The Game Boy Advance Game That Takes The Longest To Beat

The Game Boy Advance was a unique handheld console for a number of reasons. It instituted a more ergonomic design that would go on to be the standard for years to come, the later SP model would be the first from Nintendo to include a backlight, and it was completely backwards compatible with Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles, giving it one of the largest libraries of playable games (with quite a few underrated RPGs that got lost in the mix.) The games that were made for the Game Boy Advance itself were also very impressive, taking advantage of its upgraded 32-bit graphics on the slightly larger and wider full-color display.

Some of them, such as "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past," "Super Mario Advance 4," and "Metroid Fusion" were incredibly well received by critics, but none of these games are particularly long. Sometimes GBA players just want to find a game that they can sink dozens of hours into and really get their money's worth. There are a handful of longer titles on the Game Boy Advance such as "Breath of Fire 2" and "Pokémon Ruby" and "Sapphire," but the longest one that received a significant number of polls on How Long to Beat was "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance."

There were a couple games that technically had higher reported play-time averages than "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance." "Pokémon Glazed" and "Medabots Metabee" both had average times reported that were over 50 hours just for campaign completion, but each of these came from polling pools of only four to five people, so those numbers are unlikely to be accurate. The results for "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance," on the other hand, comes from a pool of 172 players. It has an average Main Story time of 45h 32m, an average Completionist-time of 122 hours, and an average game-time across All PlayStyles of 66h 28m. 

Gamers play as Marche, the newly recognized leader of a clan who must build up their status by taking on missions across the country of Ivalice. Fans of the "Final Fantasy" franchise shouldn't be surprised that the game runs so long, as the series is known for its games taking dozens — if not hundreds — of hours. "Tactics Advance" is a particularly unique example, as it utilizes a grid-based battle system similar to "Fire Emblem." Its tactical nature may therefore cause some players to spend a lot more time on it than others.