Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, as the name suggests, is the sixth mainline entry of the franchise because of the hype of both long-time fans of the series and the following that FromSoftware has built from its successes of its Soulsborne games, most notably of which was Elden Ring (The Game Awards 2022 winner of Game of the Year), there’s definitely a lot of excitement around the launch of this game. And now, FromSoftware has finally revealed that the estimated Armored Core 6 game length for campaign completion will be around 20 hours.
In an interview with Armored Core VI devs, Director Masaru Yamamura said “We’d say for the average player, a full playthrough of the campaign would take roughly 20 hours. However, there are multiple endings and, of course, arena missions and things like this to play as well. So you can estimate a little bit more than that [for players who wish to do] repeated play throughs to get those multiple endings and mission branching as well.”
We then asked how would the game completion time differ between experienced Armored Core players from newcomers that will be playing this as their first-ever AC game. Interestingly enough though, the FromSoftware devs replied that they feel that Armored Core 6 game length for both series Veterans and Newcomers won’t be vastly different from each other.
“For long-time AC fans, we would actually say that, while they may be more familiar with the assembly aspects and that will come more naturally to them, a lot of the battle design and combat design and how you utilize your assembly is going to differ a bit from previous ACs.“, adds Yamamura. “So we feel like the complete playtime won’t change an awful lot and they’ll be at a similar starting point to players who are completely new to the series in that sense.”
Armored Core has always been a very technical title as assembly has always been at the heart of its gameplay. For the devs to say that the completion time between AC veterans and newcomers will roughly be the same shows you just how much Armored Core VI will be different from the previous titles in the franchise. Ever since the initial trailers came out, long-time fans have pointed out some noticeable differences like how AC6 now has a lock-on system of sorts called “target assist”.
Producer Yasunori Ogura does candidly add “You never know… these longtime fans may enjoy spending more time in the garage, so their total playtime could be more.”
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon releases on August 25, 2023 for the PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.