Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is inching ever closer to its release, and in a recent interview that we had with Producer Yasunori Ogura and Director Masaru Yamamura, the pair mentioned that a full playthrough of the Armored Core VI campaign will take roughly about 20 hours to complete for the average player.

Related – Read our full interview with Armored Core VI Director and Producer

“For the average player, a full playthrough of the Armored Core VI campaign would take roughly about 20 hours. However, there are multiple endings and arena missions to play as well, so it would probably be a bit more than that. We hope that players enjoy repeated playthroughs to get those multiple endings and mission branching as well.”

According to HowLongToBeat, previous Armored Core titles took anywhere from 5-12 hours for just the main campaign alone, so Armored Core VI will take players almost twice the time to beat the campaign.

Armored Core isn’t a game that’s measured by just the campaign though, and with an extensive suite of customization options along with its arena mode, players will surely take more time figuring the ins and outs of this latest installment.

Additionally, players can choose to repeat missions as well, looking forward to getting the highest rank across all of them or even just grinding them for resources. While this can indeed be the case, the latter is not a recommended way of spending time in the game.

“Mission replay is implemented mainly as a sort of challenge run or an endgame feature for players that want to earn more rewards and get the highest rank. It’s not intended to be a way to grind or accumulate more parts, although players can use it that way if they wish.”

“We’ve tried to balance the mission flow, including training missions between the campaign, to give the players the weapons that they’ll need. They will have enough to choose from just by playing through the main missions and story missions to get some unique weapons. Just playing through the campaign will give them enough to choose from, we feel.”

It bears saying that Armored Core VI does not penalize players will selling equipment, as they can sell any of the equipment back for full price, incentivizing trying out multiple loadouts and experimenting with various builds.

“To the more frugal and experimental player, there’s no penalty to selling your parts and weapons at all. So if you try something out and it doesn’t work, you can just sell it back for full price and buy something else. We hope this encourages players to experiment with assembly in Armored Core VI a bit more.”

Related – Read our Hands-on Preview of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is launching on August 25, 2023, for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC.