What takes you guys so long?

There is a negative tone in your post based on how you have phrased things. Telling someone they've taken "so long" implies that they have exceed time expectations and done something wrong, which isn't the case in a video game. You wouldn't say, "The food took so long" and have it mean something positive, for example!

Ultimately, I did answer your question: people do things in different ways from each other. From your perspective, maybe you read more quickly, from someone else's, maybe you don't read as thoroughly. Maybe you go through areas once thoroughly, and someone else does it three times just to be sure they didn't miss anything. There's a million little things that add up to your playtime being lower than someone else's.

Not really, unless you're just impatiently plowing through every encounter. The average first run is probably well over 100h, mostly because of the learning curve, regardless of difficulty. I imagine successive playthroughs are typically even longer because of returning players who want to be thorough and find anything they may have missed previously.

My HM run was by far my fastest because I knew the maps like the back of my hand, skipped dialogue, and only looted and explored what was necessary. I was probably around 40h when I made it to Act 3 and ended the game at around 65h. My first and second runs, which were both Balanced, were probably my longest runs. So difficulty has very little to do with it, I think.

I'm very very meticulous in my gaming and am always a bit completionist on my first run in a game, looking for the best outcome possible.

I find laroan games like bg3 and ddos2 where you can make the "wrong" decision really difficult! It took me 200 hours to finish act 1 in divinity, I never even finished the game 😭

Act 1 took me around 100 hours on tactician, act 2 about 60 and act 3 about 120-140. Keep in mind that my second playthrough honor run I got to grymforge at about 30 hours.

Your whole post comes across as condescending. The vast majority of people take over 100 hours to get through the game, so you're either saying "I'm super smart and fast" or "everybody is so dumb and slow."

You'd have to skip large portions of the game to finish it within 40 hours, especially for a first playthrough.

Me being dumb and slow took ~140 hours on my first game and still found so much I missed on my following playthroughs. I could never be as amazing and smart and fast as you who didn't miss anything whatsoever.