How Long Does It Take To Beat Sand Land?

The late Akira Toriyama's manga Sand Land isn't his most popular work, but it has plenty to say for itself anyway. Last year, the manga was adapted into a full-length movie and an anime, the latter of which expanded on the manga's story to add a whole new second arc and new antagonists to accompany it. The game Sand Land was developed by Japanese studio ILCA and published by Bandai Namco, and closely follows the story that the excellent anime series wove, exploring themes of environmentalism, human greed, redemption, and the trauma of war.

Sand Land Preview - Fiend Prince Of Vehicle Combat

Sand Land is shaping up to be a faithful adaptation of Toriyama's masterpiece, but its engaging focus on vehicles is what stuck with me the most.

Sand Land puts you in the shoes of the fiend demon prince Beelzebub as he goes on a journey with his fiend friend Thief and the human Sheriff Rao. Their goal is to bring water back to Sand Land, which has been suffering extreme drought ever since the river mysteriously dried up. Their journey takes them from Sand Land to the neighbouring Forest Land, whose royalty has been overthrown in a coup, and their journey has implications ranging farther than they could ever have expected.

How Long Does It Take To Beat?

Sand Land is a much smaller RPG than the likes of other 2024 releases like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, or Dragon’s Dogma 2. There are two major story arcs, one of which takes place exclusively in Sand Land and the other of which has you entering Forest Land, the new country created for the anime and game. Each arc will take you anywhere from 10 to 20 hours, depending on how much of the side content you do.

It took me 32 hours to finish Sand Land with quite a lot of side quests and bounties done, and some of the map still unexplored. By the end of the game, there was still plenty for me to wrap up – I had a lot of bounties available to me, many of which are repeatable, many areas of both Sand Land and Forest Land that I hadn’t even ventured to yet, and lots of errands to run to keep my home base Spino thriving.

Sand Land is full of side quests that help improve Spino’s facilities and bring more residents in. The more you do, the more you benefit!

How Long Does It Take To Fully Complete?

If you don’t consciously put time into side quests and exploration, it’s fairly easy to complete the main questline within 20 hours. But there’s so much to do in Sand Land that you could easily add another 20 or 30 hours onto that run time.

There are plenty of collectibles to look for in both Sand Land and Forest Land, including chests, caves, Lango’s Diaries, and more. Spino’s residents usually have requests for you, ranging from finding rust cleaner to finding fortune tellers.

There are also many things to do outside of side quests, exploration, and collectible-hunting – you can register for races in different vehicles, of which you have several. You can collect bounties on errant bandits staking their claim in the open world. You can fight in the Battle Arena, or even spend time furnishing your room in Spino. There’s something for everyone, and you can complete many of these things as many times as you want.

Sand Land Hits Even Harder After Akira Toriyama's Death

Seeing Akira Toriyama's niche masterpiece adapted into a big open-world adventure left me surprisingly emotional.