Why Mitsurugi's 'Relic' stance must be reinstated

SinseiPo

SinseiPo

[09] Warrior
This is an appeal to Namco on the behalf of honorable Samurai everywhere. This is appeal is not about balance, or frames, or advantage or disadvantage during tournaments. Its not about whether Mitsurugi has been nerfed or not. Restoring Mitsurugi's Relic stance is vital to the preservation and propagation of the very fundamentals of Bushido(way of the Samurai) as it is represented and celebrated in video games.

Shinmen Musashi no Kami Fujiwara no Genshin a.k.a Miyamoto Musashi born in the province of Mimsaka in 1584, is perhaps the most known, and most celebrated Samurai of all time. Heishiro Mitsurugi born in Bizen Japan in 1562 is perhaps the second most celebrated Samurai of all time. :) Born barely 20 years apart the two Samurai could have known each other. The way of the sword was well known during the era of Musashi and Mitsurugi. The basics were passed down from master to student as if they were sacred(and to many they were). The sword, the techniques to use the sword and the Bushido code is what defines all Samurai and we all count Mitsurugi as Samurai. The way of the sword includes five basic stances:

chudan-no-kame or chudan
gedan-no-kame or gedan
jodan-no-kame or jodan
hasso-no-kame or hasso
Waki-kame or waki

In conjunction with these is laijutsu or the art of drawing the sword. These stances and the movements from these stances are so fundamental to the Samurai's techniques that Miyamoto Musashi in his famous "Book of Five Rings" describes them in great great detail in the scroll of the Water. He refers to them as the five fundamental stances: High Stance, Middle Stance, Low Stance, Right Stance, and Left Stance. Musashi painstakenly describes the importance of each stance how to move between them, how drawing the sword relates to the stances and fundamental each stance is to the way of the Sword and Samurai battle. Now Mitsurugi if he is truly the Samurai that we all know him to be would be intimately knowledgeable about these stances. In fact he would have his own version of each. Mitsurugi's Relic stance is at the very least a version of the Waki-kame and Low stance or the Waki stance combined with the most classic laijustu known to the Samurai. The Samurai used the Waki-kame stance as part of his element of surprise. It was fundamental to Samurai swordmanship. For Heishiro Mitsurugi the 'Relic' stance is one of the five basic stances that all Samurai have in their repetoire. To remove from a Samurai one of the five stances that he/she spends a life time in learning and perfecting is to remove from that Samurai part of his soul. He is an incomplete Samurai, if Samurai at all without his basic sword stances and laijutsu. As it stands now our famed Samurai Mitsurugi is incomplete. He has a whole in his soul where Relic once represented one of the five pillars.

Namco, to have an incomplete Samurai who has been dishonered by removal of his Waki-kame(Relic) as the Samurai representative in Soul Calibur V is nothing short of a travesty. Namco on behalf of all of the great warriors that followed Bushido until the road was no more, and on behalf of all the wanna-be-samurai gamers that get their samurai groove on vicariously through the character of Mitsurugi in the Soul Calibur series, we beseech, implore and entreat thee to restore Mitsurugi's honor, restore the Samurai's honor, make Heishiro Mitsurugi whole again by returning to him his 'Relic Stance' and the moves from that stance.
 
WuHT said:
I just liked Relic stance cuz it looked cool if he got the aGI off.

Congrats on taking a class on classical japanese literature though.
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LOL, actually the class is Kendo, I'm taking it now, and talking about the old Samurai is a past time for my teacher. So I indulge him.

Right Relic is a cool look, and maybe the original designers just stumbled on it :-) But actually its a very classic Samurai stance, its been featured in some of the most famous Japanese Movies/Manga/Anime etc. And as mentioned it is written about in Musashi' Scroll of the Five Rings.

But I'm looking at it from the big picture. If you are familiar with all of the video games (in the PS3 world for me) that feature Samurai, e.g. Kengo way of Bushido, Way of the Samurai, the Seven Samurai, Deadliest Warriors etc., Mitsurugi is a damn good
facsimile of a Samurai (as video games go) He is one of the best in part because many of his moves are classic almost stereo-type. Very few games get the Samurai moves right. SC is one of the few games that gets it very close. But Namco's Samurai just took a big step backward by dropping 'Relic'

Remember not all the fans are hard core, focused on frames, advantage, disadvantage, blockable, etc. Some of us just play the game casually and for fun and enjoy the fact that (in Mitsurugi's case) Namco did such a good job capturing things 'Samurai'
 
Right, because launching someone from the ground with your sword is TOTALLY within the realm of realistic samurai.

I don't have to know anything about Samurai's to know that it defies basic physics. Don't care what fighting style, lifting the weight of a whole person (let's say 150 pounds?) from the ground with nothing but the leverage of a sword is impossible.

OR, better yet, jumping 20 feet into the air for a vertical strike. Ask yourself if it's humanly possible to jump 20 feet and you might have better idea of why "relic" stance was removed.

The answer is....you ready? Drum roll please.......................Ahh nevermind, I think you know where I'm going with this.
 
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damn-I-Suck said:
Right, because launching someone from the ground with your sword is TOTALLY within the realm of realistic samurai.

I don't have to know anything about Samurai's to know that it defies basic physics. Don't care what fighting style, lifting the weight of a whole person (let's say 150 pounds?) from the ground with nothing but the leverage of a sword is impossible.

OR, better yet, jumping 20 feet into the air for a vertical strike. Ask yourself if it's humanly possible to jump 20 feet and you might have better idea of why "relic" stance was removed.

The answer is....you ready? Drum roll please.......................Ahh nevermind, I think you know where I'm going with this.
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I see, trolls are alive and well on 8way. LOL. I didn't even insinuate that all of Mitsurugi moves were based on real stances. Although some of them are reasonable virtual replicas. Relic is such a move. Also I made no mention about the realness of the physics in SC. Just so you two clowns understand SC is a fantasy based arcade fighting game. Its not a weapons based simulation and it doesn't try to be. So defying physics, disappearing and re-appearing, flying, kocking opponents 10, 15 feet in the air, is perfectly fine for a fantasy based arcade fighter like SC V. If my post is too long to read, then skip it, no need to comment on something that either you didn't read, or couldn't understand.

Don't you little boys know, that if you don't have something constructive or even relevant to post, then don't post LOL!

My original post is about the reinstatement of Mitsurugi's Relic style. Its not about how real or unreal the game physics are. Its not about the fact that Mitsurugi has some moves that are based totally in fantasy. Its about Relic, and Relic's place in the standard stances of Kendo and tries to make a case for why Mitsurugi (from a pure romantic point of view) should be given his Relic stance back.

BTW clowns, how much is troll pay these days LOL
 
Norik said:
I really don't understand the reasoning behind project soul's destruction of characters like Mitsurugi and Ivy. The depth and complexity that made them great were completely taken out and replaced with broken, boring shit that barely resembles their former awesomeness.
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Norik, I have a few unsubstantiated suspicions. Alot of times the hard core tournament types make so much noise, and complain so much, that the game publishers listen. Somebody, somewhere that had the ear of someone on project soul, felt that Mitsurugi's Relic was either unnecessary in a tournament context, or was over powered or gave him too much of an advantage yada yada yada. The squeeky wheel gets the oil. I'm not certain that's what happened here, but a lot of times the minority of players with whinning, and complaining get the publisher's attention, and those of us who are perfectly happy with the game like it is, tend to be silent, so the game publisher's don't hear from us!

I still haven't heard a valid reason why Misturugi's Relic stance was taken away. Such signature moves are almost never removed from a character in fighting games. If they are its very rare. I don't play Ivy so I don't know how she was damaged, but I do play Raphael, and from a move list point of view he half the man he once was, half the finesse, lots of classic fencing moves simply taken away.

Maybe in Project Soul's mind they were making the characters easier to play, if that's the case, that's usually a bad move in fighting games, Its usually better to just add a new character designed for entry level players than to ruin main stay characters in a fighting game. Project Soul may have pleased some noisy minority tournament hacks somewhere, but the loyal SC folks were very disappointed with the changes. I find myself going back to Soul Calibur IV more often than not.
In fact, if Mitsurugi and Raphael are not restored to their former glory, then SC IV will be my
version of choice until they are.
 
Norik said:
I really don't understand the reasoning behind project soul's destruction of characters like Mitsurugi and Ivy. The depth and complexity that made them great were completely taken out and replaced with broken, boring shit that barely resembles their former awesomeness.
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I use to like Mitsu, but in this game I hate him with a passion because he's so OP, boring, super streamlined, incredibly easy to use, easy to win with, has BS tracking, & if you play him it feels like SFxT without gems.
 
Sensei, Mitsu is not the only one who suffered from move loss. The whole roster got their moveset halved, in an attempt to simplify the gameplay, not necessarily making it easier but to increase accesibility. I know a lot of newcomers to fighting games get discouraged when they see they have to learn 200 moves for each character. I don't believe tourney players complained about the huge movesets, but it was common sense among them that most of the moves were useless and unnecessary from a high level play standpoint. In Namco's eyes, reducing movelists was the perfect solution to solve both problems.

Ivy and Mitsurugi are not as fun as they used to be, but imo these are exceptions, not the norm. Overall they did a great job at making the characters easier to pick, while maintaining their substance. I'm a Raph player, and I did miss some of his SCIV moves at first. But then I adapted and learned to love his new gameplay, now it has grown on me and imo he's as good as ever.
 
The reason is simple: All characters are designed with play-styles in mind. Mitsu's play-style in SC5 did not necessitate the niche that RLC had occupied in the previous games. Mitsu, over the course of 4 games, went from a simple character with a bunch of tacked-on extra stuff nobody really used (because it was bad, or good players couldn't find a place for it), to cutting away that stuff. Because that "extra" fluff existed for 4 games, people became accustomed to it, and, like a mother trying to nurse their child away from a bottle to a cup, there is of course some crying.

You have to understand that a big part of SC5's development ethos is bringing people back to the "playing" part of the game. They brought in tournament players onto PS, and curried the opinions of tournament players the world over. How do you get long term loyal fans? You teach them to invest in the game by making core skills learnable, and hope that the attachment to the process of playing the game vs other people takes hold.

Mitsu, like Ivy, is also a recognizable "franchise" character. You don't need to complicate characters like that, because their main appeal is to draw in newer players and allow them to achieve measured success while learning the game. Elements like stances tend to complicate matters. As is, MST is pretty much useless in SC5, and that was probably left in as a bone to people. What is great about both of these characters is that they STILL hold up at high level play, even if they aren't the best characters in the game. That is masterful design.

Full Disclosure: Mitsu Tournament Main since SC1. I think SC5 Mitsu is just fine as is.
 
Why Mitsurugi's 'Relic' stance must be reinstated
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[rant mode on]
Because it was motherf*cking cool, we need no more reasons. Come on, Namco, no fun allowed? You think new players are too useless to use characters with stances? All this is because that "lets go things as simple as we can to get more audience" policy that has reign supreme in the videogame industry all the current generation.
[rant mode off]
 
It's really tiresome seeing a thread like this. A big Yawn in fact. It's on the same par as "a character I cannot play or beat is Over Powered"

Well.... as we say in The Biz.

Tough.

Accept that the characters in this game are as they are.... and that no amount of petulant demands or pms will change that fact.

Or you could try a new tactic, it's called.

Grow up.

Or play SC4...
 
Playing SCIV isn't a bad idea actually. I showed a friend some of the stuff Mitsu could do in SCIV a couple of weeks ago and I keep going off to practice with him, lol. I'm setting up some SCV tournaments in brum soon so I might test SCIV as a side tourney for it.
 
Syn_SC said:
Playing SCIV isn't a bad idea actually. I showed a friend some of the stuff Mitsu could do in SCIV a couple of weeks ago and I keep going off to practice with him, lol. I'm setting up some SCV tournaments in brum soon so I might test SCIV as a side tourney for it.
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Birmingham UK?
 
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