Black Myth: Wukong Length – How Long to Beat and 100% Complete

There are probably several questions that you would like answered if you're considering buying Black Myth: Wukong; one of them being "how long does it take to finish Black Myth: Wukong." For a simple answer, that would be around 25 - 40 hours of gameplay for the majority of people, but if they want to find every single secret area, optional boss, and true ending it could be anywhere between 55 - 80+ hours depending on how long the player has spent trying to obtain these objectives. The difference in playing time is due to Game Science's design; they have created an action RPG that has a strong focus on the player's curiosity and explores entirely different gameplay mechanics from those that tend to reward speed and speed-related things.

Overall Playtime

The amount of time you spend playing Black Myth: Wukong will depend on your playing style, but if you follow the main storyline, you will finish considerably quicker than if you explore all possible paths and chase after optional bosses and/or true-ending requirements.

Estimated Playtime Based on Playstyle

Type of Player	Estimated Hours
Main Story Completion ONLY	25 - 30
Main Story + Key Side Quests	35 - 45
Full Completionist (All Optional Bosses, All Secrets/True Ending)	55 - 80+
New Game PLUS Run	15 - 25

In general, players dedicated to completing only the necessary parts of their current boss run will generally hit credits between 25 - 30 hours into the game. All other types of players tend to finish in greater amounts of time. According to Reddit threads and reports on HowLongToBeat, players tend to finish the game with a pretty large variance in the amount of time it takes. For example, one player on the Black Myth: Wukong subreddit claimed to have finished the game at level 105 in 79 hours, while someone else said they had only completed about 40 hours and were stuck on Yaksha King for two full days. This is common in all games where there are boss walls and optional exploration causing the length of play time to vary.

First Playthrough

As with many action RPGs, your first playthrough is usually longer than anticipated, in part due to the learning curve that accompanies them. The player character starts off without a lot of Spirit forms, has limited gourd charges, and their understanding of how each individual stance performs versus all opposing stances is minimal. The earlier areas (i.e., Black Wind Mountain, Yellow Wind Ridge) do a decent job teaching the player how to fully utilize each of the stances; however, the player also experiences a fair amount of resistance through Yaoguai skirmishes, wolf packs, and the first real "wall" (i.e., Yellow Wind Demon Sage fight).

If you are not too confident in your ability to perform perfect dodges, as well as cycle between immobilizes at the right times, you will lose time at almost every major boss encounter, which adds up quickly.

Exploration is also an important factor in determining how long it takes to complete the game. There is no traditional minimap when playing, making it easy for players to miss out on hidden shrines, bell puzzles, secret boss arenas located behind waterfalls, etc.. There are also many side paths that have no indication (i.e., such as maps) that you can go down them; therefore, it makes it easy to overlook them as well. Players that look every nook of Chapter 3 Pagoda realm and Chapter 4 Webbed Hollow can expect much longer chapter clear times - from about 2 hours per chapter on their first clean run to somewhere between 4-6 for later attempts. The number of times you must retry bosses can also greatly affect how long your run takes; if a boss taking 7-8 attempts total to kill is repeated once you have cleared the game, it can add as much as 30-60 minutes worth of additional time on top of your first clean run against the boss.

Repeat Runs

After you clear the game for the first time, Black Myth: Wukong will feel so much different based on the fact that New Game Plus will cut back on a lot of time lost in your first playthrough due to you already having learned the various systems in place. Shrine locations are already known, the way to get to the boss is now known, what value your character will have after their transformation is already known, and where the game likes to hide some of its nastiest surprises is known too.

All of this knowledge is important. If you know how to rotate Immobilize effectively, when you should utilize Thrust Stance against fast multi-hit types of enemies, and when Smash Stance will help to break the posture of stronger elite-type enemies you will be able to push through the Critical Path faster. Many skilled players can complete the full game within 15-20 hours after clear time, especially after you combine faster transitions through the various chapters with the ability to skip cutscenes for the repeat playthrough.

Black Myth: Wukong Playthrough Time Breakdown

There are quite a few variances in size among the 6 chapters so you will want to take note of this as you are planning out your run. Some chapters are fairly compact, while other chapters have a ton of bosses, detours, and zones layered throughout that will occupy a complete session during your first run through of Black Myth: Wukong. | Chapter | Place | Required Bosses | Approximate Time | |---|---|---|---| | Chapter 1 | Black Wind Mountain | ~4 | 3-5 hours | | Chapter 2 | Yellow Wind Ridge | ~4 | 4-6 hours | | Chapter 3 | Pagoda Realm/Bitter Lake | 8 | 6-10 hours | | Chapter 4 | Webbed Hollow | ~5 | 4-7 hours | | Chapter 5 | Flaming Mountains | 2 (4 Stages) | 3-6 hours | | Chapter 6 | Secret Area/Mount Mei | Secret boss | 2-4 hours |

Chapter 3 is generally believed to be the longest section of the game, and that belief is somewhat justified. Between Pagoda Realm, bitter lake, and new Thunderclap Temple, there are considerably more layers and Total bosses (22) than any other chapter (8 - required and 14-optionally). Comparatively, Chapter 5 in the Flaming Mountains, can be much shorter if you are only focusing on advancing (though if you want to reach true ending option cart boss & Bishui cave there will be considerable length added).

Optional bosses are likely to be the greatest uncertainty in the length equation. For example, going for Pearls of Loong material in Chapter 3 Gauts Breaking Pursuit, or seeking Yin Tiger to Ebon Flow transform will require traversal through areas that the game does not provide an obvious direction for. The time it will take you to complete the side hunts will depend upon how you route them and how many wipes you take; the two side hunts may vary in length from 30-90 minutes.

The True Ending Will Increase The Playtime

You need to complete all secret areas in 6 different chapters to unlock the true ending of Black Myth: Wukong. So you do not only have to finish the standard route but, in Chapter 1, you need to ring 3 hidden bells in the Black Wind Forest; Chapter 2, you must clear the Lost Kingdom of Sahali after completing the drunken boar quest line for the Yellow-Robed Squire; Chapter 3, you must complete the Treasure Hunter quest; Chapter 4, you have to defeat the Venom Daoist two times to open the Purple Cloud Mountain; Chapter 5, you need to find and complete the elemental carts side quest to unlock Bishui Cave.

Chapter 6 has one additional challenge to face before the final boss: the sequence for the secret boss Mount Mei! The boss fight has three phases, against Erlang (standard form), Four Heavenly Kings, and Erlang in lion form!

With all of the required prep work done before engaging in combat against the final boss, it is generally recommended that you will have an additional 8-15 hours of play time on top of the main story, but depending if your blind, your play time could vary.

Factors Affecting How Long Black Myth: Wukong Takes To Play

A large portion of the games you are going to play have fairly consistent times to complete, with Black Myth: Wukong being the exception. There is a substantial variance to the time a player spends playing based on their skill in combat, their build choices regarding combat elements, their knowledge, and routing of the chapters, and also the hardware they are playing on. ### Difficulty Factors for Combat

The factor that will ultimately determine how long it takes to finish Black Myth: Wukong is skill level. There is no difficulty slider in this game; therefore, if you can reliably perform perfect dodges (a perfect dodge will award you with a free heavy attack and bonus damage) and if you understand how to properly use Immobilize to generate safe burst windows, then your clears will be considerably quicker than someone who is trying to brute force their way through the game.

Completion data for Steam achievements illustrates this point as well. There’s a significant difference between how many players have completed their achievements so far before and after the first major boss (this also supports the point that there are significant difficulty barriers to the pacing of the game itself).

There are many bosses in the game that inflate the overall time spent playing:

• Yellow Wind Sage (Chapter 2)

• Yellowbrow (End of Chapter 3)

• Yaksha King (Chapter 5)

• Erlang Shen (in the secret route of Chapter 6)

Each of these bosses' encounters include multiple transitions at large thresholds in their health, generally at 25% and 50% marks. If you do not recognize the transitions in each encounter and continue to attempt to force the same mechanic, you will eventually accumulate an astronomical number of wipes.

The impression that build and spell selection do not matter as much as players expect regarding their overall performance is incorrect. A Rock Solid parry-focused build is usually going to be much slower and take a more defensive approach compared to an Immobilize + transformation build, which is typically going to burst down a boss at least twice as fast during a vulnerable window. The choice of stance will also dictate the pace of your clears; for example, using Thrust Stance against fast/movement based enemies and using Smash Stance against/enemies who have a lot of armor will allow you to complete the fight in just a couple of hits. "Staying in one position for the entirety of a game will most likely cause you to be inefficient."

Performance

The performance of a game will also have an impact on how long it seems to take to finish. The Unreal Engine 5 game of Black Myth: Wukong is very resource-intensive in terms of GPU, CPU, RAM and SSD usage because it loads all four of those resources at the same time. The closer you are to the recommended specifications on your computer (e.g., RTX 2060, i7-9700, and 16GB RAM), the more likely you will encounter issues like stutter during gameplay, longer load times and some crashes which force restarts.

While the technical issues will not seem to be that significant on paper, they add up over the course of a 30 to 40-hour gameplay session. During late-game regions where there are a large number of assets being streamed, there may be lots of micro-stutters, which would further prolong the attempts at completing encounters, as well as making the fights much more difficult.

By 2026, patches have been released to improve stability, so the game now runs significantly better with a consistent mid-to-high-end hardware configuration. If your PC is under-powered, you should expect a longer amount of downtime while playing this game. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles will generally provide you with more stable performance and shorter load times, which makes the shrine-to-boss return loop in-game significantly less frustrating in practice.

Is Black Myth: Wukong Worth Your Time?

In terms of price to gameplay, Black Myth: Wukong provides a premium single-player experience that has very high value. Whether you run through the main story quickly or slowly as long as you complete all of the chapters you will find a precious fluid of dense-handcrafted storytelling spanning out into six different sections—without any fillers! Once again, there is no padding from procedural algorithmic systems—not to mention having a HUGE boss density.

With over 80 bosses in total between required, optional, and secret content; the developers have ensured there are always multiple opportunities to engage the player with meaningful combat so you are NEVER just running through empty spaces waiting for something fun to happen.

Any player that enjoys a challenge focused Action RPG, experimenting with glyphs, and enjoying mythological storytelling will find Black Myth: Wukong to be great for them. If you played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and found the parrying system to be too restrictive—then Wukong might work better for you because it has many other tools available such as immobilization abilities and Spirit transformations—so you will be able to find ways to defeat difficult bosses beyond just reaction time. On the contrary, if you like to use open-worlds or adjustable difficulty levels, then the fixed difficulty and curated six chapter structure won't suit you well.

Black Myth: Wukong FAQ

Is it longer than Sekiro?

Comparatively speaking, they both have about the same play times if they run through just to complete their main storylines. Generally speaking, an average player can finish both games in about 25-30 hours through the critical path to finish the main story. But, as far as optional content, Wukong should take even longer than Sekiro because Wukong contains more than 80 boss fights—whereas, Sekiro probably has fewer than 60 boss fights—so players wanting to complete all of the optional content in Wukong will take longer than if they were playing Sekiro.

Can you rush the credits?

Technically, yes! Players who know the mandatory route with little-to-no optional content can reach the regular ending in 20-25 hours. However, players will miss out on approximately 60 Spirit transformations, necessary upgrade materials, and the true ending.

Does the true ending add hours?

Without a doubt. To unlock the true ending all 6 optional content areas must be completed throughout the game, which will typically take an additional 8-15 hours of playtime. Players that want to complete the true ending must finish the three-phase Erlang Shen boss fight at Mount Mei.

How long for all bosses?

Players who will kill all available bosses (including mandatory, optional, and secret) within the game can expect a game time between 55-65 hours if they are already familiar with all of the bosses' locations and strategies. Players who are unsure where the bosses are located or how to defeat them will expect a playtime that is significantly longer than those that know where they are located.

Conclusion

For most Destined Ones, a safe estimate includes playing for approximately 35-45 hours, while completing portions of the game; meaning that a thorough first run—without completing the game at 100%—should take between 35-45 hours. For those interested in completing the true ending, using each of the Spirit transformations, and gathering all of the needed upgrade materials, it would be best to add an additional 55 hours to your schedule for your time spent playing black myth: wukong.

Ultimately, the players are going to feel like they received a good return on investment with Black Myth: Wukong because the variety of bosses available for the players to defeat, the theme of myth building throughout the game, and the level of diversity of the gameplay will create a positive level of momentum from beginning to end—so if you are looking for a fantastic Action RPG title then your purchase of black myth: wukong would be a very good investment. Happy hunting Destined Ones.