As mentioned in the SCVI discussion thread, Silent Joel and I got to try the 6-character build at Bandai Namco HQ London.
Others including Ketchup and Mustard and History Behind the Warrior were also present:
We intended to to a podcast about our findings over the weekend but failed spectacularly, so here is a brief rundown of what we gathered...
Movement feels mostly like SCV to me, Joel felt it's more like SCII. 8 way run seems very fast and very strong.
In general it felt as if you didn't get punished as much for moving as in SCV, so in that sense it's like a return to what people liked about SCII. In general I think the game will be initially popular with people who liked SCII.
Tracking feels toned down, which adds to the feeling of movement being buffed. Some verticals still have significant hitboxes to one side though, so you will still need to learn which direction to step, especially if you're against a wall. I remember at least twice seeing vertical unblockables make contact when the opponent had stepped halfway around, or even behind the opponent on one occasion.
Meter stuff was hard to test - there is no training mode yet and meter is fairly slow to build relative to the amount of damage you deal. Critical Edge seem similar to SCV - punishable but not super punishable; they might be a bit slower too but we didn't really test this seriously. They don't seem to have invincible frames. I think you are better off using Soul Charge to interrupt at heavy disadvantage, as this seems much quicker.
Soul Charge is +0 on block and slight advantage on hit (tested using Xianghua vs Sophitia). Against a wall, the attacking player doesn't get forced back, so you do get a point blank mixup, which will be important for short range characters.
Apologies but it was difficult to test timing and buffering properties. The monitors were big and gorgeous but had significant lag. The controllers were wired weirdly and I couldn't get used to the controls so I had to try stick. Incidentally I will probably learn stick in this game, not least because of the possible arthritis I was getting holding down-back in Street Fighter V.
Buffering generally seemed ok and lenient. The timing for the Reversal Edge QTE is not very intuitive. We often got a different result to what we were trying to do. I think the input window is actually very early.
RE generally seems kind of fun and possibly not that useful in the long run, but also not useless. It is very steppable, and even if you use it correctly, you guarantee nothing more than a 50/50 mixup.
Just Frame timing seems very easy. I think you can basically mash. I don't know if the SCIV shortcuts still work but my impression was they don't. (To be specific - in SCIV you could map buttons to A+B+K or whatever and mash all of these to effectivwely guarantee a B input, for example, on every frame, thus guaranteeing a Just Input. In SCV they removed this by requiring any given B input to be released before another could be registered. I didn't properly test if this applies in the current SCVI build.)
Jump attacks are invincible to lows but i think can still be thrown until airborne, like in SCV. (In SCIV you could be hit by lows until you actually began your Tech Jump, which would depend on the move animation, whereas in SCV you were invulnerable to lows simply by inputting 7_8_9 A_B_K, even if your character remained technically on the ground for other purposes.)
GI window is very lenient. Apparently it doesn't actually give that much advantage though. It seemed quite a lot to me but sorry I did not test it.
RE gives different followups for different characters, so there is an additional layer of mindgames. E.g. Xianghua's RE A had a low follow up, while Groh's RE K seemed stronger than other characters'.
Visually SCVI is really nice, it feels really big and chunky like Tekken.
Here's a more technical discussion by Digital Foundry:
The whole sound / graphics/ camera motion made it feel how brand new arcades used to feel to me in the 90s. Actually playing the game was tremendously fun with no obvious flaws or issues at this time.
[[Someone in the comments pointed out that Xianghua sparkles after I missed a low grab here at 1:50 - does anyone know what this is? Glitch, mechanic, random graphical flourish?]]
Nvm apparently it's a glistening water effect.
My only (very minor) criticism of the game at this point was that it does feel a bit vanilla, nothing "new". I think Joel put it better by saying that it's quite safe - the new RE mechanic isn't as bold as SCV BE / CE or SCIV CF. But I'm hoping the increased power coming from Soul Charge buffs will make it more interesting at high level.
In general the direction of SCVI development feels like an excellent balance between being guided by community feedback over the past number of years (e.g. SCII popularity and movement, wanting to see old characters and movesets) and building a modern, beautiful and competitively-balanced game. I'm very much looking forward to new videos, character announcements and worldwide playable preview builds to see what they reveal to us next.
