Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered: How Long Does It Take to Unlock All 12 Kaiju?
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered launched on November 3, 2026 at $29.99, and finishing the twelve-kaiju roster takes an estimated six to nine hours of repeated local-mode fights. The more useful answer is that the order is now yours: Atari and Pipeworks rebuilt the unlock system so the credit you earn buys monsters, arenas and gallery items in any order you choose. Almost every launch-week description of a fixed, mode-by-mode unlock ladder — including the first version of this article — had that mechanism backwards.
Which changes the only question worth settling before paying: how much of the $29.99 is solo content you have to grind through, and how much is the multiplayer every reviewer actually praised. What follows separates the launch-week assumptions from what Atari, the game's own store listing and the people who played it say.
Key takeaways
- $29.99 digital on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Nintendo Switch 2 and the original Nintendo Switch. The physical Switch 2 cartridge is $39.99; on Steam the Digital Deluxe is a two-item bundle listed at $35.98, discounted 3% to $34.90.
- Four of the twelve kaiju are playable immediately — the 1990 Godzilla, Gigan, Megalon and Anguirus. The other eight are earned, and you pick which to buy first.
- Metacritic does not hold one number for this game. Its platform pages read 73 (Switch 2), 73 (PS5) and 71 (PC), while the site's own all-platforms block on the same day says 70, 75 and 70.
- Steam's user reviews read Overwhelmingly Positive, 96% of 973 — roughly 23 points above the critic band, and the gap is almost entirely about multiplayer.
Figures checked: November 6, 2026.
Four launch-week assumptions about unlocking the roster, checked against the source
Every figure in this section comes from one of three places: Atari and Pipeworks' own announcement, the game's Steam listing, or a review written by someone who played it. Where those disagree, the disagreement stays in the text.
Assumption 1: you clear Adventure, then Gauntlet, then Challenge, and the kaiju trickle in
This is the one that is simply wrong, and it was wrong in the first version of this article. Atari's announcement describes "a streamlined currency-based unlock system," and the Steam listing is blunter: the "improved unlock system gives you the choice to unlock monsters, locations, and gallery items in any order." Nintendo Life's 7/10 review names both the currency and the change — the "research" tied to specific unlocks "was fixed" in the 2002 game, and "now you can freely choose which one you want to prioritise (pro tip: unlock Ghidorah first)." There is no ladder. There is a pool of earned credit and a shopping list.
Assumption 2: the grind only buys monsters
That same Steam sentence puts three things in competition for one currency: monsters, locations, and gallery items. Eight locked kaiju, the arena roster and the gallery contents all draw on the same pool, so an hour budget set purely against the monsters is a budget for part of the bill. Nintendo Life's verdict that "getting 100% is a patience-testing loop of the same old fights" is about the whole list, not the fighters alone.
Assumption 3: Adventure Mode is eight levels
The eight is real, but attached to the wrong noun. Steam's feature list says 8 locations, "including recreated real-world cities, Monster Island, and the Alien Mothership," each with day and night variations. Adventure Mode itself, per Nintendo Life, comes "in three tiers of difficulty" and ends where the 2002 game ended: your kaiju "has to battle their way to the alien mothership and take on the Vortaak's cybernetic facsimile of Earth's mightiest monster - Mechagodzilla." Neither Atari nor any review published a level count, so any per-level timing is a construction rather than a figure.
Assumption 4: on Nintendo hardware this is a Switch 2 release
Atari's announcement lists five platforms: "PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2." Metacritic's details panel lists the original Switch as well. The Switch 2 version is the one that got the $39.99 cartridge and the bulk of the reviews, which is probably how the base Switch dropped out of launch coverage — including this article's first version.
So how long does the full roster take?
Nobody has published a stopwatch number. Atari has not, the Steam page has not, and neither Nintendo Life nor the outlets collected in Pure Xbox's launch roundup timed it; HowLongToBeat has no readable entry for the remaster. What follows is therefore a labelled estimate assembled from how the people who played it described the loop — a planning range with an error bar, not a measurement.
The anchors: Daryl Baxter's hands-on Switch 2 review frames the game as short-burst play, "a fun game you can load up and play for 10 minutes." CGMagazine and COGconnected both called the unlock loop grindy, and VGTimes, writing a day before launch, listed the "tedious grind required to unlock gated content" as a recurring drawback across the first seven reviews. Put a 15-to-20-minute match against each of the eight arenas and a first pass runs two to two-and-a-half hours; add the two new single-player modes VGTimes names — "Gauntlet challenges players to defeat a series of opponents that gradually scale up in power" and "Challenge Mode pits players against significantly tougher adversaries enhanced by combat modifiers" — plus the repeat fights the research list demands, and the full set lands somewhere around six to nine hours.
| Item | Count | Source wording |
|---|---|---|
| Playable kaiju | 12 total; 4 at launch, 8 to earn | "12 Kaiju to choose from, each with a uniquely vicious moveset" (Steam); "players only have access to four at launch" (VGTimes) |
| Arenas | 8, each with day and night variations | "8 locations, including recreated real-world cities, Monster Island, and the Alien Mothership" (Steam) |
| Gallery items | Count not stated anywhere | "Gallery items to unlock" (Steam) |
| Spending order | Player's choice | "unlock monsters, locations, and gallery items in any order you choose" (Steam) |
Run the money against that range and $29.99 works out to about $5.00 an hour at the six-hour end of the solo estimate and about $3.33 an hour at the nine-hour end. Neither is a strong rate for single-player content on its own, which is the same place Nintendo Life arrived from the other direction: "nothing much to do in single-player once everything is unlocked." The trade-off flips the moment local co-op or the new online multiplayer enters the picture, because that is where six of the seven launch reviews put their praise — and it is a feature the 2002 GameCube original never had at all.
Two more things the money does not buy. The Digital Deluxe content shortens none of the above: on Steam it is a $5.99 upgrade DLC sold alongside the base game, and nothing in Atari's announcement or the store listing attaches new fighters, modes or research shortcuts to it. And the remaster's headline technical work — "rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5," per Atari, with "4K performance and 99% mechanical fidelity," online matchmaking and native haptics support — is presentation and plumbing, not extra solo content.
The Metacritic number depends on which Metacritic page you open
This is worth laying out, because the figure quoted for this game at launch moved around and the earlier version of this article quoted the wrong end of it.
| Version | Platform page | Same day, all-platforms block |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 remaster, Switch 2 | 73 (8 reviews shown) | 70 (10 reviews) |
| 2026 remaster, PS5 | 73 (7 reviews shown) | 75 (11 on the game page, 12 in the block) |
| 2026 remaster, PC | 71 (4 reviews shown) | 70 (8 reviews) |
| 2026 remaster, Xbox Series X | tbd (1 review, unscored) | tbd |
| 2002 GameCube original | 73 (30 reviews) | — |
| 2003 Xbox version | 71 (20 reviews) | — |
Two things follow. The honest one-line summary is that the remaster sits in the low 70s, 24 years after the original landed at 73 on GameCube and 71 on Xbox — which is what VGTimes said at the time, headlining a Metacritic average of 73. And a site showing two different scores for the same platform on the same day is not a source to quote to the point: anyone citing a precise spread is citing one of its pages, not the game.
The individual scores also do not support the "nothing above an eight" reading that went around at launch. Console Creatures gave the Switch 2 version 90 and GameGrin gave the PS5 version 90; Digital Chumps sits at 78, Noisy Pixel at 80, then 4P.de, GameWatcher and CGMagazine at 75, a wide 70 band — Nintendo Life, GameSpot, Siliconera, Gaming Boulevard, IGN, Final Weapon, COGconnected, GameSpew, GameBlast, The Games Machine — and Multiplayer.it and Nintendo News PL at 65. That is a 65-to-90 spread, not a tight cluster.
The real outlier is on Steam, where user reviews read Overwhelmingly Positive at 96% of 973 against a critic band in the low 70s. Reading that gap rather than reporting it: $29.99 resets expectations downward, week-one buyers skew toward people who already liked the 2002 game, and a four-person living room is a different test from a solo reviewer working through a checklist. That reading is this article's, not a reported finding.
FAQ
How long does it take to unlock all 12 kaiju?
No developer or reviewer has published a figure, and HowLongToBeat has no readable entry. Based on how the reviews describe the loop, roughly six to nine hours is a reasonable planning range — an estimate, not an official number. Finishing the rest of the research list runs longer than that.
Can you choose which kaiju to unlock first?
Yes. Atari describes "a streamlined currency-based unlock system," and the Steam listing says you can unlock "monsters, locations, and gallery items in any order you choose." Nintendo Life's review suggests spending first on King Ghidorah.
How many monsters do you start with?
Four of the twelve: the 1990 Godzilla, Gigan, Megalon and Anguirus, per VGTimes' launch report. Neither Atari's announcement nor the Steam listing states a starting roster.
What does it cost, and what does the Digital Deluxe add?
$29.99 digital on every platform. The Switch 2 physical cartridge is $39.99. On Steam the Digital Deluxe is the base game plus a $5.99 upgrade DLC — $35.98 together, discounted 3% to $34.90 on November 6, 2026 — and no source attaches new fighters, modes or unlock shortcuts to it.
Which platforms is it on?
Five, per Atari: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. The Xbox Series X version had one unscored review on Metacritic as of November 6, 2026.
Is the remaster better received than the 2002 original?
Almost identically received. GameCube 73 across 30 reviews in 2002 and Xbox 71 across 20 in 2003; the remaster's platform pages read 71 to 73 twenty-four years later.
Related reading
- Final Fantasy Resonance: What 30 to 80 Hours Actually Buy You at $49.99
- Phantom Blade Zero Just Launched for $59.99. Here's What a 25-Hour Run and a 50-Hour Run Actually Buy You
- ZERO PARADES: Director's Cut Launches on PS5, Xbox, and Switch 2 November 3
Tip: A roster grind this long is a lot easier on your hands with a controller you actually like, and the kaiju roars are half the appeal of this one. A spare gaming controller also makes the local versus mode practical, and a gaming headset brings out the sound design during long Challenge Mode sessions. (These are Amazon Associate links — we may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.)
Correction November 6, 2026: this article previously described the roster as unlocking through a fixed sequence of Adventure, Gauntlet and Challenge Mode, put Adventure Mode at eight levels, gave Metacritic as 70 to 75, said no review scored above an 8, reported Steam at 95% positive, priced the Digital Deluxe at $34.99, and left the original Nintendo Switch off the platform list. The unlock system is currency-based and in any order, the eight is the number of arenas, the platform pages read 71 to 73, two outlets scored 90, Steam reads 96% of 973, the Steam Deluxe bundle is $35.98 less 3%, and Atari lists five platforms (Steam store listing; Atari and Pipeworks announcement; Metacritic platform pages; Nintendo Life review).
Sources
- Metacritic — Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, critic scores by platform
- PlayStation Store — official listing, pricing, and editions
- Pure Xbox — launch-day critic score roundup
- VGTimes — roster, unlock structure, and Steam user score reporting
- Daryl Baxter / Springboard — hands-on Switch 2 review
- Steam store listing — roster count, 8 locations, unlock-in-any-order wording, editions, user reviews
- Atari and Pipeworks — launch announcement: platforms, pricing, currency-based unlock system
- Metacritic — Switch 2 critic reviews page
- Nintendo Life — Switch 2 review, 7/10
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