The Questions, Answered From the Sources

It depends on the difficulty preset more than on you. The main story alone is 10–15 hours on Story, plus 20–30 on Fair, 30–40 on Challenging and 40–50 on Duelist; main story with exploration runs 20–30 up to 60–70 on the same scale; completionist is 60–70 hours. The platinum is estimated at 40–60 hours at 5/10 difficulty.

Both, depending on what you want. It is real for one gold trophy — In the Nick of Time asks you to rescue your family before time runs out, and it is the most missable requirement in the game. It is not real as a fail state: the story continues after the 30 days have passed, with permanent consequences in your current playthrough, and you can keep playing past the 30-day limit. The target is to reach an ending by day 22, with the story itself costing 7–10 in-game days.

No. Time doesn't progress automatically in the background; instead it is spent like a currency on certain dialogue choices, unlocking skills and completing quests, and on waiting at shrines, learning and upgrading perks, and exploring the Astral Planes. A time-spending dialogue line is marked with an hourglass icon. A full day-and-night cycle is 16 Time Segments, split evenly.

Two categories. The prologue's ten side quests, which are all missable and become unavailable after the prologue — ⚠️ PowerPyx closes them when the prologue ends, Vandal as soon as Sacred Covenant moves the story on — plus Esme, if the medicine in Withering Away is not made in time. And eighteen trophies marked MISSABLE, which include ending-dependent ones, the four skill-tree ones, and a few with very specific triggers: the fishmonger for Selfish stops spawning at Infamy Level 9, and ⚠️ PowerPyx counts only one silver trader to sell to for Smuggler, while Vandal found general merchants in Tantari and Maragir buying silver once he was dead. Everything else remains available permanently after the prologue, with the caveat that objectives inside a quest you have already started can be time-sensitive — the journal shows a blue clock.

⚠️ The sources disagree, and they also disagree on how many endings there are — PowerPyx 7, Fextralife 7, Game8 9, VGC 6, Vandal 8. On playthroughs, PowerPyx and Vandal say one is enough if you keep a manual save before the final quest and reload it after each ending; Game8's Game Length page says "unlocking all the endings requires multiple separate playthroughs, adding an extra 40~60 hours". The 40–60 hour platinum estimate is built on the save-reload method.

Yes, in early October according to the director: a new, easier Story mode below the current four presets (the current Story mode gets renamed), a fix for the camera switching target when you stun an enemy, an easier way to flee a fight, and PC performance work. No exact date yet. Details and sources on the Getting Started page.

Not yet, but one is coming. There is no New Game+ mode at launch, no free-roam after the story and no mission replay — reaching an ending returns you to the title screen, and continuing means reloading an earlier save. Since launch, the director, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, has said twice that one is coming — "It's coming. But I won't tell you when" on a PlayStation stream (18 September) and "Yes, we are" in an interview (22 September) — and it is not part of the October patch. Until it arrives, an earlier save is the only route back to a missed quest: there are 54 manual save slots, and the plan is a save on every in-game day. Separately, whether free roam exists after an ending has been read both ways; that is not resolved here.

There are three romance options — Anca, Lacra and Crake — and all three can be pursued in a single playthrough with no jealousy mechanic, though time management is required. Two have a hard gate: Lacra's needs the mandrake eaten during The Night of Horrors, and refusing locks the route out; Anca's chain starts with Page-Turner, which only exists if you agreed to practise Latin back in the prologue.

"The recommended boss order is Ambrus> Bakir > Xanthe because of their level ranges" — level 1+, 20+ and 25+. You reach each duel by doing Court Activities in that vassal's own region: 14 for Ambrus, 12 for Bakir, 15 for Xanthe, and "doing roughly 75% of them is enough to anger the bosses enough to get their boss fight quests".

Metacritic 84 on PC, 83 on PS5 and 84 on Xbox Series X|S, with OpenCritic at 94% of critics recommending. Named scores include Destructoid 9.5/10, IGN 9/10, GameSpot 8/10, PC Gamer 83/100 and Eurogamer 4/5. The writing and the day/night split drew the praise; the 30-day system split opinion, described by some critics as brutal and central and by others as largely illusory.