Soul Calibur VI: General discussion

@Rusted Blade Doesn't matter too me when Viola is in the game. Never mentioned her being in the game at all. It's a game and it's entertainment. I enjoy the story, I enjoy the CaS, I enjoy playing the game. I'm not someone that focuses on being the best player but I would never sit around and expect an aspect of the game to be neglected.

Well, I'm glad we can disagree at length without my having given offense anyway. :)

At best, Viola will have her moveset given to a new character.

Given the details in the trailer, I think it's clear that Amy will become Viola eventually, and that they will probably start that plot thread in Amy's soul chronicle in the current game, though I don't expect it will pay off until SCVII or later. But by the same token, given that their plan is to introduce Viola eventually, they certainly aren't going to give her moveset to someone else. Basically I think they are laying the groundwork at present, nothing more.
 
That was when Amy was a Bonus Character in SCIII, Amy just said her name and that was it.

Full Details of the EVOJapan 2019 SCVI Panel

sigh Hopefully they’ll go the right way with their balance patches this time around. But knowing Namco, sometimes they tend to show how much disappointment that hope can bring. :sc4amy1:
 
If anyone is curious about the items available in DLC 3 they are already listed on the official website.
Amy's break armor is so ... Viola. =P
I love this hair.
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Jotaro CaS when?

Student’s Coat could be used for a jacket but it’s both Middle Layer and the Redemption Leather Armor can’t be worn with it if you want a shirt underneath.

Also curious if Amy’s skirt thing over the dress is a waist equipment. I need it available with Xianghua’s stuff...
 
People were not (for the most part) annoyed with SCV's roster (nor the game generally) because of the lack of backstory to contextualize it. It was the fact that they dumped the majority of the cast to throw in a bunch of emo edgelords for no particularly good reason.
Granted, this is just my opinion, and may not necessarily reflect upon the majority, but I still believe that if they were able to finish the game and contextualize all of the replacements, as well as actually have every style return, by replacement or by the original returning (Zasalamel and Talim being the most egregiously missed representation, but also others, like Yun-seong, Cassandra, Rock, Seong Mi-na, and Amy), then there would be a lot less hate about SoulCalibur V in general. The "emo edgelords" complaint may be valid, but it's compounded by the fact that we didn't even get to know who they were, so it was a double whammy of negatives. Even if you felt like Taki/Natsu, Sophitia/Pyrrha, Setsuka/Patroklos, Xianghua/Leixia, and Kilik/Xiba were valid substitutions, which I know isn't a very common belief, it's still best if you do have context for why they were replaced and who the new people are.

if Amy is indeed Viola, and if her Story mode hints at that future, then I'd rather have her as Viola in VII. and maybe VII can sort of redo or retcon SC V.
I'm definitely on board the "why not both?" train with regards to this issue. I believe they can contextualize it, even if we redo SoulCalibur V in its original form, my personal headcanon on the sequencing of events would be that Raphael meeting Viola would be the catalyst that brings Amy's memories back, even if he had to pull an old trick and stab the crystal ball just like he did the eye of Soul Edge back in SoulCalibur II.

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Overall, my personal feelings on the matter are to keep everyone in the game, and contextualize them. It's one of the most attractive features of SoulCalibur, proving that you can indeed have it all, because they've done it before, and they can do it again, it's not really a situation where they have to choose. SoulCalibur III is the best example of this, being the most feature-rich game in the series, with no slouch in roster, either, with the largest roster to date. Where SoulCalibur III suffered was in the technical area and balance, which, had the game come out in today's era of online patches and updates, could very well have been sorted out. Arcade Edition did sort these issues out, at the cost of the game modes and the bonus characters that weren't Amy, Hwang, and Li Long. But those game modes would not have worked in the arcade release in the first place, so it makes sense why they were cut, and it's not like the fixes couldn't have been applied to the original home release and yet kept the game modes. It is possible, there's no need to compromise.
 
YES! The alternate hair looks great! I'm looking forward to see how she looks with her hair down. Can I just say that her new outfit is easily my favorite (this coming from a longtime fan of the character). When I saw her profile art in Soul Chronicle, I was hoping the rest of the design would follow a badass, gothic victorian look, and I was not disappointed! Her previous outfits made her look too vulnerable (in my opinion). I get how that was an intentional misdirection to contrast her cynical personality, but I'd rather she dress in a way that matched her character.

I don't hate Raph's new design like some people do (although, that might just be the biased Raphael fangirl in me talking), but his daughter easily vanquished him in the fashion department this time around.
 
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At what time will armor pack be released? Will it all be released at the same time or will I get it earlier since i’m from europe? Japan is obv ahead of time so...
 
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Considering that I'm not really one to put other main character parts on other characters anyway, I'm not really so bothered about the dress parts not being separate from the dress. If anything, it helps Amy bit just that bit more unique. I'll definitely most likely for sure use her broken hair, though, that may be the best hair in the entire series to date. Though I may just keep it on my Amy alternate, to keep it hers, I dunno, I just really love the hair. Her entire design is elegant and gorgeous, there just really are no words. I hope Cassandra's full look also has this attention to detail and grace.
 
Soul Calibur 6 - Amy Battle Director Comment :sc4amy1:
Brought back from SoulCalibur IV, Amy returns as a Rapier wielder having learnt the art of fencing under Raphael. As a fighter, she has a natural talent for 'reading' the enemies movements during the battle.
While she has short range and her attack power is on the low side, she can perform many extremely fast techniques to match the opponent's brute strength in an up-close battle.
While maintaining many of her moves from the previous SOULCALIBURs, SoulCalibur VI adds new actions where she throws roses at the opponent. Even if you have played Amy in the previous games, there are new things to try out this time around. Her unique component in SoulCalibur VI is that she has certain abilities in her movelist that raise an "Abandonment Level" (見切りレベル). Over the course of a match, you can gradually build this up to later unleash a very powerful attack.
As a character, Amy is recommended for players that prefer a more strategic approach to their gameplan that lays their 'cards' out early and then over time, build-ups and wins with a 'strong card' finish to secure the victory.
or Link :sc3amy2:
 
Soul Calibur 6 - Amy Battle Director Comment :sc4amy1:
Brought back from SoulCalibur IV, Amy returns as a Rapier wielder having learnt the art of fencing under Raphael. As a fighter, she has a natural talent for 'reading' the enemies movements during the battle.
While she has short range and her attack power is on the low side, she can perform many extremely fast techniques to match the opponent's brute strength in an up-close battle.
While maintaining many of her moves from the previous SOULCALIBURs, SoulCalibur VI adds new actions where she throws roses at the opponent. Even if you have played Amy in the previous games, there are new things to try out this time around. Her unique component in SoulCalibur VI is that she has certain abilities in her movelist that raise an "Abandonment Level" (見切りレベル). Over the course of a match, you can gradually build this up to later unleash a very powerful attack.
As a character, Amy is recommended for players that prefer a more strategic approach to their gameplan that lays their 'cards' out early and then over time, build-ups and wins with a 'strong card' finish to secure the victory.
or Link :sc3amy2:
Sounds pretty amazing. Is it April yet? I want need this in my life, like, as soon as possible. I don't really believe in mains, but it certainly sounds like Amy will be among my favorites, if not THE favorite character, to play. I love Raphael, and I've stuck with him through thick and thin, and I even still love him in this game, but Amy just looks and now sounds like she's going to be beyond a delight. I'm curious about that abandonment level mechanic and what it will really do... IS IT APRIL YET?!?!
 
Granted, this is just my opinion, and may not necessarily reflect upon the majority, but I still believe that if they were able to finish the game and contextualize all of the replacements, as well as actually have every style return, by replacement or by the original returning (Zasalamel and Talim being the most egregiously missed representation, but also others, like Yun-seong, Cassandra, Rock, Seong Mi-na, and Amy), then there would be a lot less hate about SoulCalibur V in general. The "emo edgelords" complaint may be valid, but it's compounded by the fact that we didn't even get to know who they were, so it was a double whammy of negatives. Even if you felt like Taki/Natsu, Sophitia/Pyrrha, Setsuka/Patroklos, Xianghua/Leixia, and Kilik/Xiba were valid substitutions, which I know isn't a very common belief, it's still best if you do have context for why they were replaced and who the new people are.

There was too much that went wrong with that game for a little bit of extra story to fix it. Actually, it had -more- story in terms of express cutscenes than any other SC before it; people mislabel it as lacking story simply because what narrative was there was just focused all on a handful of characters, whereas previous games had given each character basically the same amount of coverage (although said coverage was usually paper thin--which, again, as far as I am concerned, is arguably the way it should be for a fighter when you consider the need to allot resources).

Anyway, for my money the choices would have been poor even if we knew the entire extended backstories (yaaaawn) of each of those new twerps. There was just no thought put into deciding who got into that game. Let's see, we're gonna jump the narrative forward 17 years. But instead of aging all of the younger characters already in the series (Amy, Talim, Seong-Mina, Yun-seong) we'll just drop them out of the plot entirely. But half of the older characters, who would now be borderline geriatrics...we'll keep them, but only half of them--the rest we'll replace with more obnoxious/slapstick teenage versions. It's just very clear that the roster selection (like most aspects of the game) suffered from the fact that they didn't have time to consider their approach. Production was so rushed that no matter how stupid a design decision was, once it was decided on, it was a fait accompli and there was no correcting whatever hairbrained notion was spitballed and run with ("Hey, what if we stuck those angel wing assets we've been building for Devil Jin on to Lizardman for...reasons?" "Yeah, whatever Hoshi, I've got too much shit on my plate--just do whatever you're gonna do!"

I'm definitely on board the "why not both?" train with regards to this issue. I believe they can contextualize it, even if we redo SoulCalibur V in its original form, my personal headcanon on the sequencing of events would be that Raphael meeting Viola would be the catalyst that brings Amy's memories back, even if he had to pull an old trick and stab the crystal ball just like he did the eye of Soul Edge back in SoulCalibur II.

Yeah, you always put that theory forward, but I don't think it was ever meant to play out that way, paired down story or not. It seems as if Rapha-Nightmare is killed in the final analysis. If anything, I think if more of Raphael's story was meant to be told in that game, it was the lead-up to his succumbing to Soul Edge, not some redemption story afterwards. I mean, Raphael was never really positioned as a protagonist to begin with. It'll be interesting to see how things play out when they flesh-out the story leading up to SCV this time though, because last we saw Amy and Raphael in SCIV, they were both full-on sociopaths showing signs of what the story now calls malfestation. And yet while both are kind of calculating, they aren't treated as that outright evil in SCII or SCIII, and they get some of that humanity in the retelling of SCVI too. And Viola also has more of a moral center than SCIV Amy. So I have to wonder, if they keep things consistent this time around, was Amy losing her memory (and her hair turning white and all the other Viola traits) a bi-product of something that was done to purify her of malfestation? If so, did it involve a last selfless act on Raphael's part for his adopted daughter, before succumbing completely to Soul Edge? But then, why does he not quite recognize her in SCV as Viola? it's all very confused.

Overall, my personal feelings on the matter are to keep everyone in the game, and contextualize them. It's one of the most attractive features of SoulCalibur, proving that you can indeed have it all, because they've done it before, and they can do it again, it's not really a situation where they have to choose. SoulCalibur III is the best example of this, being the most feature-rich game in the series, with no slouch in roster, either, with the largest roster to date. Where SoulCalibur III suffered was in the technical area and balance, which, had the game come out in today's era of online patches and updates, could very well have been sorted out. Arcade Edition did sort these issues out, at the cost of the game modes and the bonus characters that weren't Amy, Hwang, and Li Long. But those game modes would not have worked in the arcade release in the first place, so it makes sense why they were cut, and it's not like the fixes couldn't have been applied to the original home release and yet kept the game modes. It is possible, there's no need to compromise.

I don't think you're fully appreciating that we're in a very different day and age for game developers and profitability. Or how far SC's star has descended within Namco's priorities. Look how little we got in this game, which almost didn't even get made. And you expect the next game to launch with a base roster the size of SCIII's? And as many modes? And also be better balanced than the console version of that game was? I'm sorry, but that's just a pipe dream, my friend.

Look, I like SCIII a lot (both versions), but a lot of the ills this franchise has suffered in the last 12 years can be attributed to that game almost killing the series, precisely because the developers got too ambitious with the scope and ended up delivering a broken product. And that was back in a time with more forgiving production costs. I'm sorry, but this is a plain fact we need to come to terms with: there will never be another Soul Calibur game that launches with more than 22 character, 15 stages, and 300-400 CaS parts. That's our base product from herein, and whatever else we get will be DLC. Which is fine, if players support the model. We could still end up with some big games if people buy in on the serialized content. But some of the filler is going to have to be jettisoned, and in my opinion, production costs associated with the needlessly long and tedious story modes like Libra are the best candidates.
 
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Yeah, you always put that theory forward, but I don't think it was ever meant to play out that way, paired down story or not. It seems as if Rapha-Nightmare is killed in the final analysis. If anything, I think if more of Raphael's story was meant to be told in that game, it was the lead-up to his succumbing to Soul Edge, not some redemption story afterwards. I mean, Raphael was never really positioned as a protagonist to begin with. It'll be interesting to see how things play out when they flesh-out the story leading up to SCV this time though, because last we saw Amy and Raphael in SCIV, they were both full-on sociopaths showing signs of what the story now calls malfestation. And yet while both are kind of calculating, they aren't treated as that outright evil in SCII or SCIII, and they get some of that humanity in the retelling of SCVI too. And Viola also has more of a moral center than SCIV Amy. So I have to wonder, if they keep things consistent this time around, was Amy losing her memory (and her hair turning white and all the other Viola traits) a bi-product of something that was done to purify her of malfestation? If so, did it involve a last selfless act on Raphael's part for his adopted daughter, before succumbing completely to Soul Edge? But then, why does he not quite recognize her in SCV as Viola? it's all very confused.
If you're saying Nightmare was killed, then you're also saying the Z.W.E.I. was killed, since they were both disposed of in the same fashion. I don't buy it. On top of that, it doesn't make any sense for Raphael's SoulCalibur V story to happen before Nightmare, because it starts with his waking up and not knowing what in the hell's going on, only that Amy's not with him and he needs to find her. That only works after he's regained control of his body after being freed from Inferno's grasp. It also explains why he doesn't recognize her, because it wasn't him who did the transformation, especially because now it seems like Azwel is going to be the cause, it would have been an unknown circumstance in the original narrative.

I've always seen Raphael as a tragic hero turned madman. He was heroic in his actions, regardless of what his motivations were, in saving Kilik, Xianghua, and Maxi from Nightmare in SoulCalibur II. Everything he does, he does for Amy, so while he didn't set out to save the trio, he did end up doing so, where he could have let them perish, and then pick up Nightmare afterwards. This shows that, at the very least, he's not completely irredeemable. But the taint caused by Soul Edge to turn himself and Amy into malfested, that's when things just went south, fast. Amy was already cynical, but what little hope she had, I'm sure left her, and she just kept following Raphael, because she had no other course.

Raphael's fanaticism went over the edge as he failed to sway either sword to his cause, and was ultimately used as Soul Edge's puppet when he was "killed" during SoulCalibur IV, leaving her by herself, leading her down the path that would have her become Viola, as far as we were aware. Inferno kept Raphael's body for use in the future, and that's where SoulCalibur V came into place, 17 years later. Then, only after Pyrrha took Inferno from his body, and only then, did Raphael regain his own sentience, and the first thing on his mind was, "Where's Amy?". It's the only way that the narrative makes sense, between his dialogue in-game and the information in New Legends of Project Soul.

I don't think you're fully appreciating that we're in a very different day and age for game developers and profitability. Or how far SC's star has descended within Namco's priorities. Look how little we go this game. And you expect the next game to launch with a base roster the size of SCIII's? And as many modes? And also be better balanced than the console version of that game was? I'm sorry, but that's just a pipe dream, my friend. I like SCIII a lot, but a lot of the ills this franchise has suffered in the last 12 years can be attributed to that game almost killing the series, specifically because the developers got too ambitious and delivered a broken product. And that was back in a time with more forgiving production costs. I'm sorry, but this is a plain fact we need to come to terms with: there will never be another Soul Calibur game that launches with more than 22 character, 12 stages, and 350 CaS parts. That's our base product from herein, and whatever else we get will be DLC. Which is fine, if players support the model. We could still end up with some big games if people buy in on the serialized content. But some of the filler is going to have to be jettisoned, and in my opinion, production costs associated with the needlessly long and tedious story modes like Libra are the best candidates.
Sounds a bit like you're on the lost hope Amy train of thought, while I'm on the still believes in the slim chance that hope might come through Amy side instead, but the thing is, the way I see it, I'm not sure why, aside from pure greed and capitalism, everything that is in SoulCalibur VI cannot simply be transitioned into SoulCalibur VII, without losing things. It was done from the beginning all the way to SoulCalibur IV, for the most part. It's only SoulCalibur V that enforced radical change and massive cuts. One time does not set a rule. That is, I'm pretty sure, what we call an exception.

I understand that the gaming climate has changed, and I'm not disrespecting that in any degree. While SoulCalibur is probably always going to be second-string to Tekken, at this point, due to Namco's maltreatment of the series, the success of this game should, and I express that heavily, should tell them that keeping the characters that we know and love around is what we want, and what drives success. Most of the hard work, from my perspective, was in creating this base in SoulCalibur VI with which we can then move forward.

I don't believe that SoulCalibur VII is going to be a radical change in mechanics, since it seems likely that they will want to continue this new narrative retelling that they've started, so keeping the games playing the same, for solidarity, seems like the wise decision to make. Particularly because it seems like they're going to be giving every DLC character a Soul Chronicle from this point forward (unless, of course, Cassandra doesn't get one), and setting up all these stories just seems a waste of time if they're going to be axing characters from the next game. It just doesn't make any sense to do so.
 
Some datamine snoopings into newest patch:

They updated the directory structure for DLC content. It was like this in the previous patch:
Code:
DLC01 = 2B
DLC02 = Cassandra
DLC03 = Amy
DLC07 = Yell and Stone
DLC08 = Reptile and Yellow
DLC09 = Star and Snow

It is now this:
Code:
DLC01 = 2B
DLC04 = Amy
DLC06 = Cassandra
DLC07 = Yell and Stone
DLC08 = Reptile and Yellow
DLC09 = Star and Snow

DLC03 and DLC05 are presumably CAS item packs 1 and 2. Looks like they've decided to follow the official naming for future DLC packs which results in there being nothing called DLC02 among game assets (officially, Tira is DLC01 and 2B is DLC02, but Tira is part of the main game according to game assets with 2B's assets being stored in DLC01).

The DLC namings for Amy and Cassandra now match up neatly with the directory structure they had listed for season pass 2 characters, which definitely makes me think they're doing the Tekken 7 thing of releasing characters in pairs. This would also imply there will be no CAS item packs for season pass 2 (unless they're part of the character releases or unless they're released for free).

And ironically, there are more Cassandra assets in the latest patch than for Amy. They included facial animation files for Amy and Cassandra, but for Cassandra they also including files related to lipsyncing. Pretty sure these are added by accident.
 
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