Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the final chapter of Lara Croft's origin story that started with the 2013 reboot, will launch this coming Friday, September 14. Releasing in the midst of the Fall gaming rush, budget-minded gamers may be wondering exactly how long Lara's latest adventure is before they commit to buying it, and after playing through the game ourselves, we have a definitive answer.

When playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider on normal difficulty and ignoring most side content, players can complete the main story in a little less than 10 hours. When we completed our initial playthrough, we had played between eight and 10 hours with about 60% in-game completion. If one decides to tackle all of the side quests, hidden collectibles, and conquer higher difficulty settings, it seems likely that will take another five to 10 hours, so between 15-20 hours total.

This is a bit contradictory to what has been reported in the past, as the previous claim was that it would take about 13-15 hours to beat Shadow of the Tomb Raider's story. However, that number always seemed a little inflated anyway, as the Tomb Raider games do typically clock in at around the 10 hour mark for main story completion.

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Besides the main story, Shadow of the Tomb Raider gives players some other activities to complete as well. By exploring hubs, such as the lost city of Paititi, they can collect side quests from NPCs that will usually task them with completing various challenges out in the jungle. However, the most engaging side content comes in the form of the challenge tombs that are hidden throughout the game world.

In the future, Shadow of the Tomb Raider enthusiasts have even more content to look forward to. The game has a season pass available that will add new challenge tombs, new missions, and more. Whether or not any of this additional content will be worthwhile remains to be seen, but past Tomb Raider reboot series expansions have been well-received.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider will launch on September 14 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.