Firstlook Festival in the Netherlands gave us another opportunity to play the last installment of the tales of souls and swords eternally retold…
Soul Calibur has graced a lot of consoles and arcades and is now down to its sixth installment with Soul Calibur VI coming to PC, PS4 and Xbox One. We played a couple of matches to play with some old heroes like Siegfried and Nightmare and we even got to play a Gerald vs Gerald brawl. It’s nice to see this IP come back and we were thrilled to see what novelties were put into it.
One new gameplay element is the Reversal Edge. A move that puts both characters in an animated state and lets you input an attack query that comes down to “Rock Paper Scissors” and ends in a damaging blow to the player that loses the sequence. It has a nice slow down effect and isn’t difficult to pull off. It can turn the tide of battle very quickly and it does add a bit of gambling into an otherwise very skill-based game. I guess you either love it or hate it and I can see competitive games banning the Reversal Edge system completely. Maybe it would be a good thing to have the ability to turn it off within the options screen. As a more casual player I really enjoyed this new feature and I’m sure it will ruin some more friendships!
The old techniques like the Guard Impact are still there to fool around with and devastate your opponent’s mistakes. The game is still very fast paced and chaining combos or hitting grounded enemies like a puppet with Nightmare is still very rewarding. I feel like the game has found a better balance since its last iteration where we lost some favorite characters like Talim, Seong Mi-na and even the long range Kilik! At Gamescom we were happy to see Kilik’s pole back in action!
Now Gerald joins the fight and his critical edge is exhilarating! Gerald is a much better fit than the Star Wars characters and actually fits nicely into the story which will lend him a tailored story arc. It’s been a while since we had a guest character that fits in just like the thrusted roster we’re used to. I believe Link’s guest appearance was the last time a guest character made real sense in the story.
Soul Calibur VI looks promising and could be the nest best fighter this year. Let’s hope the many game modes will offer a lot of content on top of the already promising gameplay! We’ll find out in 2 weeks!
