Do you know what my favourite thing about Soulcalibur VI is? Being able to send it back and Amazon telling me it's fine, even though I'm 12 days outside of the returns period. I'm very thankful. Because if they told me that I wouldn't be able to return this, I'd be distraught. Although it would be my own fault, because I did request a returns label 2 days after I bought the damn game.
Welcome to a new stage of history that's dusty and not worth holding onto.
The soul stopped burning for me after Soul Calibur III. So, I'm not entirely sure what made me decide to attempt to get back into the series with VI. Maybe it was the media coverage, or the mention that this was a light reboot of Soul Calibur I. Whatever the fuck happened, I ended up with this game, and all it did was highlight why I fell out of love with the series in the first place. So I guess that's something. Well and truly. Because I like closure, and I really did wonder what made me stop taking an interest in a series that I'd loved, because it wasn't like I'd played Soul Calibur V or IV and hated them.
I fell in love with the soul series right back at the very beginning with Soul blade. I remember harassing the staff at my local Blockbuster video every weekend, because the game was always out and I wanted to know when copies would be coming back. And when I finally got a hold of the game, I fell in love. 'Tekken with weapons' is how it was being coined and I was very okay with that.
Soulcalibur VI (strangely now making the game title one word, so excuse me if I flip between Soul Calibur and Soulcalibur) is being touted as a return to form. I'm genuinely glad for those who feel this is the case, because I personally don't.
When I played the online only Beta, something felt off. The game didn't feel all that responsive. Inputs felt slow. The game as a whole felt...a little slow. The collision detection seemed kinda janky. The flow of battles just felt different. Not in a 'WOW! This feels different!' [Wide grin] kinda way. But in a disconcerting 'Ooooh chile,...this feels different...' [Real housewife of Atlanta disapproving stank face] kinda way. But I figured that maybe it was due to the game being online. So I gave the game the benefit of the doubt and decided to take a chance and buy it anyway, because everybody was saying it was good. Also, nostalgia.
Then I played the full thing. And within 20 minutes I knew I didn't like this game and that I was sending it back.
As I played Soulcalibur VI I had this immediate sense that this game just doesn't have enough to it. And it doesn't. The whole package just does not feel complete to me. The single player modes are boring and half-baked and the online modes are basic and a little bit broken.
Soul chronicle is the single player story mode which is centred around the main cast of characters, but with a story that places Kilik at its centre. There is some voice acting and occasional cut-scenes (if you can even call them that). It's just an okay mode. The voice acting and dialogue is awful. And the abundance of static artwork in place of actual cinematic sequences and cut scenes pull you out of the 1 ply toilet paper thin story.
Libra of soul is pretty much your old school Edge master mode, but instead it has you go out into the world of pirates, mystic weapons, whips and titties with a character that you've created. There is zero voice acting in this mode except for grunts and squeals and everything is told via dialog in text. Some of the dialog goes on forever and it doesn't help that the text is tiny. REALLY tiny. This is the most 'interesting' (and I use that word lightly) of the two modes, but it's still pretty boring. It takes too long to really get going and get fun, and the crazy fight conditions that the mode throws at you (depleting health, no ring outs, specific attacks only) wear thin fast.
The create a character mode is equally as half-baked. The options in this mode are so few. You have very few items to work with, which wouldn't be such a problem if we hadn't had Soul Calibur games come before which featured a more extensive set of options and also a better UI. Annoyingly, when you hover over a new item or piece of equipment, you can't see how it looks on your character until you press a button to select it, which prompts the game to load for a few seconds whilst it slaps the piece onto your character. Also, there are items you can buy, but you can't see how the item looks on your character until you purchase it with the in-game currency, which is annoying as fuck.
The online play is pretty basic. It's what you'd expect and nothing more.
I'm not sure when bare bones single player modes which seem like after thoughts became a standard, but I'm tired of it already. And I would love for a beat 'em up to come along which just delivers a great Arcade mode, brings back classics like Survival and Team battle and channelled all of the resource that gets squandered on a Story mode into a great Training / Tutorial mode. Soulcalibur VI is a soft reboot of the series and for many, will likely be an introduction to the series as a whole. Yet the training mode is so basic and all of the in-depth texts and explanations on game mechanics are buried in menus. Like..who can be bothered with that shit!? Soulcalibur VI is an easy game to pick up and play, but there are layers upon layers to the fighting system, and this isn't even taking into account how this will change and vary between characters. A great Training / Tutorial mode would have worked wonders.
The single player experience of Soulcalibur VI just feels lacking. There was no incentive for me to bother investing time into any of it.
The soul series was known for its soundtracks, but these have become more and more bland as time has gone on. This seems to be a Namco thing as opposed to a game series specific thing, as the Tekken soundtracks started to decline in quality at the same time Soul Calibur's did. The music in this game is not memorable for shit. The only pieces of music in this game that stuck out for me were the remakes of pieces from Soul Calibur I. The music in this game isn't bad. It's just neither here nor there. You don't really notice it. It's purely background music. It doesn't really go to any length to set any form of mood. There's nothing as wonderfully majestic as "Chasing downstream" from Soul Calibur I, as charming as "Kkaduri" from Soul blade, or anything as hype and scene setting as "Brave sword, brave soul" from Soul Calibur II. The music in this game is a mere shadow of its former selves.
The graphics in this game are nothing special. In this day and age, where I feel games have reached the saturation point of achieving photo realism, it's the art direction that really causes a game to stand out. Soulcalibur VI's art direction is bland to say the least. Soul Calibur looks as the series has always looked, which is both a good and a bad thing. On one hand it's good, because it's a nice enough looking game. The soul series has always been one of the prettiest looking beat 'em ups which has always had a one-up on Tekken. But VI is not a huge graphical jump from Soul Calibur V or IV. In fact some of the character models look like they were pulled straight out of Soul Calibur V. And the hair and clothing animations look no more advanced than they did in Soul Claibur I. In fact...they look EXACTLY the same. Here were are in 2018 with a game which features hair and clothing animation from 1998. The issues are even worse when you slap certain pieces of clothing on characters, as items clip like hell. I gave Seong Mi Na a long Hangbok looking dress and her legs poked right through it. The game looks just about par the course for how you'd expect a game in this day and age to look. But it doesn't really wow in any way.
Soulcalibur VI doesn't do anything monumentally bad. It looks okay. It sounds okay. It plays okay. But this is the problem. I'm used to my Soul Calibur's being better than okay. I'm used to my Soul Calibur's being amazing. Wowing me. Demanding hours of my time and cancelling on friends with 'I'm busy' because I'm trying to beat that mission where I'm fighting some 8 star difficult enemy with a weapon that's draining my health and I can't ring out the bitch.
Then I realised what it was. Soulcalibur VI lacks character. Everything about this game feels so indistinct. Here we are with a series that was known for its originality, great character designs and a shit load of character. Yet somehow, all of that has been stripped away and now the game seems unable to emulate itself. It feels as though Soulcalibur is trying to compete with other games out there. This became evident with the inclusion of the critical edge attacks, which are pretty much the equivalent of Street Fighter's super attacks. These look cool, but I'm not a fan of them generally. I find them cheap, I had inconsistent experiences when it came to evading them, I find they mess with the flow of fights and not being able to turn them off? Bye.
Everything about Soulcalibur VI feels so bog standard. Even the characters, who now no longer have original P2 outfits. Just colour variants of their default outfits. The arenas have zero character. There's nothing as eye catching or memorable as the raft stage in Soul Calibur I, the Japanese temple stage in Soul Calibur II or the old Toldeo stage in Soul Calibur III. Again, the only stages which catch your eye are the re-creations of stages from Soul Calibur I, and that's purely because they're familiar. But even these feel characterless in comparison to the originals, because so much of the atmosphere is stripped out and much of the detail that would make the stages pop is way out of the shot. You only see it when the camera sweeps in at the start of a round or the camera goes all dramatic during a critical edge attack. Soulcalibur VI just doesn't have the heart of the original game. This feels and looks more like Tekken to me than anything. From how the critical edges look, to the new dramatic camera angles and the slo-mo - all things which, for me, are distractions from the gameplay and pull me out of it. Whenever a reversal edge is triggered, I'm like 'For fucks sake'.
I really wanted this game to send my wig into a new stage of history, but alas. My wig stayeth upon my head.
Verdict: Rent it or borrow it from a friend before committing to buying it.