SoulCalibur V discussion thread

Da Bounca

Sairus wrote: »

I thought the files could be transferred between consoles? That 8Way run seems to think it's possible.
He mentions that it takes about 5 hours to unlock everyone, so I really hope they're transferable anyway



But who would decide upon this build? One person's opinion of a balanced Devil Jin custom could be wildly different from someone else's.

The demo versions of the game had an open file system that would allow for easy data swapping, but apparently the final build doesn't allow for it. The thread is now locked on 8wayrun, Jaxel confirmed the ban for that reason.

I guess if the data had been transferable, a few weeks of playtesting by the top tier players would have decided the final build for DJ.

I'm kinda happy the matter is decided upon now though, we can all skip the sh1tstorm that would have been caused.

Sairus

Da Bounca wrote: »

The demo versions of the game had an open file system that would allow for easy data swapping, but apparently the final build doesn't allow for it. The thread is now locked on 8wayrun, Jaxel confirmed the ban for that reason.

Ah right. That's pretty disappointing

Da Bounca

Live SCV with 8wayrun

TheMikenyan

It's out tomorrow, lads. Anyone up for taking it for a spin at XGC?

Scavenger XIII wrote: »

I just think it's a completely pointless inclusion and it's only going to cause problems, but these designers never learn.

You want to play DJ there's already a game called Tekken where you can.

Inclusion of Devil Jin is easily trumped in pointlessness by Kilik and Elysium. I have no problem with Edgemaster, but THREE Ditto Fighters? THAT is a waste of character slots.

J0hnick

TheMikenyan wrote: »

It's out tomorrow, lads. Anyone up for taking it for a spin at XGC?

I pre-ordered it from Amazon, but I picked free super saver delivery so wont have it till Monday , on the plus side I got it for €42 and a free DLC code for Dampiere .

Generic_name01

Anyone preorder instore from GAME?

I did but just opened it there and I've no dampierre code. They had signs up though saying you'd get him as a preorder bonus.

Sairus

Generic_name01 wrote: »

Anyone preorder instore from GAME?

I did but just opened it there and I've no dampierre code. They had signs up though saying you'd get him as a preorder bonus.

They're on a separate card not in the packaging. Go back and tell em they didn't give you a code.

Danonino.

Just curious as to how much people have paid for this?
I'm more than tempted to grab it over the next day or two but I'm very strapped for cash so would wait if its cheaper in (for example) Game/HMV online ect

Sairus

Some opinions after a few hours of playing:

Game is loads of fun. The nice, nippy controls are great and ex attacks/supers really spice up the gameplay. The whole thing feels mad fast now.
Throws seem to be far longer on start up so they're not as spammable as I found they were in SCIV.

Story mode is cool enough, but it feels like it's only one quarter of the full story. Am I missing the option to choose different paths or something? Viola and ZWEI aren't explained at all, either is the Maxi, Lexia, Xiba and Natsu group thing and half the cast don't even make appearances. What is done is pretty cool in a barely sensical sort of way though.

Training is a vast improvement over 4, but not exactly exploding with features.
There are a few nice little additions though, like each character has a few on screen quick tips and combos you can cycle through with button shortcuts to give you a very short idea of how they work. You can also turn on an off dummy recording and playback with shortcuts, along with setting the AI to do a bunch of other specific stuff without needing to open the menu.

TheMikenyan wrote: »

Inclusion of Devil Jin is easily trumped in pointlessness by Kilik and Elysium. I have no problem with Edgemaster, but THREE Ditto Fighters? THAT is a waste of character slots.

On the note of character choices, it's really odd how they just gave Setsuka's fight style to Patroklos halfway through the story mode.

Elysium has all the women fighting styles and Kilik has all the guys. Total gender inequality that Elysium gets a unique Critical Edge. Damn feminists.

On the other hand, Elysium is basically Fergus' most perfect character possible, what with the being every girl character simultaneously.

Scavenger XIII

...and Game make a bollocks by sending me a used DLC code. :pac:

SCV seems alright so far but I can't help but think I'd be having more fun playing one of the old ones.

Might like it more once I've adjusted and gotten over the fact that my constant main has lost about 80% of his old moveset and the remaining 20% has been jumbled around at random.

Sairus

Scavenger XIII wrote: »

...and Game make a bollocks by sending me a used DLC code. :pac:

Might like it more once I've adjusted and gotten over the fact that my constant main has lost about 80% of his old moveset and the remaining 20% has been jumbled around at random.

I think they're really short on those DLC codes. They tried to give me my copy with no code until I asked about it, then they actually asked me if I was sure I wanted the code.

And yar, I meant to mention that above. They've really trimmed down the characters.
I'm pretty happy with that though. Ivy was waaaaaay too complicated for her own good by the time SCIV hit. Now she's back to SC2 levels.

whatsamsn

I dunno. Something makes me wanna play this game.

Generic_name01

Thanks sairus yeah I'll yeah in go back in tomorrow. I rang them and the guy said it should be in the box. Just fobbed me off by the sounds of it.

TheMikenyan

Generic_name01 wrote: »

Thanks sairus yeah I'll yeah in go back in tomorrow. I rang them and the guy said it should be in the box. Just fobbed me off by the sounds of it.

Careful how you play that one out, guys. There's nothing on the packaging about the Dampierre code, and they'll abuse the hell out of the fact. Don't bother calling Sony or Xbox support. They can't help you - trust me on that.

I'm liking the game so far, but I am somewhat disappointed by the story mode. Not that I actually play the game for the plot, but I'm used to my arcade fighters having prologues and endings for each character - seems like a bit of a cop out.

My main, Raphael, is very fun to play though. They've mixed him up and cropped *even* more of his unique moves, but he's much more comboable now, and just feels way smoother. Already battering people online with mind games.

Xbox GT is Mikenyan if any of you are up for some bouts at any stage.

1man3letters

most disapointing game ive EVER picked up on a release day,
been looking forward to this since it was talked about 1st,
been a fan of sc since sc2 and id much rather play that than this...even sc4

will be trading this in asap,prob against twisted metal which was going to get release day also.....anyway back i go to mk, woolay!

Scavenger XIII

It certainly doesn't live up to it's legacy but I'd hesitate to call it as bad as SC4.

DarkTalant

Well I'm enjoying it anyway... It's very different from previous game in the series but its still pretty good in is own right.
My only complaint is with the ****ty character designs.. FU daishi for dropping talim.

Forest Demon

Not much hype for this so far?

I picked it up. Some great online options that I have wished for in the past. Single player is bare bones.

I don't think the meter and super move thing adds anything to the game other then a bit of flash. If it takes off as a competitive game then I would say that it will go the way of the x-ray in MK and it will be a rarely used method of burning meter.

It seems a bit random yet as people get used to it. It can be hard to deal with people mashing random buttons. Then again it might get people into fighting games as they have a chance of getting a hit in online. Who knows if it is balanced and fun to play long term.

Fantastic music, lovely smooth 60fps frame rate and great graphics. I like the scaled back roster but a lot of old favs are replaced by charactors with little personality and not much of a story mode to establish them. I think if they where going to do a reboot like that a decent story mode like MKs was important.

In fairness though capcom games are not known much for their story modes and endings :pac: and it does them no harm.

I think namco have been looking at what it making the capcom games popular and tried to imitate rather then innovate.

Personally I think that are all missing the point with these fireworks and RPG elements being introduced into games. Will somebody please think of the epileptics

TheMikenyan

Speaking as a die-hard fan, my impression of SCV is somewhat mixed, but being totally honest, my only real complaints are superficial ones.

The main issue with the game is lack of depth in the Single player mode. The story mode is

Scavenger XIII

TheMikenyan wrote: »

The story mode is

C'mon man don't leave us hanging! :pac:

chopperbyrne

Mickie D's Kenyan internet strikes again!

K.O.Kiki

Scavenger XIII wrote: »

C'mon man don't leave us hanging! :pac:

TheMikenyan

Scavenger XIII wrote: »

C'mon man don't leave us hanging! :pac:

Goddamned "smart" phone.

As I was saying, the story is pathetic. I focuses on two, maybe three characters, none of whom are actually likable. They've completely dropped the plotlines for all other characters - no prologues or cinematics, which even Street Fighter is doing nowadays. Anyone who was interested in the plot after the timeskip is going to be disappointed. The single player has basically zero depth - I beat the story in less than a couple of hours and that was that.

The other thing is that a good few characters got cut from the roster. Most of them were replaced by younger clones with a few belles and whistles, but some were cut outright. This wouldn't be a problem if they included interesting new characters in their place, but they didn't. The random-style fighter returns in Edgemaster, which is fine, as it's pretty much a staple of the games nowadays, but they also included two other random fighters who mimic all of the male and female styles respectively. That is a gigantic waste of character slots, as they're nothing more than alternate skins. Add to that the fact that two of the other characters are just Patroklos and Pyrrha with different movesets, meaning that once again there are three sword/shield fighters and now three random fighters, and suddenly the game looks extremely lazily thrown together after all the hype.

Then again, like I said, these are superficial complaints - at least to me. I refer to this as SIDCA (TM), or **** I Don't Care About. I've said it before in this thread that if you're playing Soul Calibur for the plot, you're doing it WRONG. At the end of the day, I was never really going to spend much time on single player unless it was for achievement farming or want of something better to do. They kept my main character in the game, and there are one or two that I'll probably try to pick up as secondaries, but ultimately, I don't really mind that they cut out Rock and the Koreans. I feel for the people who did play those characters though, especially Talim players - there's always DLC, guys.

The reasons I do play this game are well justified. The gameplay is fast, smooth and very solid overall. Some of the new characters mix it up nicely, and the others have been stripped down to be more accessible for newbs. And the online mode is ****ing awesome. The search options and national hubs are brilliant features, and there's barely any lag - massive improvement on SC4. It's hands down the best I've seen in an online fighter so far - even Street Fighter.

This game shines where it really counts. If you care about the stuff that actually matters, and ignore the stuff that doesn't, you'll be glad you picked this up

And **** you, Byrnesy.

UberPrinny_Baal

I was kind of on the fence for this game, but after reading up on it, I think I've fallen down on the side of "not buying".

Does anyone know if this game was massively running up against a crunch time and had a bunch of stuff cut?

The fact that the story mode looks like mostly a slideshow of storyboard sketches with voiceover, AND the fact that there is zero character intro/outro in arcade mode seems kind of baffling.

Why bother doing a timeskip and dropping a bunch of characters if you're not going to properly explain the new people, or what happened to the old favourites?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Soul Calibur is the only modern day "period" fighting game series, and that automatically gives it a flavour and backdrop way more interesting than it's competitors. It seems really weird to just squander all that.

Weapon master mode has been cut too. One of the game's most unique features, and the one that gave the single player mode the most amount of content?

I don't really see any reason why I shouldn't refrain from buying SCV, and just play Soulblade or Soul Calibur 2 if the mood takes me.

TheMikenyan wrote: »

I've said it before in this thread that if you're playing Soul Calibur for the plot, you're doing it WRONG. At the end of the day, I was never really going to spend much time on single player unless it was for achievement farming

Haha, that's funny. Personally I'd say if you play ANY game for achievement farming you're doing it wrong; but a game with a good story (or even a bad story like Street Fighter) makes it a more enjoyable experience.

TheMikenyan

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Haha, that's funny. Personally I'd say if you play ANY game for achievement farming you're doing it wrong; but a game with a good story (or even a bad story like Street Fighter) makes it a more enjoyable experience.

I see where you're coming from. Thing is, I just don't care about story mode in fighters anymore. When the games were offline, it was the only real way to improve at the game if you didn't have someone to play against. With online though, that goes out the window. I must have played story mode on SC4 with about five characters before dropping it and just playing online - just couldn't be arsed with completing it. Same goes with Street Fighter - I beat Arcade Mode a few times and spend the rest building skills online. When it comes to fighting games, I just find human opponents more engaging.

Sairus

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Does anyone know if this game was massively running up against a crunch time and had a bunch of stuff cut?

The fact that the story mode looks like mostly a slideshow of storyboard sketches with voiceover, AND the fact that there is zero character intro/outro in arcade mode seems kind of baffling.

It definitely feels like there was a large chunk of the game cut before it was shipped. I didn't hear of any issues they were having with that, and it's clearly running on SCIV's engine so they didn't have to start development from scratch. It must have had a really lousy development cycle to get so chopped up.

The story mode format of sketchy art and voice overs works really well. I personally love that style of art. It was how the endings were handled in SC1 and I've always loved seeing it in SC games.

Having said that, it feels like they had a full story written for all the cast and only included the Pyrra/Patroklos section of it, which is really annoying. There's no character profiles or anything, so I have absolutely no clue who Xiba is. Only thanks to following all the devblogs and whatnot do I know that Viola and ZWEI have no memories and that Viola is very probably Amy. There's even a big climactic battle between the new Nightmare and ZWEI where they keep saying how they've been waiting for this for a long time, but that's all you ever find out.

For a storyline reboot to not explain any of what happened in the last 17 years is completely idiotic.

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

I don't really see any reason why I shouldn't refrain from buying SCV, and just play Soulblade or Soul Calibur 2 if the mood takes me.

The same reason you bought SF4 and didn't just exclusively play SF3?

UberPrinny_Baal

Sairus wrote: »

The same reason you bought SF4 and didn't just exclusively play SF3?

I'm kind of confused by this bit of your post as well (I didn't actually play SF3 until OE came out).

I just meant that Blade and Calibur 2 had cool charm to them, and different experiences that are both good.

Blade/Edge: Giant assed-jumps in the air, alternatively statted weapons, weaponless fighting, weapon master mode, 3 alt soundtracks, alternate endings via button presses in ending sequence.

Calibur 2: 8 way run, tiny hop jumps, guest characters (Link and Necrid on GCN), engine more reflective of current engine, weapon master mode

So if the two biggest advantages of SCV are the character customisation, and the online mode; I'm not terribly interested and am quite happy to rely on what I already own if I want to get back on The Stage of History.

Sairus

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

I'm kind of confused by this bit of your post as well (I didn't actually play SF3 until OE came out).

So if the two biggest advantages of SCV are the character customisation, and the online mode; I'm not terribly interested and am quite happy to rely on what I already own if I want to get back on The Stage of History.

Admittedly, SF3/SF4 was a poor choice based on SF's rocky series play history, but what I meant is that if you're interested in Soulcalibur there's not a whole lot of point going back to two games in the series that are never played anymore. If you want to delve into SC again it'd be more beneficial to play the game others are actually playing than muck around in a dead single player game.

And even aside from that, while the character customisation and online modes are great, the actual combat in the game is very fun. It's a lot easier to talk about the huge obvious bad things like dodgy character choices and an empty story mode than praise the game mechanics. However, when talking about the game having character, I would have though this being SC's first time using super meters sets it apart from its predecessors.

As I've come to realise from talking to people who actually know how to play SC, my knowledge on the fighting system from previous iterations is shockingly lacking so I'm hesitant to talk about how different the nitty gritty of walk speed and regular attack differences are.

UberPrinny_Baal

Sairus wrote: »

If you want to delve into SC again it'd be more beneficial to play the game others are actually playing than muck around in a dead single player game.

It sort of depends on your definition of "delve". I wouldn't muck around in SB/SC2 only for the single player, it would probably be for me and a friend to mash buttons and enjoy low level play.

I know pretty much zero about 3D fighters, I don't think I could tell one Soul Calibur engine from another.

In that regard I don't see how playing SCV would be any different to what I have for the layman (other than the obvious super moves).

Forest Demon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87xd1Wf4irQ

Intros and endings would have gone a long way in arcade mode but other then that the more I play it the more I like it. Character creation is a bit of laugh. Have come across a few good ones.

Looking forward to seeing some high level play and also to see how the balance works out.

My only gripe is the DLC characters for pre order. I hate DLC that is full characters at launch.