Pre-order SoulCalibur VI

It's been a few years since we saw a new Soul Calibur game, and the last one involved a pretty massive time-jump. It starred a cast that was mostly newcomers, many of whom were the sons and daughters of members of the original crew, and most of what I remember about it was the flexible create-a-character mode. For the most part, the SC community seems to have quietly pretended it never happened and have gone back to playing SC or SCII.

That might explain most of why Soul Calibur VI is hitting the reset button so hard. The cast so far is mostly the old favorites from the first two games, all of whom are at least reminiscent of their original designs, and the whole game seems brighter, faster and thoroughly back-to-basics. If you'd told me this was an HD remaster of the original Dreamcast Soul Calibur with English voice-acting, I'd have believed you.

There are two new characters at this point, a clawed guy in armor named Gaoh that nobody was using, and Geralt of Rivia, the protagonist of the Witcher games, who everyone was using. (Between this and Ciri's time in the Cyberpunk universe, the Witcher cast is really starting to get around these days.) Geralt seems to be slightly broken in the same way that a lot of Soul Calibur guest characters are, since he's got full access to a lot of his spells from his home franchise, as well as fast, fluid attacks with his brace of swords. He's benefiting heavily from being outside his genre.

After playing SC6 at E3 2018, it feels very high-risk, high-reward in a way that only Tekken usually does (that slow-motion "GREAT!" finish from Tekken 7 has been ported into this game wholesale), with one lucky combo stripping off two-thirds of an opponent's life meter. The game controls as SC always has, with a light slash, a heavy slash, a kick, and a button specifically for guarding attacks, and I found myself instantly comfortable with the controls within a few seconds of sitting down to play. (Namco had a few special Hayabusa-brand arcade sticks available in their closed-doors sessions, which have a nice solid feel to them. They're reportedly meant to release alongside SC6 this autumn.)

The game may play like a throwback, but it does feature a few new systems. Most notably, characters now have a super meter, and when it's full, you can spend it to unleash Critical Edge super combos. These are explicitly designed as a comeback mechanic, since a Critical Edge at the right time can take off half a health bar. They fire off a single button — it was R2 on the PS4 version — and meter comes back rapidly enough that you can probably expect to see two or three attempts at a Critical Edge over the course of a typical match.

You can also spend the same meter to activate Soul Charge, a mechanic that makes its return from Soul Calibur III. While Soul Charged, a character changes his or her appearance, unlocks several moves that can't be used at any other time, and may gain access to new abilities on an individual basis. Part of Namco-Bandai's theater show this year involved bringing in a couple of SC pros to play an exhibition match. One of them was using Kilik and was leaning very hard on Soul Charge for his damage; Kilik in particular turns into a giant red-headed demon, like Necalli in Street Fighter V, in exchange for a big offensive power-up and losing a significant and gradual amount of life. His Critical Edge also changed into a giant floor-blasting nuke that looked like it snuck into the game from Dragon Ball FighterZ.

The last new mechanic, Reversal Edge, is the one that you're probably going to end up seeing a lot. It's keyed to a shoulder button, and when it makes contact, implements a sort of slow-motion "clash." This is cover for a quick game of rock-paper-scissors keyed to the three attack buttons: the winner does a little damage and gains significant meter. You can also hold down your Reversal Edge button, if you get the time, to trigger a state that either causes a parry or an absorption move, depending on context. A lot of my play sessions devolved rapidly into both of us spamming Reversal Edges at one another, trying to get a handle on the mechanic, and using it effectively is mostly a question of how far you can climb into your opponent's head.

Soul Calibur 6 was built in Unreal Engine 4 and will run at 60 FPS throughout. You can probably expect that it'll ship with the typical SC array of bonus features, but the only one Namco-Bandai was talking about at E3 was the new Chronicle mode, a chapter-based, storybook-style series of missions that tells each character's story throughout the game. Inasmuch as there's going to be an answer for why we seem to have gone 20 years back in time since SCV, it's likely going to be here.

Overall, though, my impression is simple: it's Soul Calibur. They've added a few new systems that are really going to change the flow of play a great deal, particularly Soul Charge, but the general idea behind the game seems to have been to adapt and advance the series into this generation of hardware without trying to reinvent the wheel. It plays much as it always has, a lot of the cast is returning from past games, and I guess we're now officially throwing Sophitia's whiny son and daughter down the memory hole. All in all, it's business as usual, which is good news for fans of the franchise.