Soul Calibur Clones: Discussion and Video Comparison

RyujiSakamoto

Premium Member
With the locking of the big SCVI speculation thread I thought I should post my videos in their own spot.

I also wanted to put my questions here and hopefully you guys could give me feedback on how to improve or things you like about them.

My hope is that when I am finished with this video series, it will end the debate on which characters are "clones". Obviously a lot of Soul Calibur characters began as clones but they have evolved over time into something different. These videos will showcase the similarities and differences between the characters over each game.

This is the first video I created, comparing Xianghua and Hwang in Soul Calibur 1

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Edit: I'm moving all the videos to this first post for convenience.



 
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Edit: moved video to first post
Here is my video comparing Sophitia and Lizardman in Soul Calibur 1. I sped up the video because the total clip was over 7 minutes...I felt that was too long.

I also apologize for moves repeating in the video. Sophitia and Lizardman have moves that repeat with variations of the Angel Step and it's different inputs. Additionally, I recorded every move that was in the movelist including the moves in the "while running" sidebar in the menu.

That means that moves may appear twice if they involve running in the A,B or K category for the character.

Hopefully the increased speed isnt too much.
 
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Again, thanks for doing these videos. I can tell it takes a lot of time to put these together.

Regarding Sophi/Lizardman... I remember that in one of the games they shared an identical-looking kick, but Lizardman's had one additional hit (of the tail). I always thought that was a neat little distinction they added. Do you happen to remember what game that was? Maybe 2?
 
Again, thanks for doing these videos. I can tell it takes a lot of time to put these together.

Regarding Sophi/Lizardman... I remember that in one of the games they shared an identical-looking kick, but Lizardman's had one additional hit (of the tail). I always thought that was a neat little distinction they added. Do you happen to remember what game that was? Maybe 2?

I couldn't tell you. If it was in SC1 then it must have been a hidden move not listen on the command list. But in SC1 most of Lizardman's different stuff invovles him using his head to headbutt/charge the enemy.

It could be Soul Calibur 2 though since he had some wonky stuff added like his wall run. I'll be sure to let you know.
 
I wouldnt, be too concerned with the possibility of "clones" considering everyone was their own character by Soul Calibur 4, and thus characters like Hwang can keep the original "flavor" and still have just enough to make them mechanically different.

In fact I would enjoy seeing what fresh take Namco has put on Hwang at this point. If you gave him even a handful of new moves and kept Xianghua faithful to SC4 they would be two different characters completely.


Theyre just going to pull a Tekken Tag 1 and begin to draw a distinct line between the original characters and their Soul Calibur 1 replacements.
 
I've gotten requests to go in a more detailed fashion as to how the characters differ on other sites..and I just can't do it. I'm sorry but I am not qualified to go into detail on how to properly use the characters.

I can only showcase the differences on a visual level because that's as far as I can go. Nobody should be listening to me for gameplay advice lol
 
Edit: moved video to first post

Here is my comparison video of Yoshimitsu and Mitsurugi from Soul Calibur I. I thought they would be more closer in moves but less than 1/3 of the video features shared moves so clearly Yoshi's tekken moves really separated him from the get go from mitsurugi.

It'll be interesting to see how this goes in the next few games.

Now I think all I have left is Mina/Kilik, Rock/Asta and Night/Sieg before moving on to SCII
 
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Kind of interested in seeing if you'll be comparing similar weapon types in CAS as well (ie Sophitia and Sword&Shield.) Probably too much so focus on clones first.
 
Kind of interested in seeing if you'll be comparing similar weapon types in CAS as well (ie Sophitia and Sword&Shield.) Probably too much so focus on clones first.

The problem is that I'm a casual. So when games don't allow demo's of moves (like soul calibur broken destiny) it means I have to be able to input the moves myself.

I believe there will probably be moves that will give me great difficulty, particularly if the timing is very strict. I'm thinking of say Setsuka or Apat

The bonus character's in SCIII do not allow you to demo the moves, it just shows the command list. I'll see how it goes when I get to SCIII and decide from there.
 
I've seen this discussion/argument in several forums regarding SC, and I'm curious to know what you guys think of it, I've been seeing many people claim that characters like Kilik and Maxi are supposed to be cloned from Seong Mi-na and Li Long, which I disagree with, but do believe that characters like Astaroth, Nightmare and Lizardman are because their movesets are based on Rock, Siegfried and Sophitia's SE/B original moveset, unlike Kilik and Maxi, and there have been newer examples of that in SC3, with the bonus characters, for example Amy, who I do think is a clone character, since her moveset is based on Raphael's, while a character like Greed for example, who doesn't share moves with Taki and doesn't even play like her at all, is not a clone character.

so please, share your thoughts below.
 
I only really call a character a clone when like 80% of their moves are practically identical, which really is not often in the Soul series.
 
There's so many "parameters" that comprise what exactly can be considered a clone in the series. First, there's Seong Mi-Na, who came before Kilik, but was retooled afterwards to share some of the same core moves. Then there's Siegfried and Nightmare, of which Siegfried came first but then there came a time where the two of them were the same person, and thus Nightmare had many of Siegfried's stances and moves, but later installments would see them diverge into their own movesets (the former is true for SCVI, however). A similar case can be made for Sophitia/Cassandra/Lizardman as well as Raphael/Amy, as the former would become the basis for the latter's movesets and then diverge from there.

And then there's Rock and Astaroth, who share 90% of the same moveset but with minimal altered hitboxes or properties.

Honestly, for simplicity's sake, I just call them clones if they share the same/similar weapon lol.
 
There's so many "parameters" that comprise what exactly can be considered a clone in the series. First, there's Seong Mi-Na, who came before Kilik, but was retooled afterwards to share some of the same core moves. Then there's Siegfried and Nightmare, of which Siegfried came first but then there came a time where the two of them were the same person, and thus Nightmare had many of Siegfried's stances and moves, but later installments would see them diverge into their own movesets (the former is true for SCVI, however). A similar case can be made for Sophitia/Cassandra/Lizardman as well as Raphael/Amy, as the former would become the basis for the latter's movesets and then diverge from there.

And then there's Rock and Astaroth, who share 90% of the same moveset but with minimal altered hitboxes or properties.

Honestly, for simplicity's sake, I just call them clones if they share the same/similar weapon lol.
To me, the way to determine who's the clone and who's the original is simply to look at who originated the movesets/animations, rather than if the characters have similar weapons, just look at Maxi and Li Long for example, they might have very similar weapons but they never had the same moves or animations, I think with Seong Mi-na and Yoshimitsu, it's kind of a unique case of a character being based on two different movesets, one of which is their own from a different game respectively, so it's kind of debatable whether they're clone characters or not.
 
I only really call a character a clone when like 80% of their moves are practically identical, which really is not often in the Soul series.
I came to say this. Also the characters from the past games are no longer the same in later games, new moves have been added to them making them their own thing.
 
I came to say this. Also the characters from the past games are no longer the same in later games, new moves have been added to them making them their own thing.
Sure...Hwang would be a perfect example of that, turning from an outright clone of Mitsurugi to an actual unique moveset that was even used as a base for a technical clone of himself, but that's not really what I was discussing to begin with.
 
similar weapon does not necessarily mean clone in my eyes. Shura was a clone of cervantez in sc4, because the moves WERE the same (as far as I remember, I don't have a copy of the game anymore so I can't confirm that).

I would laugh when people said Cassandra was a clone. Like, really? Is having the same weapon the only criteria for some people? Her play style was vastly different from sophitia, and it was the reason why I liked using Cass but absolutely despised Sophitia. I tried her out, found her to be boring AF, while Cassandra was super fun for me.

This is an interesting topic for me because I find that some people have inconsistencies in their idea of clones. The same people who claimed Cass was a clone would deny that for Patrokolus. Neither are clones, Pat is another S&S user that I fell in love with. On a side note, I will miss his moveset. Best new moveset that SCV brought to the table IMO.

In the case of NM/Sieg, the only moves that I can think of that are the same are AGA, and even then, they attacked from different directions from those 2. (this isn't the case with SC6 I've been told, NM has an AGA variant that attacks from the other side like Sieg's classic AGA). Just thought of another: Sieg's 66b was identical to NM's 22/88B ( I believe this was true from sc3-sc5). 3k was also the same animation, but with slightly different frames both on attack and on block (CH properties might be different I can't remember the specifics). There might be a few more that I'm not thinking about, but basically it's only a handful of moves.

You could make the argument that NM and SIeg are clones in the sense that they have similar play styles, relying on long range whiff punishing and step control, but I believe that Sieg is more a defensive play style where NM is more of a 'rush in' character since he has better movement. But in all fairness, calling these clones is a big stretch

Seong mina and kilik have even more identical moves than that, but I still wouldn't call them clones. Nor would I call Hwang a clone of Yun Seong. Heck I don't even consider Rock a clone of Astaroth, but I would be more likely to think of those 2 as clones than any other because they are more alike IMO. Same with Amy/Raphael.

That being said, we should expect that SC6 will do away with these so called 'clones'. But since we have both NM and Sieg then all bets are off I suppose. Maybe not in the base game, but I'm hopeful that some of these will be DLC down the road.

Peace out.
 
I would laugh when people said Cassandra was a clone. Like, really? Is having the same weapon the only criteria for some people? Her play style was vastly different from sophitia, and it was the reason why I liked using Cass but absolutely despised Sophitia. I tried her out, found her to be boring AF, while Cassandra was super fun for me.
The reason why I consider Cassandra a clone character is because when first introduced, she shared moves/animations with Sophitia that originated with Sophitia, something that Patroklos didn't do, yet Pyrrha and Omega Pyrrha did.

I honestly don't know what to call Seong Mi-na or Yoshimitsu, there's evidence of cloning there, but then again they're both a mish mash of two styles that existed on their own before, one of which is their previous style lol.
 
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The reason why I consider Cassandra a clone character is because when first introduced, she shared moves/animations with Sophitia that originated with Sophitia, something that Patroklos didn't do, yet Pyrrha and Omega Pyrrha did.

I honestly don't know what to call Seong Mi-na or Yoshimitsu, there's evidence of cloning there, but then again they're both a mish mash of two styles that existed on their own before, one of which is their previous style lol.

Cassie was originally going to replace Sophitia in SCII because Sophie wasn't in the arcade version of SCII. Sophitia returned in the console version of SCII. Cassie still had a lot of original moves though. In SCIII & SCIV, Cassie continued to be diverse than Sophitia. Cassie has enough unique moves to have a different style even though it's the similar weapon.

As for Siegfried & Nightmare here's the comparision of similiar moves in SCVI.
A
(A)(Similar Stances SHH & NSS, but different moves come out of those stances)
agA_ag:A
ag(A)_ag:(A)(Similar Stances SHH & NSS, but different moves come out of those stances)
Siegfried's 6A to bgB_bg:B
- Similiar Animation, but Nightmare's version causes a KND on NH.
- Siegfried's Version only does it on CH.
Siegfried's 3A & the 2nd Hit of Nightmare's 3AA are the same.
Nightmare can charge his 1[A]K
WS AA(Nightmare & Siegfried Can Cancel the 2nd Hit in different ways)
WS(A)(Similar Stances SHH & NSS, but different moves come out of those stances)
JMP A
2B
2(B)(Siegfried has BH while Nightmare has NLS)
3K(Siegfried could do a KB followup)
2K
Siegfried's 66B & Nightmare's 22_88B are similar, but Nightmare can go into NLS and causes Lethal Hit.
Nightmare's 44K & Siegfried's 44K are the same, but Nightmare's version is a Guard Break.
Nightmare's A+B Moves from his stances only come out in Terror Charge & Soul Charge.
Siegfried's 66A+B & The 2nd Hit of Nightmare's Terror Charge/Soul Charge NLS A+B are the same.
SBH = NSS(Similar Stances, but different moves come out of those stances)
SCH = NBS(Similar Stances SHH & NSS, but different moves come out of those stances)
SCH K & NBS K are the same.
Similiar low throws
 
A clone is a character who shares no less than 50% of another character's movelist. If you call a certain character a clone of another character, but cannot name at least 3 moves that they share then you're really kidding yourself.

Currently, we have no clones whatsoever. We have same weapons, but no clones.
 
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