Soulcalibur 6 – Not as Good as 2,3, or 4
Summary: Too flashy & gimmicky. Nowhere near as well refined, clean, balanced, or well produced as Soul Calibur 2 or 3. Control issues, tedious menu navigation, glitchy & dull customization, long loading times.
Critical Problems that need immediate fixing:
-Control Customization - Fix Needed: Allow mapping of a single button (A/B/K/G) to more than 1 button on the controller. For example, allow “G” to be mapped to both “Left Trigger” AND the “A” button on an Xbox controller. (This was possible on Sega Dreamcast & Xbox for Soul Calibur 1,2,3 etc). Not having this available is crippling!
-Graphics Options Needed: Please make a setting to reduce or remove the special effects from some or all attacks. They are far too bright and shiny, and they make it extremely difficult to see what is happening. I would much rather see the location of my weapon and the stance of my foe than a bunch of fake lights & colors. I understand why unblockable attacks have flames and special effects, but every single attack glowing and zapping is just too much. It also makes it harder to tell “special” attacks from “normal” attacks. This option would also be very beneficial for epileptic players.
Expanded Review: The game has been dumbed down and is clearly intended to be “noob fancy.” A new player can smash a lot of buttons, make crazy flames and lightning shoot out of their blade, and have their character do wacky flips and spins that may even harm their opponent. However, this actually deteriorates the overall play quality, as actually figuring out what is going on is nearly impossible. The “reversal edge” mechanic just slows down gameplay with a fancy slo-mo sequence, but punishes players who actually know moves and combos by trapping them in a “rock-paper-scissor” scenario. The same is true for the “soul charge” attacks, which are flashy yet pointless.
-Just because something is bright and colorful or “cool looking” does not mean it is good for gameplay.
Other Problems:
-Clipping, Clothing, & Materials: For some reason, clothing was not designed properly. Nearly every piece of clothing clips through other clothing. Pants cut through boots, shirts can be seen through belts and waistbands.
Additionally, clothing does NOT fit the character. Belts and bandoliers hover about 2-3 inches off the body of the character, as if there is some anti-gravitation field around you. Shoulder pads seem to float magically upon you as well. Just about every regular piece of clothing (except the “sexy lady clothes”) is bulky & enormous. Even the plain white t-shirt seems to be made of cloth that is about 3 inches thick. Even the basic skirt makes your character’s hips look about 4 feet wide and chunky.
There is also a surprisingly small amount of custom clothing available. This, combined with the fact that almost every piece of non-bondage clothing makes your character look like a fat oaf, makes the actual outfit choice and character customization quite limited and dull.
-Soul Calibur 3 and 4 had excellent customization with many items, weapons, and much less clipping. If they could do it on PS2 and Xbox, they should be able to do it now.
Character Customization – Fix Needed: You should be able to preview changes on the actual model before selecting the item; hovering over the item should apply it to your model as a preview.
Menu & Story Navigation is Tedious & Bothersome: Story mode takes ages to navigate through page after page of single lines of text. Either introduce a “Skip” button, or put all of this information on 1-2 pages that we can read if we feel like it. Pressing a button 13 times just to get to the next fight is tedious and boring.
Navigating through menus requires too much button pressing. Simple arrow keys work in most every other game. Almost everything in this game requires an arrow press, then “select,” then another arrow press, then “select.”