Board 8 > How bad is it gonna be if I try and mainline Horizon?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just got to Meridian and now...there's too much stuff. Too much map, too many quests....I don't really want to do all this. Is rushing the main question viable?
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do all of it :D
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Sure it's viable, but it isn't recommended. You'll miss out on a lot of stuff.
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I'm trying to narrow down my focus to just Main and Sidequests. The game does a good job of filtering a lot of the superfluous stuff into "Errands" that can be ignored, or by giving things like Cauldrons or Hunting Grounds their own category.
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For the most part, you can ignore the errands, though there are a couple that have nice moments in them, but you should do the cauldrons, they make some fights easier, and side quests, since those help build on the world.

Also, you don't have to go out of your way and get all of them like I did, but you should get a few vantage points since those also help set up the world prior to Zero Dawn. The vessels and flowers, and to some extent, the Banuk figures you can ignore completely. The flowers and vessels are literally just collectibles, and don't really build on the world. The Banuk figures have some story attached to them, but it is only tangentially related to the main story.
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So at this point, with just main and sides, what kind of time might I be looking at?
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Horizon Zero Dawn
Main Story - 19½ Hours
Main + Extra - 37 Hours
Completionist - 51½ Hours
Combined Average - 41 Hours

what a short game I wasn't even to my first dungeon in zelda by the time I hit 50 hours
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Around 7 hours or so, I'd guess if you don't get distracted, maybe less. It kinda depends on how much trouble you have with some encounters. I'm right at the end, I am basically done with side quests and what not and just have the last two main quests to do, but have some classwork to do first.
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