Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee have been out for a couple of weeks now, giving Pokemon trainers the world over plenty of time to explore the Kanto region, take on the Elite Four, and potentially even catch 'em all. We now have a pretty good idea of about how long it takes to beat the latest Pokemon adventures, thanks to data collected by playtime aggregate site How Long to Beat.

According to How Long to Beat's data, Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee will take a little over 20 hours to beat the main story. Completionists who look to catch every Pokemon (it's unclear if catching every shiny Pokemon is being considered for "completionist" data or not) can expect to tack on an additional 15 hours of playtime, for about 35 hours. The average playtime across all styles is about 25 hours.

While this may seem like a decent amount of content, it's worth pointing out that Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee seem to take less time to beat than other games in the franchise. According to the same site, Pokemon Sun and Moon take nearly 120 hours to fully complete, and Pokemon X & Y apparently take an average of nearly 200 hours for completionists to conquer.

pokemon let's go cover

Compared to those numbers, the completionist time to beat Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee seems way short. However, it's worth pointing out that Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee are aimed at a more casual crowd than the other games in the series, and so it makes sense that beating them requires a much smaller time investment.

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee completely eliminate one of the reasons why getting through some older Pokemon games takes so long, and that's random battles against wild Pokemon. Not only are players able to pick and choose which Pokemon they engage with in the game world, but they don't even battle them anymore, and instead just focus on catching them like in Pokemon GO.

This more casual approach to Pokemon has its detractors, but it seems to be a smart move on the part of Game Freak and Nintendo, as the games are already breaking Switch sales records. Next year will bring a proper main series Pokemon game to Nintendo's handheld/console hybrid, but there also appears to be an appetite for this more casual and less time-consuming take on the iconic franchise.

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.

Source: How Long to Beat