9.5? Naaaah. Definitely a 8.5 - 8.8ish

Stretch is never a positive when talking the contents of game.

@JWeinCom - Im curious. sE has added a lot of new content to expand on the Walmarket scenario, but you call it Stretching. So SE wants to expand on Walmarket - How do you suggest they do it without it being streched? I thought I gave you two perfect examples  of streching, and 7 Remake does nothing like that. 

Again, what is up with the mystery drink before first arena fight?

Stretch is never a positive when talking the contents of game.

@JWeinCom - Im curious. sE has added a lot of new content to expand on the Walmarket scenario, but you call it Stretching. So SE wants to expand on Walmarket - How do you suggest they do it without it being streched? I thought I gave you two perfect examples  of streching, and 7 Remake does nothing like that. 

Again, what is up with the mystery drink before first arena fight?

Well for one, ya gotta buy a keyboard for chatting, I know ya wanna play alone and you can but you will have a better time if you at least give people the time of days and echanges tips, ask for help etc. The game will flow more smootly and, ya never know, ya might end up chatting to a random stranger for an hour.

Two, yeah gotta play and adjust the UI on the fly over the course of your playtime, I'm still fine tuning things after 2,5000 hours. It's the most customizable UI in any game and that comes at a big cost the girst few hours but if you can stick with it, it'll pay off. Have a look at this random raider I'm going to pull from Youtube, nothing like the UI you get in the first few hours, I'm sure...

Seems about right, not the most polished and I'm going to give him bad marks for not being able to tighten the play space and his optimization of the layout but I'm know one thing for a fact, this UI didn't come to him until he has at the very least 100 hours or so in and it didn't need to. You build what you need ober time and people will help you when you ask. It's the friendliest game you'll ever play, maybe too friendly. You can scale the UI up or down and it'll all depend on your TV. My UI since I went 4k has changed drastically but I had no issues at 1080p and couch play. 

As for playing alone, it's easy. I played through the entirety of A realm reborn on a secondary server by my lonesome after I paid skipped it the first time around to get straight to heavensward and ended up confused, I talked to people in dungeons and that was about it for a few weeks of on and off play. It'll likely take you four to six weeks to get through that going at a moderate pace depending on how much you chat to people to get help, maybe eight weeks if you're free time gets tied up (Pandemic doesn't look to be lifting anytime soon) and about 4 weeks for every expansion after at a moderate pace. The last expansion that was out, actually only took me three weeks but I went hard as fuck at it, that said I spent a good chunk of time engaged in other activities in game so it's hard to say. These estimates couldbe wildly off cause I could see myself now, knowing what I do, B lining the story of those games in less and I could also see myself, in a space with less free time and it taking much, much longer. Really depends on you. 

There are hundreds of hours of side content, that I know you don't wanna play but you will get sucked in along the way. I wanted to play this game entirely by myself when I started but ended up just meeting people randomly and enjoying replaying dungeons over and over again to help other people out their first time after people helped me out.

By yourself, playing it as you would any other game and just B lining the story, I can't say exactly what the least ammount of hours would be because I didn't paly the game like that. All I can say is you'll go into this, play it solitary and realise along the way the fun and intrigue quadruples when you engage with people and those hours just melt away. It's also got the best Final Fantasy story of the all the games, with the best cast and definetly the best worlds. It's just a bit of a shame that we can't go back to 1.0 andget to know the characters from the start, you kind of get shoved in there along with the 2.0 reboot but they melded that into the lore of the world nicely. 

The game also depends heavily on what class you choose first and what starting area that class is tied to. It can mean the difference bettween, basically three very different, first couple of dozen hours. So I'd say research on youtube, there is starter guide video after starter guide video on their for a reason. Find what works for your style and hope for the best, if it doesn't work out you can restart to change your location or push through until you reach level 30 to change your class if you happen to like your home region. 

Good luck and don't give up. Some of the best gaming many don't even know about beyond the first 30 levels of FF14 and by far the best final fantasy.