Despite being the shortest month, February’s place in the bleak and dismal ass-crack of winter for half the planet often makes it drag. In 2025 though, there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the month to fit all the massive games that are coming out. But it’s not so much the quantity of new releases as it is the density of a select few, because some of the year’s longest games are dropping in the shortest month.
If any of your friends are major history buffs, you should probably check and make sure they’re okay over the next couple of weeks. If they’re unresponsive it’s likely they’re completely immersed in – or frozen with decision paralysis – over the two huge games that come out in February: Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 and Kingdom Come Deliverance II.
These are two very different games with a couple major things in common. One, they’re jam-packed with tons of extensive deep-cut lore from that hit, long-running immensely controversial franchise known as human existence (in other words, actual real-world history), and two, they’re infamous timesinks. The upcoming sequels are bound to keep even the most casual players busy for at least a couple 40-hour workweeks, but if the previous installments are any indication, they’ll keep serious players occupied waaaaay longer than that.
Civilization 7
Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 needs little introduction and whether you realize it or not, multiple people you know – or possibly, you yourself – will sink hundreds, possibly thousands of hours into the next entry of the prolific turn-based 4X strategy series. I don’t just mean your gamer pals, either; this is one of those series with crossover appeal that attracts players who typically don’t play many games otherwise, and hardcore Civ players are hiding in plain sight all around us. Whether it’s your teachers, your co-workers, your dentist, that one aunt who doesn’t talk much at family gatherings, the person at the deli counter, or that guy at your gym who grunts too much when he’s working out, Sid Meier’s incredibly addictive sim has created a cabal of sleeper agents and it’s not hard to see why.
Despite a dauntingly robust number of systems and a vertigo-inducing amount of depth, the board game aesthetic, turn-based nature, and familiar subject matter make Civ approachable to players who might otherwise be scared off by many other games. You know, the ones set in fictional universes mired in convoluted lore that require players to learn complex control schemes, and then have the dexterity and reflexes to use them under pressure. Civ 6 has one hell of a learning curve but getting the hang of it is more like learning Excel than gittin gud at Elden Ring, and there’ll be even less of a barrier to entry if Civ 7 comes to iOS down the road, which seems likely, if not inevitable.
According to howlongtobeat.com, you can finish the main story of Civilization 6 in around 23 hours, and according to Lay’s Classic Potato Chips, the serving size is just 15 chips. Realistically, most people who open a bag of chips are gonna eat way more than that, and realistically, most people who get hooked on Civ will spend days, maybe weeks in its thrall.
Howlongtobeat also says completing the main campaign plus sidequests – or, optional objectives – will take around 97 hours, and if you’re a completionist, you’re looking at approximately 382 hours, which seems more accurate. It’s unclear if this accounts for the copious amount of DLC that Civ 6 has gotten over the years, and it doesn’t clock multiplayer , but the point is, Civ is immensely time consuming, infinitely replayable, and prominently featured on plenty of desert island game lists, and there’s absolutely no reason to think Civ 7 won’t be more of the same, and then some.
The jury’s out on exactly how long Civilization 7 is, but let’s say it’s on par with Civ 6 – if you average the 23 hours it takes to mainline and the 382 hours it takes to 100%, you’re looking at approximately 200 hours.
The average adult gamer spends 8-12 hours a week gaming. I don’t know who you are, but if you’re watching an IGN video, I’m gonna assume you’re doing way more than that, so for the sake of this article, let’s say you play video games three hours every day. Okay, fine, you’ve been good, so you can stay up a little late, let’s call it four.
If you play video games for four hours a day, every day of the week, clocking 200 hours in Civ 7 will take you 1.7 Februaries. Is that a stupid metric for the size of a game? Absolutely, but it just goes to show you that just because something involves numbers doesn’t mean it should be treated like an exact science. See also, IGN review scores. How much your time is worth, how much money you spend on games, and how much enjoyment you get out of said games is entirely subjective, but one thing that is not up for debate is that Civilization 7 isn’t the sort of game you burn through in a weekend.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
So that’s ONE huge game dropping in February. The other is Kingdom Come: Deliverance II This may not have as much of a reputation as Civ and it might not be quite as infinitely replayable due to its narrower historical focus and lack of multiplayer, but it’s nonetheless a doozie. The original Kingdom Come Deliverance has garnered a devoted following for not just its authentic simulation of medieval life, but how much player choices actually affect the world around them over the dozens of hours it takes to complete, which has the tendency to encourage multiple replays to see different outcomes.
How Long To Beat says you can mainline the original Kingdom Come Deliverance in 41 ½ hours, but again, that’s sort of like buying tickets to a renaissance faire and running full speed toward the exit as soon as you’re past the front gate, which is a waste of money AND a safety hazard. The point of either experience is getting immersed in the day-to-day life of another era – in Kingdom Come’s case, as the son of a blacksmith in 15th-century Bohemia. Howlongtobeat says 100%ing Kingdom Come will take around 131 hours, but poking around the KCD subreddit, you’ll find plenty of folks who’ve clocked twice that, and several who’ve put in over a thousand hours because it’s that kind of game. There are probably people in the Bubsy3D subreddit who’ve sunk 1,000 hours into Bubsy3D, so take that with a grain of salt.
Nobody complained that the first game was too small or light on content, but Warhorse studios has repeatedly touted that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will be twice the size, so a conservative estimate suggests a single playthrough will easily make 100 hours disappear. Well, maybe not EASILY, given the realistically brutal combat, but you get the idea.
If we take the 41.5 hours it takes to mainline KCD1 and the 131 it takes to supposedly complete it, we have 86.5, which seems fair. Now, if KCD2 is in fact twice the size of the first game, that means it’ll take you just over 1.5 Februaries to play it once! if you double that, it’ll take you almost twice as long! When you consider the average price of ren faire tickets is 40 bucks, not counting the cost of mead, turkey legs, or period attire, 60 bucks for a month in medieval bohemia is a steal!
Avowed
On February 18th, Obsidian’s next big fantasy RPG drops. Avowed is set in the same universe as the studio’s Pillars of Eternity games, which may set unrealistic expectations. Both of those games exhibit some pretty flagrant false advertising: none of the titular pillars are, in fact, eternal. But, in Obsidian’s defense these isometric CRPGs do offer pretty hefty campaigns – you can mainline them both in roughly 40 hours, but 100% completion will take more like a hundred. Then again, these are actual role-playing games, not just games where there are experience points and numbers fly off enemies when they take damage. These are meant to be replayed, and the playtimes you’ll see people on the Pillars subreddit boasting are three, four, maybe even 30 times that of what’s on HowLongToBeat. As always, your mileage may vary.
Meanwhile, Obsidian’s most recent full-scale RPG, The Outer Worlds, is egregiously or refreshingly short, depending who you ask. This one’s practically an anomaly in the RPG scene because you can roll credits in under 14 hours, and 100% it in less than 40. An RPG that can be beaten in a single work-week? Unheard of! Though, for some individuals whose work-week cuts into their gaming time, the idea of being able to finish a video game in under a fiscal quarter was one of The Outer Worlds’ main selling-points.
Anyone expecting Avowed to be on the same scale as the Pillars games will be sorely disappointed, as Obsidian has said it’s more in line with The Outer Worlds. The Outer Worlds got a bit of a pass for being short, since it was published by Private Division, whose whole business model was incubating indie and smaller scale projects. Avowed will be the first Obsidian game released since the studio was acquired by Microsoft that actually looks like an Obsidian game. This studio is best known for big, crunchy RPGs like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Fallout New Vegas, and while Grounded and Pentiment are both excellent in their own right, they’re kind of like when Andre 3000 from Outkast put out that flute album. It’s a good flute album, but it’s not an Outkast album.
Anyway, even if Avowed is shorter than a lot of Obsidian RPGs, that’ll likely encourage people to play it more than once. The Outer Worlds was short but like a good role-playing game, there were multiple outcomes. There were three main endings, but plenty of variables would see situations play out a multitude of different ways.
So, let’s say Microsoft’s deeper pockets means Avowed is a little bigger than The Outer Worlds, like 20 hours, but assume it’s about as replayable. If you want to see three endings, that’s still 60 hours, which is 1.8 Februaries, assuming you’re following our completely arbitrary made-up rules and only playing four hours a day. And even if you only play it once, that’ll still likely take you a whole weekend during which you do literally nothing else.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii
On February 21st, there’s Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is really more of an honorable mention with an asterisk than a proper entry on this list. The series has some absolute behemoths, with the longer installments like Yakuza 0, Yakuza 5 and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth easily racking up 60 hours for a normal playthrough. Of course, it’s not uncommon for people to spend twice that long after getting hooked on any of the infamously addictive side activities, like mahjong! Or managing a cabaret club! Or growing a senbei rice cracker company into a fortune 500 company that owns an amusement park run by a crawfish, a vacuum cleaner, and a 10 year old!
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is going to be a smaller entry and the developers gave the oddly specific estimate that it’ll be about 1.3 to 1.5 times the size of last year’s Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Despite having the longest title in series history, that’s the shortest game to date, apparently starting out as DLC before becoming its own standalone thing. Gaiden can be completed in around 12 hours, so expect Pirate Yakuza to be roughly 16 to 18… with a big capital BUT: it’s very possible there’s some absurdly time-consuming diversion. The kart-racing and delivery minigames from Infinite Wealth return, but there’s also something called Masaru’s Love Journey: My Dream Minato Girl… so make of that what you will (just close the blinds first.)
Like a Dragon Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii might only weigh in at two thirds of a February if you’re microdosing it, but don’t underestimate how easy it is to lose track of time in one of these games.
Monster Hunter Wilds
Now we should probably address the 800 pound Gorillaphant in the room. Actually, I think that’s a Congalala, which is neither gorilla nor elephant and probably weighs way more than 800 pounds but I disgress: the biggest game of the month is Monster Hunter Wilds, which releases on the dawn of the final day, February 28th. When I say this game is big, I mean not just in terms of its geographical scale, the grandiosity of its gameplay, the amount of anticipation millions of players have for it worldwide, or the amount of time they’ll sink into it, but really, all the above.
Anybody who knows anything about Monster Hunter knows that the people who get into Monster Hunter get into Monster Hunter. The last few entries, Rise and World, plus their respective expansions and/or expanded editions Sunbreak and Iceborne, can be mainlined in 30 to 50 hours, but like every other game on this list, aside from Speedrunners, who does that? That’s like going to an all-you-can-eat brazilian steakhouse and filling up on rolls before a guy with a sword covered in meat even comes by your table. And like a Brazilian steakhouse, the meat and swords are also big selling points for Monster Hunter. Realistically, getting your fill of an average Monster Hunter game’s campaign and sidequests, plus all the requisite grinding, will at least triple the playtime of the main campaign.
I sent a message to the entire IGN team asking folks how much time they put into Monster Hunter games and literally no one who responded had less than 100 hours clocked. Admittedly, I work at a video game website. If you work at, like, Applebee’s, or a hospice, or the Arvin Edison Water Storage District, you probably won’t get the same response from your co-workers, though you might get called into HR for being annoying and using company time to talk about video games. Regardless, it’s probably worth adding that my esteemed colleagues don’t play a lot of video games just because they work at IGN, they work at IGN because they play a lot of video games. A lot, as in 956 hours across Monster Hunter World and Iceborne. Another colleague had 632 hours logged, but shrugged it off saying some of it was hanging out in lobbies chatting with friends. Yes, friends with whom you spent hundreds of hours playing Monster Hunter!
I’m not saying this to boast about the people I work with at a video game website actually doing their job, but rather to underline that it’s not out of the ordinary for fans of this series to make this kind of time commitment, and I’m sure quite a few of you have done even more Monster Hunting than these casual scrubs I work with.
Monster Hunter has been a big deal in Japan since the jump. There were news stories about a CEO giving his employees the day off when Monster Hunter Rise came out because he knew half of them were just going to call in sick anyway. In fact, the previous game on this list, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s Crazy Verbose Vacation Adventure, actually had its release date moved up a week to get the hell out of Monster Hunter’s way. The studio head put out a video stating the reason was so fans could “play the game that comes out after with peace of mind” and “enjoy hunting at [their] own pace.”
Monster Hunter World was appropriately titled, because it proved to be a massive global success, and part of the reason Wilds has been in the works for so long is because of that popularity. How do you make something that is accessible and appealing to newcomers, but which also poses a fresh challenge to the millions of players who’ve sunk hundreds of millions of hours into the previous games? That’s quite a quandary, and whatever they don’t stick the landing on day one will likely get addressed in future patches or expansions.
In any case, anticipation is through the roof and Wilds is already smashing records: The open beta held in late October attracted almost half a million concurrent players on Steam alone, a new record high for the franchise, with 150,000 more people online than Monster Hunter World’s all-time peak player count.
So, breaking news: Monster Hunter Wilds is going to be a big game that a lot of people are going to be playing, and based on my incredibly precise calculations, it’ll likely take upwards of three and a half Februaries to get the full experience, but realistically, this is one of those games that a lot of folks will keep simmering on the backburner year round.
So, which of these massive games are you gonna spend your hard earned money on, and how much of your ever-so-fleeting spare time do you see yourself sinking into it? Let me know in the comments below, but try to keep it short and sweet… I don’t have all day.
