How Much Is Enough?

So this question especially with recently playing through The Order:1886 got me thinking. When you buy a game how much time do you expect you should get out of it. With The Order only slight over 5 hours of story time and nothing really besides that I feel although the game was different and looked beautiful wasn't really enough in it.

Now of course different game types will have different views. Games which have active mulitplayers as their main draw really don't suffer from a shorter campaign. What about games who are short in length 5-8 hours but have multiple ways to play through the game to get different endings? Do we count this as more playtime. Do players actually play through multiple times to see the story?

I know if I was playing an RPG anything less than 20 hours would be an insult to me. There has to be time to develop the characters and the story. Otherwise it really isn't an RPG. I can think for an ARPG depending on the end game I expect at least 10 hours of story when it really comes down to it. Then again ARPGs end game sometimes is playing the game itself over and over. So that leads to more questions.

So I have though like this for days wondering if there really is some sort of magic number and really I can't say that there is. When you play a game you are either satisfied with the time you put into it or you aren't. There will always be those times when you wish there was more, but that is different feeling then this game actually needed more.

This really isn't about sidequests even though they can make the game more enjoyable. Sometimes they are a distraction from the true length of the game. Some games actually do a very good thing about hiding this from you. Same goes for collections lead you off the main path for just that amount of time to add an hour there or an hour there.

So when it comes down to it I guess I don't actually have an answer other than you will know when you are down. If you have concerns about play length of a game don't get it day 1 and check out a play through or a review on par time of the game itself. After all the most important thing is you as a gamer using your game time in a worthwhile fashion.