[Fighters] Soul Halibut

[Delthazar]

There's a free-to-play version of the new Dissidia coming the to PS4 and PC. Looks like it'll be running a DLC model kinda like Killer Instinct, plus a weekly rotating roster of freebie fighters.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/0 ... p-release/

still sounds like an STD you need to treat with some kinda shampoo but I'm not exactly the target audience

[Delthazar]

This is a goooood goddamn Johnny Cage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y9lael4MIg

[Falcon Critical]

The Cage family are really a highlight of MK lore. Also I love that Kano is Australian now (RIP Trevor Goddard you mad brit).

[Delthazar]

On a whim I played a bunch of the freebie "Core" version of Dead or Alive 6 and enjoyed it quite a bit. This version only has four fighters (Kasumi, Hitomi, Bass, some other guy) and no story mode - supposedly, as I was able to at least start it up and see some cutscenes without getting a DLC prompt.

But it seems like all the usual not-story modes are included in Core, yer Arcades and yer Versuses and whatnot, including a super long and pretty fun Quest mode, and all kinds of stuff can be unlocked through normal play even for characters that aren't in that freebie foursome, so that's cool.

I doubt I'll ever actually throw money at this thing but it is getting me in the mood to finally jump into Soul Calibur 6 when it eventually goes on sale. DOA ain't quite SC but it's perfectly competent and DOA6 feels like a pretty damn solid one of those.

[Delthazar]

hey Layfield did you accidentally will this game into existence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6J_c7FhDnk

[Delthazar]

Picked up Soul Calibur 6 in the Steam sale and I'm really feeling it. My favourite fighter remains my favourite fighter 20 years later, go figure.

It's got a pretty neat timeline presentation to its story mode which suits the 16th century historical flavouring really nicely, maybe hard to describe in text though. But even better is the secondary story mode Libra of Souls which sounds familiar but I don't remember seeing in the older games. This one has you create a character and travel the world roughly contemporaneous with the main story mode, even overlapping in some pretty interesting and unexpected ways.

The best part is how much like an RPG Libra of Souls feels in presentation and structure. There's a lot of RPG-ish systems on the map layer especially. Sidequest exploration, some even with recurring characters and ongoing quest chains, random encounters, money expenditure for travel, eating food for passives, upgrading towns through sidequests to open up shops and stuff, you can hire mercenaries... it's wild. And probably pretty long. After several hours I'm only about Lv. 15, but there's Lv. 40-50 quests visible way on the other side of the map across the Himalayas (which cost a lot more to cross, as do seas, which is neat.)

The creation mode is also pretty great and free patches seem to add new parts on a somewhat regular basis. I probably will pick up the season pass DLC for this 'cause adding another 60+ parts (with another big drop still to come) kinda feels totally worth it for the time I've already put in and how much I'm enjoying SC6's take on the system (it's definitely better than 4's but I don't remember 5's.) Plus two of the three DLC characters are great (Amy, if I remember 4 and 5 correctly she's a ton of fun to play) to amazing (2B y'all, christ) and there's still another as-yet unrevealed. I'm hoping for another 2B-level guest character, to keep balance with SC originals Tira and Amy, but we'll see, a Cassandra or Hwang are easy possibilities too.

Anyway, game good. Gimme creation ideas.

[DHerder222]

...Suikoden? Maybe a character that's not super well-known. I vote Futch.

Also, can you explain the basis of the storyline? I've read differing and sometimes contradictory things.
Most that it's a reboot of Soul Calibur 1 but tinkered to also include all the subsequent characters. Is that accurate?

[Delthazar]

Yeah, that's pretty accurate. Rebooted and expanded, not just to account for some of the post-SC1 characters, but also adding a lot more dialogue and context to the original story. Or at least for the main path Kilik/Xianghua/Maxi trio anyway, I haven't gotten into the other characters' individual paths just yet, but I figure they're similarly fleshed-out.

Suiko 3's adult Futch would be simple enough. I just finished a warmup run through the arcade mode with Raphael and his fencer style and general flourishes would probably suit a lot of Suikoden's narc characters really easily and probably most Falcon users too. One of his throws is basically Valeria's Falcon Rune attack animation.

[DHerder222]

It feels like Namco really tried early on to give both SC and Tekken a storyline that could hold up over time. I particularly liked how Tekken 3 jumped ahead 20 years and had the original cast age correspondingly (well, most of them...). But like all other fighting series, by the 4th entry or so they threw up their hands and let insanity take over.

How's the CAC in general? Lots of flexibility?

[Delthazar]

Tons, though there's a couple little areas I like more control over, like scaling of equipment pieces would be really nice, only a few categories of gear let you do that. And as always I'd love to be given the book with regards to character movesets. Give Kilik's running kick combos to a character using Seong Mi-na's weapon style, that kinda thing. But I totally understand why we don't have move customization considering the possible animation clashes but especially the balance issues it'd introduce.

Otherwise it's quite deep and flexible, or as much so as you'll see in a true fighting game like Soul Calibur. It probably doesn't hold a candle to the sheer number of options you'll get from the creation systems in something like the WWE 2K series, but SC is delivering a far more polished end result across the board, so you get what you want in quality. There's still plenty of surprising features to play with, like a huge Photoshopian colour palette with saturation levels for skin/hair/gear, way more stickers and patterns than I expected with a lot of ways to control them, even control over tiny details like the effects your weapon slashes make.

I sorta remember one of the previous SC creation modes doing more with layers, like maybe you could use more than one piece of gear per category that way, but it always looked messy as hell in the end, so not having that here isn't really a loss (assuming that was possible at all in 4 or 5, christ it's been a while.)

[Delthazar]

...I caved and picked up the season pass so I'll return later with thoughts on Tira, 2B, Amy, and all the new creation gear, and maybe screenshots, assuming I don't lose myself too long reworking my custom fighters.

Oh, forgot to touch base on Geralt, the not-bonus not-DLC guest character in the base roster. He's alright, but looks and feels kinda... vanilla high fantasy, at least standing next to all of Soul Calibur's generally flashier fantasy characters. Dude's so brown and grey. Even Mitsurugi's got some colour on his plates at least.

[Delthazar]

Huh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA7lkUeog5Y

DOA6 is solid but I wonder how many KOF folks this will actually pull in.

[DHerder222]

Think this'll be one of those all-female fighting games?

[Delthazar]

It's been out for a while with plenty of dudes - not that the dudes get the attention in DOA games of course

[DHerder222]

Oh, I see. I thought this was going to be a Street Fighter x Tekken-esque special release.

[Falcon Critical]

SNK are loving these character crossovers recently, after Geese showed up in Tekken as well. Then again they've never been super tight with their IP, so it makes sense. I guess Mai and Kula are solid choices for DOA, though I could have seen Leona or Athena being there too.

[Delthazar]

THEY'RE BRINGING BACK MY GIRL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XznU3L3uWD8

Hilde is a character I loved in one or both of her previous appearances thanks to her kinda unique combination of long- and short-range weapons options. And by long I mean loooooong 'cause get a load of that spear. Her pokes probably outdo even Kilik and Seong Mi-na but it's been like ten years since I rolled Hilde at this point so

Not sure I like her voice this time though, could've sworn she was bassier before, but I guess she would've been like 35 at SC5's point in the timeline vs. back to 18 in SC6's rebooted timeline, if that matters

The second season pass is also adding this dude who I don't really know much about, not being a Samurai Showdown guy and all, but maybe some of y'all have opinions

https://youtu.be/TZDDvaP20Xg?t=88

Anyway, yeah, I've been playing a ton of Soul Calibur 6 lately, checking in on the first season pass now that all its content is out. Should probably mention Cassandra was the final drop in that pass. I'm pretty bad at Cassandra. That's my Cassandra review. (She always feels like a more finicky Sophitia, and therefore at least a little redundant.)

2B is fantastic. Tira is... Tira, not bad to play, but always a fairly obnoxious character, like they're just fulfilling a "must have one (1) Harley Quinn in every franchise" rule. Amy owns, she's a better Raphael.

re: Suikoden-ass custom character creation, Talim's style is 100% Riou, the dual tonfas, the wind, all of it. I can't imagine an easier build, aside from perhaps Fire Emblem's Byleth, thanks to Ivy's whip sword being pretty much Byleth's Sword of the Creator. The only problem there is the costume.

[Delthazar]

Some of the victory/idle quotes are really funny I didn't realize they always got this specific regarding who you're facing.

https://twitter.com/TheFairy519/status/ ... 20608?s=20

https://twitter.com/TheFairy519/status/ ... 00033?s=20

[Falcon Critical]

That's the flavour parts of fighting games that I really like, stuff like Ken giving Ryu a noogie in Street Fighter, Mary flirting with Terry in KOF, or all of the character intros in recent Mortal Kombat games.

Some previous KOFs and SFs have had specific win quotes between characters, but mostly in text/win screens.

A couple KOF highlights (same video, different timestamps)

Shermie vs Brian - get slapped
https://youtu.be/YTZaDpfjgtc?t=367

Kensou vs Chin - eating too fast
https://youtu.be/YTZaDpfjgtc?t=185