The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a truly wonderful game, and one I’ve gone back to many times over the years. As much as I love it however, I don’t think I could ever put close to 700 hours into it, even over the course of multiple playthroughs.
Clearly I don’t have the fortitude of Reddit user Millerischris’s grandmother. Not only did she put an incredibly impressive 755 hours into Twilight Princess, she managed to eke that out across one playthrough. For context, an average playthrough of this particular Zelda title takes around 35 hours. What a woman.
It took Millerischris’s gran a few years and several guides to conquer the many dungeons, secrets, and bosses of Hyrule, but fair play to her for managing it. I tried to show my nan how to play Mario Kart once, and it was a disaster.
Millerischris explained that his gran isn’t a “hardcore” gamer, but she absolutely adores the Zelda franchise (a woman after my own heart). She played the Nintendo Wii version of the game, meaning she had to get used to the motion controls, but even with Millerischris helping out with the occasional challenge, he says she did 99% of the work – including the final fight with Ganondorf, which isn’t easy.
The internet loves a gamer gran, so of course the post soon blew up on r/gaming, and his grandmother made her own Reddit account as u/GramieGreat to talk all things Zelda and discuss the progress of her marathon.
The top comment from her is wonderful:
Had a couple of years when I didn’t touch this, but it was always there waiting for me. As for the “water temple” comment? I was NOT in the “water temple” most of the time. Never heard it called that before! Thanks for the laugh!!
Oh, and if you really want the cockles of your heart warmed, you can take a look through the messages between Chris and his nan right here. She describes a lot of the game’s puzzles as “insane”, which is fair enough, as there are some genuinely rough dungeons in Twilight Princess.
The big question of course, is where now? I’d heartily recommend gran checks out Wind Waker if she wants a slightly more relaxed Zelda experience, or Breath of the Wild if she really wants to lose herself.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.