Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

[FluffyQuack]

The series has never fully stuck to realism anyway, even with their very first release.

There's a range, though, it's not binary. Sure, Soul Calibur wasn't ever fully rooted in realism, but in the first game, almost the entire cast was based on historical cultures and weapons. And I think the way they approached it was neat. It makes no sense that Sophitia dresses up like she's from ancient Greece when the game takes place during the Renaissance, but this kind of mish-mash lead to an interesting aesthetic and design.

But now, rather than a small percentage of new characters being completely out-there, it's 100%. We've got a character who looks like he's from a sci-fi anime and a character who likes to summon a shield out of thin air in order to use it as a hoverboard.

 

[Robert_J_King]

That's not what I meant AT ALL. What I meant (mean) is IMO, historical-based weapons and styles are way more appealing than fantasy/anime based ones. There's already a ton of fighting games matching that description (BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, MvC, among others) and SC is tilting in that direction, which I believe is detrimental to itself. The fact they left out the likes of Rock and Hwang to make room for the likes of Groh and Azwel seems ridiculous to me, like, really? Even when they were by no means very popular characters, they did have that sense of realism in their styles and weapons. As mentioned by @Rusted Blade, it's the sense of (or actually the "lack of") human biomechanics that sort of bothers me. And again, if I was advocating for realism here, I wouldn't be playing SC at all, given its very core is attached to an unrealistic situation (the evil sword/seed, call it what you will). Now here's a question for you: if PS decided to bring in a newcomer for S2, would you like to have a Warlock-like dude, or a Viola-like gal, or would you rather have a mace-wielder, or a flail and shield (FH's Conqueror to be precise)?

I'd want a Warlock

That's not what I meant AT ALL. What I meant (mean) is IMO, historical-based weapons and styles are way more appealing than fantasy/anime based ones. There's already a ton of fighting games matching that description (BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, MvC, among others) and SC is tilting in that direction, which I believe is detrimental to itself. The fact they left out the likes of Rock and Hwang to make room for the likes of Groh and Azwel seems ridiculous to me, like, really? Even when they were by no means very popular characters, they did have that sense of realism in their styles and weapons. As mentioned by @Rusted Blade, it's the sense of (or actually the "lack of") human biomechanics that sort of bothers me. And again, if I was advocating for realism here, I wouldn't be playing SC at all, given its very core is attached to an unrealistic situation (the evil sword/seed, call it what you will). Now here's a question for you: if PS decided to bring in a newcomer for S2, would you like to have a Warlock-like dude, or a Viola-like gal, or would you rather have a mace-wielder, or a flail and shield (FH's Conqueror to be precise)?

I'd want a Warlock or Viola. There's so much that they can do with SC6's mechanics. However I'd be concerned about Orb glitches now more than ever.

 

[Crash X]

There's a range, though, it's not binary. Sure, Soul Calibur wasn't ever fully rooted in realism, but in the first game, almost the entire cast was based on historical cultures and weapons. And I think the way they approached it was neat. It makes no sense that Sophitia dresses up like she's from ancient Greece when the game takes place during the Renaissance, but this kind of mish-mash lead to an interesting aesthetic and design.

But now, rather than a small percentage of new characters being completely out-there, it's 100%. We've got a character who looks like he's from a sci-fi anime and a character who likes to summon a shield out of thin air in order to use it as a hoverboard.

Well yeah there’s that. But I was mainly referring to a lot of the more “magical” elements that the creators chose to bring into the franchise. Be it for a story reason or a part of a fighting style/weapon.

 

[AMillionHP]

I can understand and partially agree with both ends of this argument but i'll tell you something that SC truely never needed, was Dampierre. There was definitely already enough satire and goofiness through CAS. Several characters already have some degree of comical elements to them anyway

 

[Leonhart]

It never seizes to amaze me how much hurt Seong-Mina can dish out. Found out a lethal combo that gets around 135 in damage; No wall shenanigans, no super, just plain little Mina. Stupid crazy. (But the damn thing seems to require an ukemi hit).

 

[Project Bokuho]

It never seizes to amaze me how much hurt Seong-Mina can dish out. Found out a lethal combo that gets around 135 in damage; No wall shenanigans, no super, just plain little Mina. Stupid crazy.

Stahp trying to make Mi-Na trash like in SCIV :( l0l

 

[Robert_J_King]

I wanna take this time to appreciate Ivy's RE K on Lethal Hit. It's the best/worst thing to get finished off with because you get to watch it from three different replay angles.
I was super happy with catching a clip of it as well because it's just so seldomly seen for me.

 

[Ukkesh]

That's not what I meant AT ALL. What I meant (mean) is IMO, historical-based weapons and styles are way more appealing than fantasy/anime based ones. There's already a ton of fighting games matching that description (BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, MvC, among others) and SC is tilting in that direction, which I believe is detrimental to itself. The fact they left out the likes of Rock and Hwang to make room for the likes of Groh and Azwel seems ridiculous to me, like, really? Even when they were by no means very popular characters, they did have that sense of realism in their styles and weapons. As mentioned by @Rusted Blade, it's the sense of (or actually the "lack of") human biomechanics that sort of bothers me. And again, if I was advocating for realism here, I wouldn't be playing SC at all, given its very core is attached to an unrealistic situation (the evil sword/seed, call it what you will). Now here's a question for you: if PS decided to bring in a newcomer for S2, would you like to have a Warlock-like dude, or a Viola-like gal, or would you rather have a mace-wielder, or a flail and shield (FH's Conqueror to be precise)?

Everyone seems to want a flail characters. But how would they make the moves? There's only so much you can really do. A mace wielder would probs function similarly to Soph, Cass or one of the Alexandra's. I'm no choreographer, but anime styles give at least a bit more creative freedom.

I'd rather have Cass, Amy, Hilde, Hwang and Hilde, but I liked Zwei and Viola. A lot. I thought Zwei was cool. I like the lolita style Azwel.

With the anime styles, they should tone it down a tad with groh, but both of them make complete sense. Shards of the swords give all sorts of abilities.

I'd like to see a Knight Templar/ War Priest character who follows Soul Caliber, and has a soul charge kinda like Kilik's, with a Soul Calibur design to it if anything.

 

[GhostTear]

tournament going on right now

 

[Synalon]

Every time I lose to 2B, I rage. How the hell do you deal with this character? I try reversal edge when they go into stance but the strings go on for so damn long I never know when to release the button. In fact it's not just her stance strings, it's all of them. She gets massive damage off AA and BB strings it seems. How do you deal with her?

I realise she's not broken and I'm just being salty though, lol

 

[SSfox]

I was honestly not looking for CaS at all, by it was quite a nice surprise, i was able to make costume i'm quite happy with and end up using quite a lot, while i've always used Ivy only with default, dunno if it's because the clothes physics are there, textures details being way better (at the level the default textures), or maybe both. And i really love her default in this game too (especially with White colors <3<3<3)

 

[RagingGhost]

Kind of wonder if Groh would look less anime if he had a svärdstav instead of his twinsword.

 

[Klimat]

Every time I lose to 2B, I rage. How the hell do you deal with this character? I try reversal edge when they go into stance but the strings go on for so damn long I never know when to release the button. In fact it's not just her stance strings, it's all of them. She gets massive damage off AA and BB strings it seems. How do you deal with her?

I realise she's not broken and I'm just being salty though, lol

You just need to memorise how many hits there are in each string. Playing as 2B is quite helpful at this task. The average number is 4 by the way.

 

[Heniek]

Kind of wonder if Groh would look less anime if he had a svärdstav instead of his twinsword.

He would still look like shit imo. He would have to be heavily redesigned to look any good. Drop the damn eye-patch, fix his eyes to make them less Asian, redesign the costume to look less modern, for the love of God - change his hair colour at the least. Also they would need to change the way he speaks. Too many things about him and his lore are too modern azwel and that is also an eyesore

 

[Ukkesh]

He would still look like shit imo. He would have to be heavily redesigned to look any good. Drop the damn eye-patch, fix his eyes to make them less Asian, redesign the costume to look less modern, for the love of God - change his hair colour at the least. Also they would need to change the way he speaks. Too many things about him and his lore are too modern azwel and that is also an eyesore

But Ivy has white hair? The eyepatch is likely made using some weird Calibur imbued shard. The gauntlet is dumb, but most his design and abilities are explainable by saying "Malfestation!"
What's so modern about his lore anyway? He's a dude from a secret organisation dedicated to destroying soul edge. Seems fairly legit. Also yoshimitsu literally looks like a cyborg. His face is glowing. Grøh isn't really the only offender.

 

[Frayhua]

France vs UK Team Battle

 

[Rusted Blade]

Every time I lose to 2B, I rage. How the hell do you deal with this character? I try reversal edge when they go into stance but the strings go on for so damn long I never know when to release the button. In fact it's not just her stance strings, it's all of them. She gets massive damage off AA and BB strings it seems. How do you deal with her?

I realise she's not broken and I'm just being salty though, lol

Both points are true: she's not really broken, but it's still quite reasonable that people, especially long-term players of the series still trying to get a handle on how she nuances the SC formula, can go on tilt. I've actually finally arrived at the conclusion that she's not even more than upper-middle tier, after initially feeling (in that first month) that she was top-tier. One still encounters her frequently in ranked, but I note that players who have broken out of E rank with her are a rarity; scrubs who abuse her pressure run into a wall at that point, same as those who attempt to leverage the broken mechanic that is RE, victims of the very tools that were supposed to make the game accessible to them and which they now cannot depend on.

Anyway, turning to your question, I have a few suggestions as someone who has been maining her in recent weeks. First, outside of a few niche scenarios, you should just forget about RE; she has more ways to thwart it than pretty much every other character (actually, I rather like that; I really wish more characters had tactics that made that move panick-button a little more risky, since it would help control it's imbalances). Other than her main B string, it's not going to shut down her aggro--and even with that string depending on the timing, she can still avoid the clash (though with some characters you can get a combo out of the maneuver). But just an FYI, if you lab against 2B the first thing you will discover is that her strings actually mostly do pitiful damage individually. I believe people just think she is a powerhouse in that respect because of the psychological effect of how well she can keep the pressure up and how the strings kind of blue together. But that's actually really important to remember; you can still recover in the middle of most of her "combos", which mostly are not combos at all, because most of her strings do not lead into guarunteed chains. Don't let her train-in-motion visuals trick you into thinking you're helpless; with time and patience you can mitigate her offensive capacity by limiting her to just the first string.

Other then that, the best advice is to just memorize her strings and let her close the distance. She has plenty of decent mid and short range options, but it's still her weakest position for zoning and punishment. And at higher level play, her strings actually are her biggest liability; when she whiffs or her entire string is guarded, she leaves huge (I mean, truly massive in SoulCal terms) windows for punishment (though keep in mind the point bellow in my response to Kilmat). Be careful though, because a lot of players smartly end her vertical-initiated combos with the back-B string, because after the first two hits you can choose from two different final moves (a second overhand downward slash of her large blade, or a poke from her spear) both of which get frame advantage in almost every scenario and can RO, but which each have a slightly different timing and telegraph differently in such away that can lure an opponent off the guard button. I've lost track of the number of times I eked out a victory against a tough defensive player by conditioning them to expect the faster one and then throwing in the mix-up at an opportune moment.

You just need to memorise how many hits there are in each string. Playing as 2B is quite helpful at this task. The average number is 4 by the way.

Almost always four, actually, but a couple can be cancelled, so you have to be careful once you start running into her at higher level play, because being conditioned to just sit on the guard button by the scrub 2Bs from seedling through D3-ish can cause you to give up some occasions of frame advantage (which are absolutely essential for punishing 2B's primary down-side, the fact that she is super-committal on offense) once you begin to play the more savvy players who know how to exploit the turtle instincts she instills in a lot of players and who have her mix-up and positioning tools down.

 

[Heniek]

But Ivy has white hair? The eyepatch is likely made using some weird Calibur imbued shard. The gauntlet is dumb, but most his design and abilities are explainable by saying "Malfestation!"
What's so modern about his lore anyway? He's a dude from a secret organisation dedicated to destroying soul edge. Seems fairly legit. Also yoshimitsu literally looks like a cyborg. His face is glowing. Grøh isn't really the only offender.

Groh has white hair with blue/purple ends that glow when he is in SC. His outfit looks pretty modern, especially jacket (but that is the least of an issue). His eye-patch not only does look ridiculous but it also acts like some kind of phone. The whole Aval organisation feels more like a modern spy rather than a past conspiracy organisation, probably mostly due to the fact that they all have phones in their eye-patches and wear fancy jackets. I think the weapon itself is the least of his problems

 

[AMillionHP]

I love how all advice for dealing with a complicated, unique and frequently encountered DLC character involve "lab her".

 

[GhostTear]

I love how all advice for dealing with a complicated, unique and frequently encountered DLC character involve "lab her".

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War