Exactly, in SCV to execute this powerful move the command input required more time and a decent double motion.
Still easy to pull-off, but far from instant gratification.
Well, you're preaching to the choir as far as RE being too prone to abuse. It's an unbalanced panic button that breaks the pacing of the game, particularly online where stepping becomes more tedious and the lure of constant free meter is too much of a temptation for the newbies on their wifi who you can't avoid no matter what you enter into your settings. The consequence is that matches devolve into rinse and repeat battles where the veteran player can typically still punish enough to get around the RE/CE spamming, but not without such matches devolving into something that is needlessly frustrating and notably unlike traditional, enjoyable SC gameplay that proceeds at a clip and hinges on insightful reads and/or clever lures for the opposition, within the rock-paper-scissors dynamics. At the same time, it prevents the newbie from developing sound strategies for higher level play, through an exploration of the other mechanics / classic SC balance.
But y'know, I was no fan of the SCV CE inputs: it was a cumbersome method that also didn't mesh well with the SC formula and which, frankly, was just one Street Fighter influence too many for that game. I'd point out that there's certainly a happy medium between those two options, but personally, I have no problem with any move, (CEs, unblockables, throws, whatever) being mapped to a single button. That's been a mechanic in SC since forever, and I don't think it really reflects much on whether a particular game in the franchise has sound and balanced mechanics. Soulcalibur has always leaned more on the mental game than on a need tor convoluted inputs. Needless to say, advanced play requires quick reflexes and a nuanced understanding of inputs and timing, but the balance of the demands the game puts on you definitely leans more towards planning, intuitive understanding of mix-ups and more than a spot of mind games, more so than an ability to contort the hand to execute a convoluted sequence of inputs to nail a 52 hit combo.
And CE wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, whether it takes twenty buttons or one, without RE. Many CEs are fairly punishable, being either stepable, slow, or both (not all, of course, but strengths and weaknesses with the mechanic are a part of the balance between characters, so that's understandable). In and of themselves, no single CE is going to wreck an opponents chance to come back completely, except if well executed in a chain, and even then the damage scales. Given how long it would take on average in high level play (and even advanced intermediate play) to put together that amount of meter without RE, and also considering how much more damage one can do with a well planned Soul Charge, CE wouldn't really be abuseable, even if mapped to just the one button, if not for RE itself. It's the two working in concert that makes everything such a f---ing chore: every scrub that's on the ropes will spam the hell out of it, and while a good player can manage to punish more than not even in a laggy situation, the scrub will also follow it up with CE after CE using the free meter. So while the vet will still generally prevail, it will be nothing but an exercise in frustration (and sitting and watching cinematics more than you play) in getting there. Anyway, if there's anything I'd rather have a convoluted input, it's RE. But of course, that would run quite against it's express design purpose of being there to give the casuals a leg up.
There are things I wish were different in SC6 (not a fan of RE, pacing gets slowed down by very long animations like CE, I wish CEs were less safe, visual effects are too distracting sometimes, I don't like any of the new characters, and some other SC games had better rosters), but when it comes to an SC game I would have the most fun playing right now (either if it's singleplayer or multiplayer), it's SC6. So that gets my vote.
If I were to rank the entire series, it would probably be something like this:
- SC6
- SC4 - Horrible netcode, but best roster in the series and I like the movesets in the game. Okay singleplayer content.
- SC3 - Great singleplayer content and roster, and did a great job evolving many movesets. Just too bad about the bugs.
- SC2 - Good singleplayer content. The game is still fun to play today, but it's hard to go back to since I prefer the roster and movesets of later games.
- SC5 - It's a fun game and they finally made a playable netcode, but roster and singleplayer content are both abysmal.
- SC1 and SE tied. Those are the two games I've played the least so I can't really judge them. I started the series with SC2.
I knew there was a reason I liked you, FQ: you may be the only other person on this board rational and objective enough to recognize that SCIV is actually one of the strongest entries in the series and that the maligning it often faces is more about a constructed community fiction about its offerings than legitimate complaints. Not that it was a perfect game by any means--flaws, it certainly had. It's just that many of the complaints are inaccurate--sometimes so inaccurate I wonder whether the people making the claims even played very much of it.
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