Sno

Soul Calibur V

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So anybody excited about this?

The game will be set 17 years after the last one, the new protagonist and the guy you see at the end of that teaser is Patroklos, who is supposed to be Sophitia's son. He will fight with short sword and shield and would be the fourth character to fight with that general style. Eagh.

Siegfried and Nightmare are confirmed as returning, and possibly/probably Voldo? There's concept art of Siegfried floating around looking much older. It seems likely most of the cast will return, just aged up. (Consider that Ivy would be nearly fifty in SCV, and then scrub the image from your mind.)

The game is supposed to play much faster than IV did. I had also read they're getting rid of A+K moves, since they're so hard to do on a gamepad. (That would be X/B on a 360 pad, or Square/Circle on a PS3 pad. So yeah, glad to see those gone.)

The design lead wanted to call it Soul Edge 2 to suggest a reinvention and a new focus for the series, but was vetoed by Namco execs, and so it's Soul Calibur V.

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Those were some weird voiceovers. Also lipsyncing didn't really work.

Wee, last Soul Calibur games I've played are Soul Calibur 2 and Soulcalibur Legends. SC2 was ace, Sc Legends not so much.

I wonder will they end up streaming this also to Wii Too because release is in 2012.

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Those were some weird voiceovers. Also lipsyncing didn't really work.

The stuff with Siegfried and Nightmare is just footage from SC4.

Wee, last Soul Calibur games I've played are Soul Calibur 2 and Soulcalibur Legends. SC2 was ace, Sc Legends not so much.

Soul Calibur 2 was probably the best-playing game in the series.

I am completely unfamiliar with Legends, other than it being the weird motion-controlled spin-off.

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Soulcalibur IV was a disappointment because it didn't have Team Battle Mode from Soulcalibur II, although the character creator was surprisingly great. My purchase of Soulcalibur V will depend almost entirely on the presence of Team Battle Mode.

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I paid full price for Soulcalibur 4 and felt rather burned by that. Talk about phoning it in. Namco are also some of the worst offenders of AWFUL $DLC. :(

What a shitty trailer by the way. They couldn't wait until they finished the models for the actual game? :erm: The lipsyncing made me laugh.

Anyhoo, WE'LL SEE. Things I'd like to see in SC5: When playing 2 player Versus, have all fucking characters unlocked from the get go. That's all I ask for.

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So i picked this up today, played online for about four hours straight. I like this game an awful, awful lot. My gut reaction is that this is the best Soul Calibur has been in a long time, maybe since II, but i'm saying that as somebody who never really fell out of love with the series.

The solo offerings are a little sparse, better than IV, but nowhere near the magnitude of stuff offered in the earlier games. Story mode is trying to do the MK9 thing, except it's a lot of still art and voice over, and you only seem to play two of the characters. (So it kind of sucks.) Everything else is variations on arcade/versus/training stuff, so no mission mode. (Also, apparently no character endings in arcade, i hear? I haven't checked on it myself.)

Online is amazing, apparently through dedicated server magic on Namco's end, but really didn't see any latency at all. (The online startup has a notice that they are only obligated to support it for twelve months, but that's a fairly common disclaimer in EULA's, it will not be dead after only a year.)

There's a really brilliantly executed lobby system too, and match replays, and a lot of stat tracking. Online really seems to have been the emphasis here.

Had such a great experience online, i don't think i can emphasize it enough. There's some tiny hitches here and there, but i was nailing things requiring precise timing and never feeling like it was lag's fault when i couldn't.

It's also probably the most different a Soul Calibur game has been since the jump from Soul Edge to Soul Calibur. The game moves at a much, much faster pace. A lot of new systems have been introduced, a lot of old systems are gone. Some characters are mostly intact, some have been radically changed. Some characters are gone, replaced by other characters that are similar and different to their predecessors in varying ways. (Or seemingly amalgams of different absentees in the roster.)

A lot of the new characters are really obnoxious/garish.

Ezio is pretty fuckin` awesome.

Dampierre was apparently a pre-order bonus exclusive to Best Buy, so that's bullshit. (Expect him to be released as paid-DLC in the coming months.)

On a more personal note, Siegfried was always my main, and has kind of been garbage in the last few games, but seems like a total monster again.

Finally, It's depressing that it's even an issue, but I personally feel that the sexism has been reeled in a bit, it's a little less overt. I mean, Ivy and Tira are still absurd, but i definitely don't think that ridiculous marketing campaign is at all indicative of the game.

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Alright, cool.

No love for Soul then.

A few days out, i'd like to addendum that this is definitely the best online feature set i've seen in a fighting game. The solo experience is pretty much shit though.

I guess that'll be the last to be said on it.

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I played a bit. Didn't have the chance to try it out online, but I did play a bit of local with a friend. It's certainly immediately much better once you're playing against a human, but that much is true of every fighting game.

My primary issue comes from not really having found an enjoyable flow to the combat. In a similar way to Tekken, I just don't really "get" how its combat works, and that makes the fighting seem pointless and luck-based, even if it isn't. Meanwhile, the story is obviously almost totally worthless and the characters don't really interest me enough to hold my attention beyond that.

I feel like I've become much more critical of fighting games since the latest Mortal Kombat. Before that I was content for them to exist, to entertain me very briefly and then to forget about them completely. Mortal Kombat was the first in a long time that I really enjoyed as a game and an experience. I haven't played a fighting game so much since Dead or Alive 4 was one of the only games that existed on the 360.

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My primary issue comes from not really having found an enjoyable flow to the combat. In a similar way to Tekken, I just don't really "get" how its combat works, and that makes the fighting seem pointless and luck-based, even if it isn't. Meanwhile, the story is obviously almost totally worthless and the characters don't really interest me enough to hold my attention beyond that.

How much do you know about the game, kind of scrub-league stuff or what?

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How much do you know about the game, kind of scrub-league stuff or what?

Not even.

I know what a quick glance at the moves list for perhaps half a dozen of the characters has told me. There are some fighting games I've endeavoured to learn a little more, but I rarely exactly go deep into it. Soul Calibur has not made me want to learn at all.

Is it a game that you have to know to love? I hate to sound spoiled but if it is then I actually don't care. Right now the only fighting games I'm interested in are those that I can pick up and play with some friends in a party atmosphere.

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I think Soulcalibur is probably actually one of the easiest fighting games to pick up, there's a very minimal barrier of technical execution, and most of the challenge in learning is purely knowledge based. (Somewhat in contrast to the norm of the mechanics being relatively simple but incredibly demanding.)

With this game, you want to be able to read your opponent's actions and respond appropriately. It's so important to understand how your moves are applicable in different situations, and to have ideas about how to counter certain behaviors in other players. (Or even just straight up play mind games with people. Find a hole in their game, train them to close it up, and then shift to abusing another gap their new behavior has opened up.)

You don't have long combos to lock down the opponent with, but once you have control of a fight, once you're in a favorable position, it can be hard for the opponent to break that control. You kind of have to build up momentum, and to do that you have to know your character's moveset really well. For very beginner play, look for what hits low, what can hit grounded opponents, what moves knock them off their feet and in what direction they do that, what your launchers are, and what your pokes, fast attacks, and basic strings are. If it's a character built around multiple stances, have an understanding of how that stuff all flows move-to-move.

A defensive game is harder to build up, that just takes experience. Knowing when to sidestep and when to block low, it takes an instinctual understanding the game's horizontal/vertical dichotomy. (Additionally, being quick on those throw counters can also be a pain to learn, but that's true for any game with a throw/counter-throw mechanic.) Also, as a general rule for starting out, block on wake-up, it's the easiest way to be safe when recovering. You can also air control out of juggles, if it's not a true combo, you can move out of it while airborne.

I mean, but i'm kind of the blind leading the blind here. I'm not that great, but i think i'm competent, and i feel like i understand the game and can appreciate what works well about it. (If you want to go down that rabbit hole, there are fansites with very advanced character guides, but the lingo and notation for this game would just be incredibly confusing for starting out.)

Failing all of that, Soulcalibur games have always had a reputation as casually fun and potentially button mashy games. I mean, and at that kind of level, of course it's going to feel random and cheap. Even Street Fighter is going to seem like bullshit if you don't know how to deal with fireballs.

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I dunno, there are two games that I've felt like have done the "just learn by playing" with occasionally looking at special moves stuff really well, and that's the recent Mortal Kombat and Guilty Gear XX. Nothing else I've played has ever entered my brain so organically.

Also I think I'm biased against 3D (meaning with sidestepping) fighters now. I don't know if it's because of sidestepping, but I've never had as much fun with them as with 2D games. As I say, no idea if it's cause or just coincidence.

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This is the question that will make or break this game:

DOES IT HAVE TEAM BATTLE MODE FROM SC2?

(This is the mode where each player selects a sequence of up to 8 characters to fight against the other player's sequence, and then each time one of your characters dies, they are immediately replaced by the next one on your roster, without the opponent's character getting health refilled, or cutscenes or any crap like that.)

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I dunno, there are two games that I've felt like have done the "just learn by playing" with occasionally looking at special moves stuff really well, and that's the recent Mortal Kombat and Guilty Gear XX. Nothing else I've played has ever entered my brain so organically.

I'm just going to go ahead and say it, that if you played those games in a vacuum, you're probably not as good at them as you think you are. Fighting games have always been terrible at teaching people how to play, and the games you've listed are not exceptions.

I had a similar experience with Soulcalibur way back on the Dreamcast, figuring that game out mostly on my own and feeling like i knew it inside and out, but really having no idea what i was doing and being kind of terrible at it.

There's so many weird, arcane little elements to fighting games that i don't think the developers even think to explain. (BBCS i think has probably the only good tutorial i've ever seen in a fighting game.)

Also I think I'm biased against 3D (meaning with sidestepping) fighters now. I don't know if it's because of sidestepping, but I've never had as much fun with them as with 2D games. As I say, no idea if it's cause or just coincidence.

There's certainly not many fighting games out there were 3D movement is more of a thing than it is in Soul. I think it's always been a strength for the series though, because of the verticals/horizontals dynamic. Evasive side-stepping in Tekken and other 3D fighters always seemed really arbitrary to me, relatively speaking.

This is the question that will make or break this game:

DOES IT HAVE TEAM BATTLE MODE FROM SC2?

(This is the mode where each player selects a sequence of up to 8 characters to fight against the other player's sequence, and then each time one of your characters dies, they are immediately replaced by the next one on your roster, without the opponent's character getting health refilled, or cutscenes or any crap like that.)

The team battle mode from the first few games has still not returned, no.

Like i said, IV and V were and are noticeably lacking on the extra stuff front.

Yeah, it sucks, i want it back too.

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I'm just going to go ahead and say it, that if you played those games in a vacuum, you're probably not as good at them as you think you are. Fighting games have always been terrible at teaching people how to play, and the games you've listed are not exceptions.

You're not wrong, they don't have any real way of teaching you. Perhaps I should have specified that it's more that it feels like I come to understand them. My actual understanding of them is probably still not great.

That said, I haven't played them in a vacuum either - because of my enjoyment of them and the way they made me feel like I was acquiring competence, I have played them against a wider pool of people and even occasionally online against randomers. I certainly haven't participated in any open tournaments, and I have no doubt that I'm solidly in the unskilled amateur category with both games, but having played them against other people who play games regularly, I know that I am better than most of them and that is through practice and a little understanding. Neither of which I would have achieved without feeling like the game was giving me something to work with.

In a sense, my actual competence is much less important than whether the game makes me feel like I'm competent, or at least not clumsy. Soul Calibur makes me feel clumsy, and so does Tekken, hence my lack of enjoyment with them. By contrast, Dead or Alive has somewhat similar mechanics to Tekken* and I only rarely felt clumsy in it. What the difference is I'm not totally sure, but maybe I'll go back and play more fighting games to try to figure it out.

(BBCS i think has probably the only good tutorial i've ever seen in a fighting game.)

What's BBCS? I feel like there's a fighting game in the back of my head that is screaming at me that it had actual teaching mechanics, but I really can't remember it.

*Based on shoddy memory and an incomplete understanding of fighting games.

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Yeah, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift. If you've played Guilty Gear, i would have assumed that you would have played BlazBlue too.

For Soul, i encourage you to just set aside an hour or so and go into training with a character you think you like, and try to really figure out what they can do. Attacks in Soul can be incredibly situational, you need to understand what tools are available to you and have ideas about how and when to use them. It really doesn't take much effort to reach that base level of competency.

Saying this all feels a little contrary to the reputation this series has as being super approachable and accessible, but i understand where you're coming from. The game does look really ungainly when two people are button mashing at eachother, i understand how that could make you not want to invest more time with it.

I mean, I don't agree with taking that initial reaction at face value, but i understand why you would have it.

Edited by Sno

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Honestly I just have only the barest amount of affection for the genre at the moment. With the exception of the recent Mortal Kombat, I don't feel like it's given me anything novel for a long time. That exception isn't even a particularly strong one as the only thing that was genuinely novel about it was a decent story mode, which, while incredible for a fighting game, was only passable in terms of a game in general.

In the absence of a tight group of friends who all really love fighting games, I just don't have a strong reason to put the effort into teaching myself to enjoy them. Even Guilty Gear mostly worked because I had one friend who adored it, and we played each other over and over again. Also, the character and sound designs in that game are fantastic.

So yeah, I'm aware I'm being lazy and my judgement is face value, but the entire genre doesn't thrill me anymore and I really just dip into the games to see if they're going to give me something I haven't had before. SC5 didn't, so I'm probably moving on.

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Honestly, with fighting games like Tekken (Tekken3 & Tekken tag all the way up to 6) & Super Street Fighter 4: AE, You just have to go into training mode and spend your time wisely learning combos. Every game engine is different so all combos differ from one another, we all know that. Lets say, Tekken 6 for example, which has a ridiculous juggle system, that game consists of launching the opponent in the air, rp rp rp lp -> smash down -> last finishing combo. You have to learn by somewhat feeling it (bare with me on this) & either studying their command list/learning off some random guy on youtube. Take what you learned and try it, and repeat that combo till it's jammed in your brain. Mix whatever combos you know and see if it works. Doesnt hurt to try.

SSF4:AE, that engine is slightly different. Not so much juggling. Majority of combos consisting of jab jab, medium into special. That's it. If you are a little more experienced, you dont need the jabs (for hit confirm) and just do crouching/standing heavy into special for more damage (avoid damage scaling). But I will admit this though, anyone can mash. This game respects 'random' too much. But that is what makes this game more challenging fun for me. Predict & Bait out scrubby moves and punish hard. This game also requires you to learn each characters match ups and frame data. Knowing combos is not even half the battle.

I'm no pro player, but I do play competitively. I have witnessed salty scrubs. They cry, they bitch, they moan. "That doesn't make any sense", "That's bullshit", "This game is stupid". Scrubs like those should realise that fighting games aren't for them & should just stop. Especially if they don't put the time and effort in training mode. For those who have, you're just going to have to try harder. No offense.

Timing + Execution = Combos

Mashing + thinking you can do what others can do = Failure.

One salty player I know cries about SSF4: AE & Tekken 6 & UMvC3. All the time. No experience under the belt. Yet that unnamed person dickrides Mortal Kombat 9. Of course. (Not hating on MK9, It's not my cup of tea. Best of luck to MLG with that game). "CoOOooooOOmmboooOOo BrRrreeeaaakerrrrr" :finger:

If there are other players that get a satisfactory feeling after executing a full combo perfectly, wether online/offline, please let me know. I can't be the only one.

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I'm no pro player, but I do play competitively. I have witnessed salty scrubs. They cry, they bitch, they moan. "That doesn't make any sense", "That's bullshit", "This game is stupid". Scrubs like those should realise that fighting games aren't for them & should just stop.

Maybe if they did stop, these games would stop making money, they would stop making them, and you have nothing to play. Then you'd have to go and play some other genre where folks would mildly insult you with names like "scrub".

No offense. :)

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scrubs

Guys who think they're fly, also known as busters?

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I'm no pro player, but I do play competitively. I have witnessed salty scrubs. They cry, they bitch, they moan. "That doesn't make any sense", "That's bullshit", "This game is stupid". Scrubs like those should realise that fighting games aren't for them & should just stop.

Go easy on them. They can't do it all on their own -- I mean, they're no supermans.

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