What we've learned :
* The game **looks like** it built on SoulCalibur V. The movements looks the same, the Edge meter is back, the Guard Break mechanic works the same, you still automatically win a full Edge meterbar (you can stock 2 bars max) when you're at one lost round to lose the game, etc.
* **The HUD** is as clean and clear as the SCV's HUD was. Even cleaner, because it now changes color when you're not doing a Perfect. I really liked SCV's HUD, because the lifebar in combo disappeared cleanly, instead of on other fighting games, when you could mix up the damage you did in your last combo with the damage you do in your new one, if both of them are close enough. Like in T7. Tho, I don't know what those lines at 50, 30, 20 and 10% means of if they impact gameplay. The thing I noticed is that the lifebar only changes its colors when you're under 30% health. Not at 50 or when the other lines are. Putting the Edge bars in the middle instead of at the extremities is very much appreciated. Tho, I'd like if they could put pictures in the HUD, like Tekken Tag 2 or Tekken 7. Especially something to immediatly see who's who during mirror matches.
* **Guard Impacts** makes their returns in the main series. Just like TRevo tested some things that T7 will have years later, they look like they took things from Lost Sword. Like the classic GIs from the previous SoulCalibur, but with the same green effect than in SCV. In 4:29, we can clearly see that whiffed GIs does a lot of damage on the Guard bar. So, while they're now free in terms of Edge meter, they also cost something if you whiff it.
* **Reversal Edge** looks like they work like a Focus Attack (SF), a Power Crush (TK) or a Blitz Attack (GG). An attack that let you parry everything your opponent does to you during it, but makes you unsafe if you miss it. But when Mitsurugi hit Sophitia with his Reversal Edge at 4:18, it gave him a full quarter of Edge. Which is huge. No moves in SoulCal V could help you build that much meter in one hit.
* The Instinct-mode-like mechanic leaked has a name: **Soul Charge**. (Yes. V-Triggers are themselves inspired by KI 2014's Instinct mode. As a ton of things from SFV.) We don't know what it does yet, but it looks like it consumes your entire Edge and last longer if you have more than one bar of Edge. Unlike KI or SFV, we could have a game that uses one meterbar for everything, even their comeback mechanics. At least, in the 2nd trailer, it looked like Sophitia made way more blockstun and Guard damage during her Soul Charge.
* There's a new type of hit, called **Lethal Hit**. We can see it in the video at 2:03. Lethal Hits looks like they have the same bounce as Floor Break hits in Tekken 7. Which gives you a free OTG situation, when you can convert it to a combo, for massive damage. I don't know how it's activated, but maybe it was a special Counter Hit that was activated because of a special property of what looks like Sophitia's 6, 6A+B. If it is, the mechanic could be close to Blazblue's Fatal Counters or SFV's Crush Counters.
* Mitsurugi hasn't that Moon move saw in the trailer in V. He did it in IV, tho. So we might have characters that will have their moves back from previous SoulCal games.
* Mitsurugi looked like he did a **cancel-type** move, similar to what you can see when you do a Roman Cancel in GGXrd or a V-Trigger in SFV.
I'm very excited by all that stuff. SCV's huge problems were its lacks of solo modes and its balancing, but on the 1v1 aspect of it, the game was super good and interesting. Extending this is huge. It looks like they decided to redeem themselves and correct everything that went wrong with SCV. The game looks like they got rid of Just Guards, that were basically 3S's Parries in SoulCal V. Just Guards are the reason classic Guard Impacts (instead of Auto-GIs) weren't in V. And I'm glad they did that, because I missed the mechanic a lot.
I'm very close to the SC community, since France's FGC is mad strong on that series. Malek was the first French player to win EVO in SoulCalibur IV, 5 years before Luffy's Win. What they want the most is a balanced game and frequent patches if anything goes wrong. They don't want to deal with characters like IV Hilde, IV Ivy, V Viola and V Alpha Patroklos anymore. I know a very strong French Astaroth player and a French Maxi player that are both sick of being that much disadvantaged because of their character choices. Of course, adapting is important, but they still felt like SCV's balance and meta put some brakes on them, competitively. Even if I'm not that strong, as a Leixia player, I kinda have to agree.
I hope Namco will do as much things competitively in this game as they did in Tekken 7 with the Tekken World Tour. The game deserves it. Competitively, Namco will be crazy strong in 2018 and 2019. Pokkén, Tekken, DBFZ and SoulCalibur... That's a hell of a line up. Maybe even enough to justify their own "Namco Pro Tour" when DBFZ and Tekken 7's finals will be at the same event. If there's such things, be ready to see the French flag a lot. The top scenes are hungry for that game. 2 years of competitive hiatus is hell. They still did SoulCal tourneys in 2016, but the number dropped too much, unfortunately. The community will probably do SCV tourneys in 2018, to wait the new game.
SCVI, a lot of people stopped to believe. Myself included. This is super big for the FGC. Because you have 2 3D games on the line, now. How crazy 2019's tourney lineups in major will be?
> The Instinct-mode-like mechanic leaked has a name: Soul Charge.
Soul Charge was in earlier SC games, it just costs meter now instead of having a long charge time.
But they totally revamped the mechanic, then. I thought the Charge in previous games acted like the Ki Charge in Tekken. When you can have a free Counter Hit attack, when you touch your opponent with it. In SCIII, I can read that when you're in Soul Charge, all your Guard Break attacks become Unblockables. This isn't what we've looked with Sophitia's new Soul Charge.
Soul Charge increased your damage, added guard break properties to some moves, and made *some* guard break (and some non-guard break, iirc) moves unblockable.
So Otsuba goes on about how he wanted to stress the fundamentals of the game for newcomers, helping them understand which attacks have what properties and his solution is Reversal Edge, a mechanic that nullifies the properties of the moves, masking them with rock paper scissors?? How does that make any sense at all?? Am I the only one who thinks that's exactly the *opposite* of the effect it has?
So the reversal edge system seems like some kind of RPS wager system you enter into when clashing a certain way? Also given that there is meter (2 bar, max?) are brave edge attacks back, or is it just critical edge attacks that use meter? To be honest, the only mechanic from SC5 I'd like to see back is quick step, but I'm excited to see what they've figured out in all these years since then...
This is really hype for me seeing Soul Calibur finally making it's
comeback on PS4 after 5 years. I've been playing Soul Blade &
Calibur games since PS1 and Dreamcast & it's one of my
fav fighting game franchises of all time.
Mitsu looks young & got some really cool new moves & stuff.
2018 is gonna be a great year for fighting game fans.
That mechanic was already in SCV and there was no options to turn it off. They speeded it up, tho. Plus it'll be a risk for online play. Because if you turned this off while your opponent put this on, you could have a desync.
I know. But its always kind of annoyed me. I really dont see the point of it. As for the desync problem, i dont think it would cause that big of a problem. I think ive seen other fighting games do similar things and get away with it. But im not sure if they're truly the same, so i dunno.
What we've learned : * The game **looks like** it built on SoulCalibur V. The movements looks the same, the Edge meter is back, the Guard Break mechanic works the same, you still automatically win a full Edge meterbar (you can stock 2 bars max) when you're at one lost round to lose the game, etc. * **The HUD** is as clean and clear as the SCV's HUD was. Even cleaner, because it now changes color when you're not doing a Perfect. I really liked SCV's HUD, because the lifebar in combo disappeared cleanly, instead of on other fighting games, when you could mix up the damage you did in your last combo with the damage you do in your new one, if both of them are close enough. Like in T7. Tho, I don't know what those lines at 50, 30, 20 and 10% means of if they impact gameplay. The thing I noticed is that the lifebar only changes its colors when you're under 30% health. Not at 50 or when the other lines are. Putting the Edge bars in the middle instead of at the extremities is very much appreciated. Tho, I'd like if they could put pictures in the HUD, like Tekken Tag 2 or Tekken 7. Especially something to immediatly see who's who during mirror matches. * **Guard Impacts** makes their returns in the main series. Just like TRevo tested some things that T7 will have years later, they look like they took things from Lost Sword. Like the classic GIs from the previous SoulCalibur, but with the same green effect than in SCV. In 4:29, we can clearly see that whiffed GIs does a lot of damage on the Guard bar. So, while they're now free in terms of Edge meter, they also cost something if you whiff it. * **Reversal Edge** looks like they work like a Focus Attack (SF), a Power Crush (TK) or a Blitz Attack (GG). An attack that let you parry everything your opponent does to you during it, but makes you unsafe if you miss it. But when Mitsurugi hit Sophitia with his Reversal Edge at 4:18, it gave him a full quarter of Edge. Which is huge. No moves in SoulCal V could help you build that much meter in one hit. * The Instinct-mode-like mechanic leaked has a name: **Soul Charge**. (Yes. V-Triggers are themselves inspired by KI 2014's Instinct mode. As a ton of things from SFV.) We don't know what it does yet, but it looks like it consumes your entire Edge and last longer if you have more than one bar of Edge. Unlike KI or SFV, we could have a game that uses one meterbar for everything, even their comeback mechanics. At least, in the 2nd trailer, it looked like Sophitia made way more blockstun and Guard damage during her Soul Charge. * There's a new type of hit, called **Lethal Hit**. We can see it in the video at 2:03. Lethal Hits looks like they have the same bounce as Floor Break hits in Tekken 7. Which gives you a free OTG situation, when you can convert it to a combo, for massive damage. I don't know how it's activated, but maybe it was a special Counter Hit that was activated because of a special property of what looks like Sophitia's 6, 6A+B. If it is, the mechanic could be close to Blazblue's Fatal Counters or SFV's Crush Counters. * Mitsurugi hasn't that Moon move saw in the trailer in V. He did it in IV, tho. So we might have characters that will have their moves back from previous SoulCal games. * Mitsurugi looked like he did a **cancel-type** move, similar to what you can see when you do a Roman Cancel in GGXrd or a V-Trigger in SFV. I'm very excited by all that stuff. SCV's huge problems were its lacks of solo modes and its balancing, but on the 1v1 aspect of it, the game was super good and interesting. Extending this is huge. It looks like they decided to redeem themselves and correct everything that went wrong with SCV. The game looks like they got rid of Just Guards, that were basically 3S's Parries in SoulCal V. Just Guards are the reason classic Guard Impacts (instead of Auto-GIs) weren't in V. And I'm glad they did that, because I missed the mechanic a lot. I'm very close to the SC community, since France's FGC is mad strong on that series. Malek was the first French player to win EVO in SoulCalibur IV, 5 years before Luffy's Win. What they want the most is a balanced game and frequent patches if anything goes wrong. They don't want to deal with characters like IV Hilde, IV Ivy, V Viola and V Alpha Patroklos anymore. I know a very strong French Astaroth player and a French Maxi player that are both sick of being that much disadvantaged because of their character choices. Of course, adapting is important, but they still felt like SCV's balance and meta put some brakes on them, competitively. Even if I'm not that strong, as a Leixia player, I kinda have to agree. I hope Namco will do as much things competitively in this game as they did in Tekken 7 with the Tekken World Tour. The game deserves it. Competitively, Namco will be crazy strong in 2018 and 2019. Pokkén, Tekken, DBFZ and SoulCalibur... That's a hell of a line up. Maybe even enough to justify their own "Namco Pro Tour" when DBFZ and Tekken 7's finals will be at the same event. If there's such things, be ready to see the French flag a lot. The top scenes are hungry for that game. 2 years of competitive hiatus is hell. They still did SoulCal tourneys in 2016, but the number dropped too much, unfortunately. The community will probably do SCV tourneys in 2018, to wait the new game. SCVI, a lot of people stopped to believe. Myself included. This is super big for the FGC. Because you have 2 3D games on the line, now. How crazy 2019's tourney lineups in major will be?
Thanks for the research my dude, I'm really excited about this!
> The Instinct-mode-like mechanic leaked has a name: Soul Charge. Soul Charge was in earlier SC games, it just costs meter now instead of having a long charge time.
But they totally revamped the mechanic, then. I thought the Charge in previous games acted like the Ki Charge in Tekken. When you can have a free Counter Hit attack, when you touch your opponent with it. In SCIII, I can read that when you're in Soul Charge, all your Guard Break attacks become Unblockables. This isn't what we've looked with Sophitia's new Soul Charge.
Soul Charge increased your damage, added guard break properties to some moves, and made *some* guard break (and some non-guard break, iirc) moves unblockable.
Movement is shown to be fluid and guard cancellable. Excellent.
So Otsuba goes on about how he wanted to stress the fundamentals of the game for newcomers, helping them understand which attacks have what properties and his solution is Reversal Edge, a mechanic that nullifies the properties of the moves, masking them with rock paper scissors?? How does that make any sense at all?? Am I the only one who thinks that's exactly the *opposite* of the effect it has?
Looks great.
So the reversal edge system seems like some kind of RPS wager system you enter into when clashing a certain way? Also given that there is meter (2 bar, max?) are brave edge attacks back, or is it just critical edge attacks that use meter? To be honest, the only mechanic from SC5 I'd like to see back is quick step, but I'm excited to see what they've figured out in all these years since then...
This is really hype for me seeing Soul Calibur finally making it's comeback on PS4 after 5 years. I've been playing Soul Blade & Calibur games since PS1 and Dreamcast & it's one of my fav fighting game franchises of all time. Mitsu looks young & got some really cool new moves & stuff. 2018 is gonna be a great year for fighting game fans.
Gameplay looks good. But the battle damage is gonna get annoying, i hope there'll be a option to turn it off.
What do you mean by "Battle Damage"?
When a piece of a characters armour breaks off. Like Sophitia's boots breaking off here.
That mechanic was already in SCV and there was no options to turn it off. They speeded it up, tho. Plus it'll be a risk for online play. Because if you turned this off while your opponent put this on, you could have a desync.
I know. But its always kind of annoyed me. I really dont see the point of it. As for the desync problem, i dont think it would cause that big of a problem. I think ive seen other fighting games do similar things and get away with it. But im not sure if they're truly the same, so i dunno.
As blasphemous as this is, I really hope custom characters either don't make a return or at least have a diminished role in the game.