Game #925: Soul Calibur VI

  The only way forward is... going backwards?

 Unpopular opinion... I actually really liked Soul Calibur V. I love it when fighting games actually develop their world and characters. Street Fighter III, Garou, Tekken 3... I love generational updates, so I loved Soul Calibur V. It was pretty fun to play too! Sadly, I'm in the minority when it comes to this, as most fans want the originals and the originals only, it's the reason Marvel and DC comics will never evolve their characters and offer better narratives. But I digress, as I'm wont to do, since fans weren't so keen on SC V's update, Soul Calibur VI acts as a remake and reboot of Soul Calibur II, one of the most beloved entries in the series.  

 While it's missing basic modes such as Survival, the game makes up for that with at least two rather lengthy single player modes, one focused on individual sub-stories for each character, as well as a 20-chapter long 'main narrative' focused on Kilik, Maxi and Xianghua, as well as another mode focusing on your created character. As lengthy as they are, I'll admit that they aren't particularly good. The story mode has every hero fighting pretty much generic characters, with fights being interspersed with voiced text and surprisingly decent character portraits. The thing is... some are really uninspired and the dialogue is dull, for example, Xianghua's story has her fight the SAME generic character throughout every chapter. The character creator is as good as it's always been, allowing you to create some pretty cool looking, or weird if you're into that, characters, although I think it could've used a few more clothing pieces, as well as less gender-exclusive clothes.

 The character roster is pretty decent, if you don't mind a few cuts. The character roster is almost exactly like the one from Soul Calibur 2, but the three bonus characters(Lizardman, Berserker and Assassin) got cut, as well as Necrid and Charade, but most importantly... my boy Yun Seong was cut completely. Which is baffling, as he was a SCII newcomer and the game's Korean representative. On the other hand, everyone else is back, Siegried is now a separate entity from Nightmare and we get two new additions, Groh, Zwei's stand-in without a stand, and Azwael, another guy with mystic blue/red weapons. The guest character is Geralt, from The Witcher, and his moveset is brilliant. All in all, it's a decent 21-character roster, although a bit smaller than what we have gotten used to. Of course, you can get more characters by buying them, but that's cheating. Oh, and Tira, the first DLC character, can be fought in the single player mode.... and you'll fight against her style multiple times, which goes to show you that she was just ripped out of the game and sold for profit. Lame.

 On another note, they went full-cake with the female character designs. Taki's nipples have never protruded so much and that was pretty much her trademark, Sophitia and Ivy are more voluptuous and thicker than ever and Seong Mina is rocking the underboob with a costume that makes little to no sense. Make of this what you will, but I think the female heroes have looked better before, but hey, it's a Japanese game, you can't expect better. On another note, this might be a first for the series, but characters don't have alternate costumes, just a simple alternate recolor. Sure, you can customize pretty much every character in the game... but that's just... why? It's not a particularly large roster, they could've done something. On another note, just like Tekken 7, the overall visual presentation is a bit lacking, heck, I think they might've ripped the models out of SC V and just gave them new costumes and called it a day. The lightning is a bit better since it's a bit more natural, but that's it. Some shoulders and breasts and pecs have a few rough edges on them too instead of being perfectly round.

 The gameplay is a step-up from SCV, and that's great since SCV was already a great game. In my opinion, it doesn't feel as good as SCII, but no other game in the series did. At least, it's still very speedy and simple, with a high skill ceiling. Super Moves make a return from SCV, which I'm quite happy for, and now characters can do a 'Soul Charge' by spending an energy gauge, and in a few cases, characters change their appearance when doing this move. Your weapon will catch fire at the very least. There's a new Rock-Paper-Scissors move that is more spectacle than fun, but you can block or sidestep it if you'd rather opt-out of the gamble. To be honest, eventually I started to get a bit bored of these encounters, and it kinda sucks that a few characters can trigger them from basic combos(Like Mitsurugi's BBB).

 Overall, I liked this entry at least as much as I liked Soul Calibur V, which is a good thing since it was a step in the right direction. On the other hand, it feels like a few corners were cut with this game, both in its overall presentation and roster, which makes sense as it was probably a lower-budget effort from Namco since Soul Calibur isn't as popular as it used to. That said, gameplay is top-notch, the game is super speedy which is something I really enjoyed. As a fan of characters that can transform, the new Soul Charge felt like a great addition, however, the new rock-paper-scissors thingie just didn't hit the right note for me.

 7.5