The Ace Combat franchise finally makes its comeback next month after something of a hiatus, making its debut on current generation consoles with Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. For fans of the series, there’s obviously plenty of excitement surrounding the game. We’ve seen plenty of footage of the game, and gotten deep looks into other aspects, such as customization, but some questions still persist.
One such question relates to how long the game will be. Given that Ace Combat 7 is an arcade combat sim, that can be hard to judge, especially since this is the kind of game that promotes retries and replays. According to the developers at Project Aces of Bandai Namco, though, if you were to quantify the amount of gameplay in Ace Combat 7, it could be anywhere between 10 hours (for expert players who choose to stick to the main path) to 50 hours (if you choose to “explore deeply” and max out every single aircraft in the game).
“Ace Combat is an arcade experience where you must complete missions,” the developers told Wccftech. “The times for a continuous process of trial and error are not included like in an RPG or adventure game.
“Adjusting the shaft of game level design and the length of gameplay time are decided based on the cycle of how you fail and retry missions. But, if an ace pilot plays without any mistakes, playtime is more than 10 hours… If a player explores deeply and aims to complete all aircrafts, it is assumed to be around 50 hours.”
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown launches next month, on January 18 for the PS4 and Xbox One, which will be followed by a PC launch a few days later on February 1. Bandai Namco will also be launching an “Aces At War” Bundle for $89.99- read more about that through here.
