At Gamescom 2018, we sat down to play SoulCalibur 6, the upcoming title in Bandai Namco's fighting series. In the video above, we pit Nightmare, Sophitia, Yoshimitsu, Siegfried, Mitsurugi, and Groh, as well as The Witcher's Geralt--who's guesting as a playable character--against each other. Although most of these characters are mainstays in the SoulCalibur series, both Groh and Geralt are new.
Not much has been revealed about Groh's backstory, but the Nordic knight delivers sweeping slashes with his double saber--which can also be separated into two single sabers to deliver quick stabs in his more complex attacks. Groh's moveset is relatively easy to learn, and we can see beginning players gravitating towards him when SoulCalibur 6 releases.
SoulCalibur 6 marks the first time Geralt has been in a non-Witcher game, and Bandai Namco worked with CD Projekt Red to make sure his moves are correctly translated over. As such, Geralt fights with the same levels of precision that he does in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
We didn't see anything groundbreakingly different in the other characters, but that comes as no surprise. They all have rich histories with the SoulCalibur franchise, and it's unlikely Bandai Namco would dramatically change their movesets this late in the series. Nightmare and Mitsurugi have been in every mainline SoulCalibur game since the start. Siegfried has technically been in all five previous games as well, but he was only a skin in SoulCalibur 2. Sophitia was introduced in the first game, took a small break in the franchise in SoulCalibur 2, and then went on to be in every subsequent title. Yoshimitsu also first appeared in SoulCalibur and appeared in every following game until SoulCalibur 5.
SoulCalibur 6 launches for Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 19.