Soul Calibur V Raphael - Nerfs? Buffs? Change Of Style?

his main punish/poke being a stance entry move means now raph has to take some risk.

No simply 3B for you to hit confirm.

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So far he's been largely unchanged from his SC4 incarnation, per the French interviews.

His lone stance on paper in SC4 will probably once again return in SC5 with a shit load of options (but none abusibly good)

Here are two moves based on "old" pictures that were not uploaded to this site oddly:


This is probably raph's ground hitting attack until 11B (sc4) returns



TC? yep!
Horizontal? Yep!
Mid? Probably

This animation reminds me of his 236AB, where it starts like sophitia's 236AA but ends with a single linear thrust.

The back-turned on NH would be great.

Looking forward to having Raph be a hard-to-rush-down beast but then again he looks like he'll likely revert to a good counter-poker.

4B, a (hopefully useful 4A+B), 4K, 4A, (jeez holding back + something with raph looks like his go-to position) prep A+B,and his auto-evades are all stuff I'm looking forward to

I prefer his style as a counter-poker. Fencing is all about footwork and testing your opponent for openings. I think his gameplay should reflect that, with good movement, great pokes, and some nice crumple stun on his attacks, but fewer combos and less grab range than other character might have.

Don't forget a decent retreating step or just backstep in general! However, if he had a SC4 mina-esque backstep he would be a brutal matchup for some short range characters, (while not overall increasing his tier) but this is SC5.

I agree that I dont mind if raph had weaker than average grabs, as long as he has reliable low pokes.

In a game sense if Raph is overly too defensive it may turn away his popularity.

I believe that prep A+B from neutral may be the spiritual successor of 44B. Now what made 44B so great was that it was safe, tracked well for a vertical, hit grounded, and he a 60 damage AT on NH. It is going to be hard to top i'll admit.

NH knockdowns will likely not be one of raphael's strengths in SC5.

All that would change if 1BB low pokes were more threatening (one of the few raph moves that got buffed in SC4:BD).

Speaking of 1BB low, I'd like to see a split in raph's lows specialized like as follows:

1BB: linear but good against grounded opponents who try to roll
1K: react-able Power sweep with knockdown only on CH
1A: unreactable decent range linear low poke
FC3b: slow long range low poke
33B: slow, evasive semi tracking low poke.
2K: standard unseeable low poke for fishing a reaction.

Namco can balance the damage, frames on hit and safety accordingly. I just want the low moves to serve a varied purpose.

As opposed to his SC4 low pokes all kind of being redundant (being - on hit, easily teched-out-of, low damage, unsafe and super linear).
However, realistically, the only bad attribute that can be turned into a strength is the low pokes being slightly negative on hit, so I'm prepared to live with that. The other ones, not so much.

1) thats tago, not daishi.

2) He likely has an auto-evade from neutral, as we saw the animation in another video but it wasn't successful.