When I was invited to the Bandai Namco booth at E3 2018 for a press presentation, I had the chance to play Soulcalibur VI. Now, I’ll freely admit that while I enjoy fighting games, I’m not the most skilled player, nor had I used a fightstick in some time. That said, it was still a lot of fun. My friend Lord Cognito recorded some off-screen gameplay, which you can check out here or below:
Now, here’s my Soulcalibur VI impressions!
Soulcalibur VI Impressions
The gameplay is fast and fluid, with genre staples aplenty such as grabs, slashes and combos. Even with only a cursory glance at the controls, I was impressed with how easy it was to pick up momentum and chain together moves for extremely powerful combo attacks. Running on Unreal Engine 4, Soulcalibur VI runs at a rock-solid 60 frames-per-second, with fantastic particle effects, skin textures and image quality.
There’s three main points of combat worth focusing on. Critical Edge returns, granting the ability to charge the character’s attacks. Reversal Edge is a new art that triggers a slow-motion fight decided by tactical attacks akin to rock-paper-scissors. Finally, Soul Charge is also returning however, it works different from past games; players transform their characters into alternate states, with completely different advantages and disadvantages.
I got some more information from a press briefing at Bandai Namco. The story mode for Soulcalibur VI is called Chronicle. As is series tradition, there’s a big guest character: Geralt of Rivia, The White Wolf of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Each character has a strong story arc and playing through each arc will show different parts of the story hidden in other playthroughs. While thirteen characters have been revealed, the character select still has nine empty slots, so it seems we have a ways to go before we’ll know the full launch lineup.
I’m definitely looking forward to this title. It certainly seems like a fantastic fighting game all around and the inclusion of Geralt is just the icing on the cake. Soulcalibur VI releases on October 19th, 2018 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
