass story, character interactions, and graphics by playing all playstyles and beating 100% of the game at a medium pace, all in 45 hours.
4. Is Uncharted 4 better than Lost Legacy?
The Lost Legacy is a DLC mission to the main Uncharted 4 game, A Thief’s End. Despite this, several players rank Lost Legacy as a better game than Thief’s End, simply because of its stunning visuals. It’s also smaller and tighter than Uncharted 4, with respect to chapters, fights, and pacing.
On the other hand, UC4 has a larger, more varied environment with epic gun battles and a fascinating story. A huge advantage that UC4 has over Lost Legacy is that it is the last game to feature Nathan Drake as the protagonist.
Lost Legacy deals primarily with Chloe Frazer and doesn’t continue the main storyline of Uncharted.
5. Is Uncharted 4 too long?
Everybody knows that Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is the longest game in the Uncharted series, but is it too long?
The main gripe players have with Uncharted 4 is its pacing. The traversal sections are much too time-consuming in its 22 chapters and all the climbing, jumping, and swinging needlessly bloat the playtime.
Although the epilogue is worth sticking around for, most players feel that the game drags on past chapter 14.
The Lost Legacy is perfectly paced, with just the right amount of combat and not nearly as much traversal.
6. Does Uncharted 4 have 2 endings?
Uncharted 4 has a single ending, plus one epilogue. If you want to count the epilogue scene, then Uncharted 4 has 2 endings.
The “first” ending brings closure to character arcs and story. The epilogue is set more than 10 years in the future, and shows Nathan and Elena’s kid Cassie, discovering the secret treasure-hunting lives of her parents.
7. Is Uncharted 4 hard? Does Uncharted 4 have difficulty levels?
Uncharted is challenging and tedious if played on higher difficulty. There are 5 possible difficulty levels in Uncharted: Explorer, Light, Moderate, Hard, and Crushing.
If you play on Hard or Crushing, Uncharted 4 is also going to take you a lot longer to beat than the hours mentioned earlier in the article.
Most players start out with Light or Moderate depending on their skills and experience, and then replay them on Hard or Crushing mode.
I do feel that the Moderate mode is the best difficulty level to play Uncharted 4 at because the game mechanics seem to be designed for a medium/balanced mode. Anything harder takes away the fun of an AAA game like Uncharted.
But one thing that might encourage you to play Uncharted 4 on different difficulty modes is that you get different trophies for every challenge level. If you’re a completionist, you will have to do this since you’ll want to collect all the trophies.
While this might add to your playtime, it’s worth it to get through Uncharted 4 100% because of the collectibles.
8. About Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection
The Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is a remastered collection from Iron Galaxy and Naughty Dog, consisting of Uncharted: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
The games have been remastered for the next-generation console with modes offerings 4K resolution, 60 FPS, and 120 FPS respectively. The collection will be coming first to the PlayStation 5 then on the PC through Steam.
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