How long to beat Tekken 8? Story mode, Arcade Quest & more explained

Curious how long it might take you to finish Tekken 8's various single-player modes? Tekken 8 has several ways to play solo, including a main story mode called the Dark Awakens.

If you are curious about how long it takes to beat the story mode of the game, the Arcade Quest mode, and all the other single-player content, here is what you need to know.

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The main story of Tekken 8 is called The Dark Awakens, and will likely take you four to five hours to complete. The story is made up of 15 chapters, each of which is relatively short, some are just a single fight and some cutscenes.

As is often the case with this style of cinematic fighting game story mode, a lot of the run time is taken up by cutscenes. Beyond that, you will have several fights, mostly as Jin but other characters are playable as well.

It isn't just basic fights all the way - throughout the story, Jin's strength and moveset change quite a bit, meaning he can play very differently in different fights. There are some sections that change things up completely, but we won't spoil those surprises here.

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Arcade Quest can be powered through in about three hours if you rush to get to the end. However, Arcade Quest is really more of a training tool, an excellent introduction for new players.

If you are new to Tekken or just want to step up your game for playing online, putting some time into Arcade Quest is a good idea. You can pick the character you want to learn, go through the various lessons, and play matches against AI opponents using all different characters and styles.

Then you have the Ghost Battle mode, which is an incredible practice tool that you could sink hours into if you want to improve. Arcade Quest gives back what you put into it, but if you simply want to finish the story, it shouldn't take you much more than an evening to do so.

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Character Episodes take about ten minutes to complete, and with 32 characters in the game, it will most likely take around four and a half hours to complete the full list.

Expanding beyond the main story of The Dark Awakens, the Character Episodes are individual stories for each character in the game. Some of these are locked until you finish the main story as they contain spoilers. Also, many of these are non-canon, as they completely contradict the main story.

Still, many of the Character Episode endings are a lot of fun, taking the place of the classic arcade endings of previous games that ranged from the serious to the utterly ridiculous.

That is it for how long it takes to beat Tekken 8. For more, head to our Tekken homepage where we have guides for the different editions of the game, customisation, and a rundown of the game's rollback netcode.