Soul Calibur is a good example of how a publisher is intentionally starving a property to the benefit of another, complaining about its underperformance, and then using that underperformance to justify it receiving LESS support for the next iteration. Another thing is that the inclusion of guest characters in 2 did two hideous things: It fucking ruined Soul Calibur's chance at appealing to casuals without guest characters, and it created and raised expectations that there would be Link-level guests in every game going forward. The dropoff from 2 to 3 was absolutely caused by casuals having 0 attachment to Soul Calibur's cast. They were only there for Link. It's all casuals mention when they remember Soul Calibur. Lastly, the guys were absolutely right. The double whammy of SCIV being shitty and SCV ejecting beloved characters meant that it set up SCVI for failure. SCVI is beloved and respected, but good god. I can't blame casuals for not coming back after 4 and 5. I also can't fault them because Bandai Namco fucked over VI hard. The reason it looks like SCV, is because many of those models are near-straight rips from SCIV and V. Taki, for example, still has the clearly stumpy flat polygonal fingers from IV. If SCVI is the last Soul Calibur, I'm glad it went out with a great game. What sucks is that with DOA dead, the 3D fighting game genre is effectively just Tekken. It's not even a genre at this point.
You're so right it hurts. Bro, I was literally playing SCII at an anime convention with some guy, and after I picked Nightmare's 3rd costume (which is just Siegfried), he pointed at my character and said, "Oh cool, where's he from?" I was obviously confused and asked what he meant and he clarified, "What game is your character from?" I just stared at him and said, "...THIS GAME...He's a Soulcalibur character..."
For those wondering about why SC6 is named 6: Even though there is a new timeline, the old timeline still existed. Kinda like the Mortal Komabt games. In Cassandra's story, she fights a corrupted old timeline version of herself, so everything from up to 5 is still canon. Also Max seemed to misremember something about 5: There was NO DLC characters for 5 post launch. Dampierre as an early pre order bonus was the sole character DLC for the entire project.the game was infamously rushed to the point where most of the canon story was cut to save time, leaving about 80% of the planned plot to the art compendium of 5.
To answer your spawn question. It's because medieval spawn was tied up in a legal battle at the time. Neil Gaiman created him along with Anglea. The legal battle went on for years. Eventually Gaiman obtained the rights to Angela, then sold them to Marvel. This is why Tiffany was created as a replacement.
I am so happy you guys are finally doing SoulCalibur! I grew up during the so-called "dark age" of fighting games and Tekken, DOA and of course SoulCalibur were doing pretty well at the time and it's definitely thanks to games like Tekken 5, DOA2 and SoulCalibur III that I love fighting games so much to this day! Mitsurugi was banned in the Korean arcade version of SoulEdge and replaced by Hwang who then became a worldwide character in the PlayStation version. The European censorship Matt is thinking about was for Li Long's nunchaku being changed into a three-sectioned staff due to a British law banning nunchakus. Arthur replaced Mitsurugi in the Korean arcade version of SoulCalibur and Hwang was on Xianghua's slot instead of being a locked character. Arthur returned as a bonus character in SoulCalibur III. Soul Calibur, the sword, was owned by Xianghua's family after her father stole it from the monasteey where Kilik, her lost sister Xianglian and her parents trained at and gave it to her mother, but was in a concealed form named Krita Yuga. It revelaed its true form at the end of SoulCalibur when Xianghua defeated Siegfried / Nightmare. At some point, I keep forgetting how and why, it came into Siegfried's possession and he used it to pierce the eye of Soul Edge at the end of SoulCalibur II and he finally stopped transforming into Nightmare (Nightnare in SCI, II and VI is Siegfried possessed by Soul Edge, Nightmare in SCIII and SCIV is a manifestation of Soul Edge / Inferno and Nightmare in SCV is Raphael possesed by Soul Edge) It turned into it's crystalized, "final" form after Nightmare wounded Siegfried at the end of SoulCalibur III and created crystals around Siegfried's fatal wound to keep him alive long enough to destroy Soul Edge. SoulCalibur Legends is between SoulEdge and SoulCalibur but the playable characters use either their SoulCalibur II or SoulCalibur III costumes and it confuses people for that reason 😂 It's so bittersweet that SoulCalibur is in the state that it is but, honestly, the guests and the character creation are a big part of this. When a huge part of your promo for whenever a new SoulCalibur game comes out is split between 1. Look at this IP we borrowed and won't be around for the next game, cool right??? 2. You can make a horse with a huge penis in character creation and 3. Ivy has huge breasts and you make little to no effort to make your characters, who have lore on the same level as NRS, stand on their own and sell their own game on their own then it's bound to be in a state like this. SoulCalibur I had no guests and everybody loved it. Games like Tekken or DOA also had guests, and sure, they will be part of the promo, but it's not it's main appeal or only marketing tactic. I mean, even Matt said it himself that he was dissapointed when SCIII had no guests and I imagine many others felt this way and didn't end up buing the game or subsequent games if they didn't like the guests.
I find Tekken's comparative popularity bizarre. Outside of a few joke characters and wacky endings, I find the characters themselves have almost no appeal. SFxT gave them a huge injection of character that really made it clear to me how bland Tekken normally is. Distractions like guests and character creation should only be a bad thing if the main cast is unlikeable (like SCV I guess), but for the most part I feel SC always had fairly strong characters, certainly recognisable.
@@garjian0 neither SoulCalibur characters nor Tekken's are bland. They can, and should, very much hold their own, they're just rarely given the chance to shine properly. The way SoulCalibur V's and VI's story modes were presented didn't help much either, it's hard to convince people your characters are cool through still images. And I get It, you can't CGI the fuck out of everything (that money is for Tekken only, apparently) but I feel like better alternatives could have been chosen.
@@xxigeorge I consider these story modes to be telling-not-showing. SCIII's intro cutscene will always be miles better than two characters exchanging plot details in engine. Appeal comes from voice work, design, animation, and yeah, maybe the plot, but most of our beloved fighting game characters found their popularity long before these story modes. Ryu learning how to text is more endearing than anything he's done in years of him being the main character. You couldn't have one without the other but the point still stands; tiny, humanising detail over grand, sweeping plot.
@@garjian0 Soul Blade's story was amazing, the best I've experienced in any fighting game. Each character had 2 lengthy real time endings and they were really well done. Mitsurugi even had a mini game to decide which ending you'd get. The Edge Master mode went into each character's background. The story went downhill after that.
@@atuls55 Only one I've never played sadly. SCIII stories sometimes had lengthy branches too, and the endings had QTEs with a simple alternate scene for pass/fail. I don't claim its the same, but it's... effort? Still, SB must have had its weaknesses considering how many of its characters would eventually get dumped.
Soulcalibur is my favorite franchise ever, so I have a lot of comments to make: Arthur indeed came back. He was a bonus character in Soulcalibur III and an alternate costume for Mitsurugi in Soulcalibur VI. Soulcalibur went from a Chinese straightsword to a zweihander in Soulcalibur III, but it didn't get all icy and crystalline until Soulcalibur IV. Soulcalibur II was originally going to be much more "next generation." There were plans to replace Mitsurugi and Taki with younger characters named Setsu and Seidou. The anime girls from Soulcalibur IV were not guest characters; they were all OCs of guest artists. One of them went on to appear in a manga though. Algol wasn't just in Soulcalibur IV and Broken Destiny. He was in Soulcalibur V also. Soulcalibur Legends takes place between Souledge and Soulcalibur, but it was non-canon... kind of. Soulcalibur VI revealed that Legends was actually all in Siegfried's head. Soulcalibur V only had one DLC character: Dampierre. He was also a pre-order bonus.
So on the Soul Edge/Blade situation, there was a man in the VG industry (One Tim Langdell) who claimed the trademark for the word "edge" and was very litigious against any use of the word, leading Namco to rename Soul Edge to Soul Blade in the West, and with its follow-up Soulcalibur being a success, Namco decided to simply unify the series world wide as Soulcalibur and go from there. This video here goes a bit more in-depth on the "Edge" trademark situation, which is an interesting little rabbit hole. th-cam.com/video/lCMT8nif0oY/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=LarryBundyJr
Soul Calibur is the only 3D fighting series I've ever been able to get into gameplay-wise. A big reason being its buttons: you have dedicated buttons for horizontal and vertical attacks. Horizontal are for stopping sidesteps, vertical tend to be quick mids but can be sidestepped; there's exceptions of course, but it's easy to figure those out through experimentation. Instantly so much easier to wrap your head around than Tekken or VF. I wish it would come back. SC6 got screwed by netcode and coming out so close to Smash Ultimate, but it was fun for what little time I spent with it.
It's probably also because this series was developed with 3D sidesteps in mind from the start, unlike Tekken and Virtua Fighter which didn't have universal sidestepping until their 3rd iterations.
Same here, there was something about Soul Calibur's gameplay that just flowed really well to me that Tekken didn't really hit for me, even though I like playing Tekken too. Admittedly Smash Ultimate took most of my time and I honestly forgot I bought SC6 so i'm hoping they'll give it another shot at SC7.
Heh I gotta STRONGLY disagres with Max on the graphics of Soul Edge, at the time, the graphics were AMAZING. No other fighting game had detailed backgrounds that switched from night to day during the match, and Rocks stage with the moving blades of grass was DOPE. The thing is... it moved at 30 fps, because that was the sacrifice for having all of that detail. If you look at Tekken and VF 2 and even Doa at the time. Yeah they were smooth at 60FPS, but to do that... They basically had super flat backgrounds with 2D drawn texture and very little detail Also VF3 came out in 98, not 96
IIRC, the reason Soul Edge had its name changed to Soul Blade is because Tim Langdell owned a game company named Edge games and tried to sue anyone that used the word "edge" in the titles of their games. He tried that on EA over Mirror's Edge and EA counter sued him and the court ruled in favor of EA.
Soul Blade is the game that started my love for the franchise because of the content, story, and amazing music. It's unfortunate that the series hasn't been given the love that Tekken gets from Namco over the years, but I will continue playing regardless because there isn't another fighting game like it that's out there. Hopefully we'll see another game after Tekken 8 that's placed in a better position to succeed since SC6 was setup to fail from the start on top of needing to repair the damage from SCV where people assumed that the franchise was dead because of it.
Have a random topic idea for y’all! Newcomers: Best and Worst. Sometimes, they become staples of the franchise after one appearance, other times they’re condemned to the pits of “oh yeah, that one.” Also, how many newcomers are too many or too few? Maybe it’s part of a larger conversation on roster diversity in general, IDK.
To this day, even after professionally reviewing fighting games during what's looking like another golden age, my heart still belongs to Soul Calibur. SC1 and a Virtual On title were my go-tos in my childhood arcade, and the Nintendo Power feature narrating a staff SC2 tournament that I think ended with Link beating P2 Ivy lives in my head forever. I've even played SC2 since SC6 came out to confirm that 2 really did feel the loosest. And don't even get me started on Create-A-Soul in Soul Calibur 6. That was worth the price of admission for me. I have no idea if the franchise has a future within the boundaries of this console generation, or even at all, but I still love it to death.
SC is one of my favorite series, so happy you guys are talking about it! - The SC3 memory bug didn't just wipe your SC data, it wiped THE WHOLE CARD - I'll stand up for the SC5 cast, there was potential but they were done dirty by the budget cuts. The story in particular is the biggest victim, a lot of their plans ended up in interviews or as written tales on the website. If Maxi and the new kid's quest to find Kilik was in the game you could have given them a bit more personality. Seeing Setsuka train Petrokulus would do the same, Nightmare confirmed as Rapheal and tying that in with Viola. Expanding all this into the game would have helped for sure and made it all feel connected. Focusing everything on Sophitia's kids, the worst new characters, was a death blow.
Seriously, Bandai-Namco flat out said they were happy with Ace Combat 7 and Soul Calibur 6's sales. We know Ace Combat has a another game in the works, but SC has essentially been dead for 5 years.
At best, a remaster probably. If its SC2, then it has to be Switch exclusive because of Link, if they want him in the game that is. Another selling point is Heihachi is not in Tekken 8 but he can be in the remaster. Spawn is up to Todd.
How did I not know that this podcast existed?? I could listen to max talk about soulcalibur for hours lol! Love this, definitely gonna watch the whole thing!
Im probably one of the few that played soul calibur lost swords regularly until it fully died. Getting weapons, characters and outfits that werent on scv and sometimes even for free was a blast
SoulCalibur in my opinion is awesome yet underrated at the same time. The series lore was just as interesting and treated with just as much care as Tekken. Plus they were always feature rich. I believe it was 2 and maybe 3 but getting everyone's weapons was an awesome way to add replay value. Everything he had a wide range of cooler looking weapons a joke weapon and a souledge and soul Calibur version of there weapon. And the SoulCalibur version would heal you during battle while soul edge drained you. I really wish they would put them out again . I'd buy 1-4 again no question
What are we even talking about here? I'm only a few minutes in, but Soul Blade was AMAZING on the Playstation. I remember thinking it was BETTER than Tekken. And the music is astounding. It's so stirring. Presentation-wise, Soul Blade looked even better than Tekken! I'm so lost here. Am I living in an alternate reality with this episode???
You're not alone. I grew up with tekken 2-3, and only played Soul Blade 5 years ago, and the game still exuded so much charm. It's a huge leap from Tekken 2 and rivals T3. Its edge master mode is still better than most tekken's. Maybe I'm a sucker for low poly, but I think Soul Blade is one of the best visually looking PS1 games
Yeah idk if they are misremembering or if they just had a different experience, but Soul Blade released between Tekken 2 and 3, and definitely looked better than T2. It looked pretty great at the time. The cgi intro and the music were amazing too (I liked the remixes a lot).
Soul Calibur 1 is still my favorite from the series. Soul Blade definitely aged pretty bad but it still holds a special place in my heart and that intro is just pure greatness!
man, SC2 was one of my favorite fighting games back in the day. The amount of time I put into learning the movesets, going through figuring out Yoshimitsu's hidden moves, finally pulling off Ivy's crazy inputs for that special attack we see in the intro movie on a cpu lol. It was the first game I played that made me really think about quick-tapping vs pressing vs holding within the structure of a move to pull it off. Bunny hopping with Link. Freakin good times man. I miss that era.
As a SC lore enthusiast, I was actually pretty surprised that they reused concepts from the anime chicks from 4 into 6, like some of the create-a-character races. The automatons, hidden village, and whatnot. It's better than letting concepts go to waste, way I see it. The shittiest of those was always Angol Fear anyway which was literally just the Sgt. Frog artist making a deviantart OC of one of his existing characters. At least the others make an attempt (key word attempt) to fit into the world. Then again it is the same game with Yoda in it so I'm not sure if the pot can call the kettle anything in this case, anwyay. On that topic, I still wish dearly they had just catapulted off 4 to make a Star Wars fighting game with SC combat before Disney bought it.
I actually loved the music in Soul Blade. And especially the Khan Super Session soundtrack (have to select it in Options). I felt that Soul Blade wiped the floor with Tekken on console back in the day. Game also has the best intro/music ever to date, imo.
@@Kmatt_9262 Casuals just care about how much content a fighting game has even if the core game is competitively unviable and broken which Brawl and SC3 fit that so well my point still stans.
@@personaphantom5543 no it doesn't because brawl and Sc3 are nowhere near the fan favorites of there respective franchises, the honor for both goes to either the 2nd in both series or the latest (Smash Ultimate/Sc6) so no. You're wrong.
I really liked how in depth soul calibur 4-6s create a fighter was just which they kept the extra characters instead of just reskinning original characters
Always loved Soul Calibur series--starting with Soul Edge in the arcades. One of my most popular cosplays was Kilik from SC2. Wished that SNK and Namco would collaborate and make Samurai Shodown vs Soul Calibur. We got a taste of that in SC6 with Haohmaru being DLC. Now we need a full crossover!
I remember something about the name change being the usual trademark dispute over the name: In this case, "Edge". When I saw Soul Edge for the first time on the original PlayStation, I found it was one of the most beautiful games I'd ever seen. And the music? So many bangers: Epic Calling (character select), Recollect Continent (Rock), Future Dancing (Taki), The Wind and the Clouds (Mitsurugi), Dragon's Call (Li Long), Gears of Madness (Volvo), Heavenly Engage (Sophitia), Haunting Wind (Taki Khan Mix), Soul and Sword (Siegfried), Horangi Arirang (Hwang), Bravely Folk Song (Cervantes) Such a shame what happened to SoulCalibur VI, well, the franchise as a whole because that entry is actually my favorite.
Correct. A guy by the name of Tim Langdell owned a game company named Edge Games and decided to sue anyone that used the word "edge" in any game title.
Our college arcade had a Soul Calibur arcade machine with the secret characters not unlocked initially, and since the Internet was in its infancy, my friend and I would speculate who would appear next. Given Namco’s collab with Square on Ehrgeiz featuring a lot of the FF7 cast, I held out hope that Squall would be an unlockable character in Soul Calibur. Obviously it never happened, but man did my heart break learning years later that the breakdown between Squeenix & Namco meant we lost Cloud in Soul Calibur 2 on PS2 and had to settle for Heihachi (yes, I see it as settling). Hopefully Tifa will finall appear in Tekken 8…
Soul Calibur 2 and 3 specially 2 drove me crazy when i was a kid. It took the fighting game in another level compared to tekken for me. Sad it ended like that.
So. Matt. Lore time. It's been a long time so may get some details wrong. Soul Edge was originally 2 swords wielded by the dread pirate Cervantes, but during a battle with Sophitia and Taki (I think) one was shattered and Siegfried ended up picking up the remaining sword, becoming Nightmare. In a final battle with him, Xianghua's sword turns into Soul Calibur, and she defeats him, shattering this one as well, but the pieces end up dispersed and affecting multiple characters in multiple ways. As a result in SC2 you could unlock Soul Edge and Sould Calibur versions of your character's sword in Weapon Master mode
You were right that everyone in SC2 had grotesque Soul Edge versions of their weapons. But only 3 characters got to wield Soul Calibur as their ultimate weapons. Xianghua, aside from being one of the 3 also had an “Evil” version of Soul Calibur she can wield.
@@Wolfedge75 yup and I think there were game modes that specifically allowed you to use the extra weapons.. like a boat paddle... or a calligraphy brush...
@@neah2k11 There's basically an alt version of the stock game modes (Arcade, Team Battle, Time Attack, Survival & Practice) which had the extra weapons enabled, called "Extra [game mode]" which you can unlock by playing Weapon Master or Arcade/Team Battle for solo/team VS.
My played the first SC game SC6 in 2018, I love the game the moment I saw character creation. Aside from creating biggest muscle man, I love SC6 gameplay the most, with all those new soul mechanic, critical edge and sparkling effect, to me it's the best SC game. Then I tried SC4 and 5 too, which were pretty fun, I love character creation the most. Hope one day our soul will burn again with Soul Calibur 7
There were 3 goddamn Mokujin/Dural characters. Kilik = Male Character movesets, Elysium = Female Character Movesets, Edge Master = All Movesets. Absolutely bottom of the barrel dogshit.
Kilik was male characters only, shorter, and had some extra moves when he rolled Xiba. Not that that means he wasn't a waste of a slot. V was famously rushed.
Hmm... Since you guys are debating on Soul Calibur, I think it'd be cool if more fighting games series could get their own spotlights (episodes). Just a suggestion.
Soul Calibur II was my introduction to the series, playing it at my local Toys R Us' Gamecube Demo Kiosk during the store's Yu-Gi-Oh locals. It made me buy the Gamecube version to play through the whole game, Weapon Master Mode and all. If I didn't live in a rural area with limited internet access until a handful of years ago, I would have jumped on V and VI during their actual lifespans, but alas...
I’m really glad you guys did a ep on this. It was unfortunate because as fun as SCVI is, it lacked story/single player content. Namco really let this thing die. I’ll always appreciate what Soul Calibur did as a whole. Hopefully someday it’ll get a chance to do a proper reboot.
From my understanding gif the lore (which can easily be my head canon Mandela’d from what I thought I read), Soul Edge and Soul Calibur take on the form of the weapon the wielder prefers, not unlike the One Ring from Lord of the Rings always being the perfect fit for the one who wears it. Hence why every character had a “Soul Edge” & “Soul Calibur” version of their weapons.
Though it's not really dead. I don't know why people say this. Bandai Namco said that for Soul Calibur to continue after 6 it needs to sell 1 million units, and it sold over 2 million
@@DragonAge87 yea I heard that, but when the main person (Okubo) who fought to bring the franchise back leaves. That’s never a good sign. I’m sure it’s not dead dead…but I don’t think we’ll see it for many years…hope I’m wrong tho
@@AmotivatedIndividualJust wait, Namco is not gonna say anything about SoulCalibur when they are developing new Tekken, if they didn't say anything in 3-4 years after Tekken 8 is out then yeah I guess the SC series is dead.
It's been ages, but I'm pretty sure the armor break and the instant kills were separate mechanics that Max is just randomly linking in his brain for some reason. Armor break was not per body part, it was just head, body, legs, and it happened all the time. Instant kills were tied to a guard break mechanic, where if you blocked too much you would get guard broken, and if your opponent was ready and mashed every button when it happened, you would go into a crazy super move animation and instantly die. I specifically set up a Yun Seong gear set using the corn cob sword designed to guard break enemies so I could see his absurd Segata Sanshiro style "toss you so high into the air that you explode when you hit the ground" super over and over, and I was able to do it basically every round with his heavily advantaged on block attacks.
Instant kills are a SCIV system, and in that game, there was only a singular tier of armour/guard burst. During the stun, if you pressed A+B+K, you would trigger a cutscene and win the round. In the PSP version, every character was given a universal B+K guard break, and if that caused a guard burst, the instant kill would be automatic. The previous system was still in place though. That system was removed in V and replaced by the 3 tiers of armour break, a much less punishing guard burst system, and supers tied to meter for your cool animations.
I had that memory loss glitch on Soul Calibur 3 happen to me twice I lost all the parts all the creative characters all the weapons damn shame too cuz I actually really enjoyed this game
Great episode! It really saddens me to hear that SC6 might be the last game in the franchise, at least for a very long time... Also, I didn't know Lloyd was in Legends, that's rad!
@Beforezzz The main guy championing the game is gone from Bamco. Harada can get a lot of pressure but they have to find someone willing to do SC again.
thats what we needed for the Soul Calibur series, an utterly confusing title like the fast and furious series, 2 Fast 2 Furious -> Fast Five -> Furious Seven
1:21:10 I don't actually think Bandai Namco owns Dark Souls. In Japan all of From Softwares games (except Demon's Souls and Bloodborne) are published by FromSoft themselves so I think Bandai Namco is only a licensee to publish the games in the west.
Medieval Spawn likely wasn't in SC2 because the rights to the character were actually being fought over in court between MacFarlane and Neil Gaiman. That's because Image, in the early days, allowed writers and artists to own what they created for the company. Since Gaiman introduced both Medieval Spawn and Angela in issue 9, he argued (successfully, might I add) that he had the rights to said characters. This is why Medieval Spawn is MIA as well as why Angela was killed off in Spawn only to reappear in Marvel Comics in the early 2010s.
The coolest option I can think of is SoulCalibur merging with Tales. I love SC6, but I think there’s hope if the brand can get a new life with some changes. I think Tales’ aesthetic would make SC look like its art for once. They could have a solid single player RPG adventure. They could work back in Multiplayer, and do a big guest character thing with all the SC and Tales characters, like how Square did for FF with Dissidia (but not gameplay wise).
"Soul Blade's music isn't that good." Laughs in Bravely Folk Song, Future Dancin, Another Fanatic, Wind and Clouds (the leitmotif is in every one of Mitsurugi's themes going forward).
No, Namco came up with Necrid’s traits, his role, and his physical build, and then had McFarlane complete the design “they gave us some descriptions of some of the things they'd like this character to do in terms of what his role was and whether he'd be a good or bad guy and how he'd interact with everyone. They draft up these bibles, if you will, on the characters in the game as they're putting it together. So they came to us with like a paragraph or so--I don't think he had a name at that point--and we said, "OK, let's take a whack at it and see what we come up with."” which is why Necrid can be mentioned by name in the timeline of SCV’s New Legends of Project Soul artbook without mentioning McFarlane unlike in SCII. 58:30 “It feels bad to play” No it doesn’t, I’ve played it more than you have and it feels better than SCIII. Tekken 7 had/has trash netcode but people play it while citing 'bad netcode' as the reason they won't touch SC. It’s a really weird, blatant, double-standard against Soulcalibur. Namco made educational VHS tapes to advertise Tekken 1, 2, and 3 by teaching people how to play. There was an animated move, a CGI movie, a live action movie, a Netflix anime. SC? Nothing. Meanwhile, Namco executives literally ask if SC needs a character creator and single player content at all while STILL giving it shit netcode. Other comments have pointed out that the Guest Characters have harmed the series more than they helped (and this is from me, a guy who had all 3 versions of SCII). I also gotta point out that while SCII may be a favorite that's fun to play, they won't stop to realize the inherent problems with it (and how to retain fun while avoiding the design problems in SCII). 8wayrun.com/threads/hate-speech-a-seasonal-feast.9103/page-2 1:32:53 …Max… Soulcalibur on DC had 19 characters... Soulcalibur VI launched with 20 characters, plus Inferno, plus Tira who was basically done. So NO, Soulcalibur VI did not launch with less characters than Soulcalibur 1.
We never had a weapons game crossover, Bamco vs Koei Tecmo would be insane, basically SC/popular souls characters vs DW/DOA, three team tag mode, CaC, with constant guest characters…..a man can only dream 😢
heihachi was the coolest character in Soul Caliber to me. I wasn't aware of Link in the GameCube version of Soul Caliber 2. Funnily enough, this game taught me how to do the wave dash motion and I learned Heihachi's 10 hit combo from this.
For me, the reason why soul caliber 4 was the highlight of the series for me was that everyone I knew could play and enjoy the game, from people with fighting game backgrounds to none at all. Once they started to add meter and supers and all that, I remember my buddies girlfriend just being lost in all that vs us having no issues, it felt like it kind of shit the door on the casuals and beginners. Was it balanced? No, but that’s what made it fun and exciting for everyone that was playing at the party
I think one of the best things about SoulBlade that you don't mention is that each character can unlock an armory of different weapons each with their own buffs. It makes the game super broken and unbalanced but it's a load of fun to muck around with the different weapons and see what they all offer. It's one of the things that always disappointed me about the SoulCalibur because they basically remove that for obvious balance reasons.
Soul Calibur is one of my fav fg series. I played it from Soul Edge on PS1/Arcade, skipped SC 1 because i don't have Dreamcast back then, and played all 2-6. It's really sad that Bamco pretty much buried the series just because it doesn't sold as much as Tekken.
I was lucky enough to have been able to play Soul Caliber on Dreamcast back in the day. Me and a friend of mine enjoyed playing so much when 2 came out we both got our own copy. I got the PS2 version and he got the Gamecube version. And we would play whoever's depending on who's house we were at. Link was def OP and my friend def preferred playing on his Gamecube so he could cheese like crazy. When 3 came out, again we both got our own copy. I remember we had a really good time with it, though we were not aware of the glitch that is being talked about. However, that is the last we played like that because rl stuff started happening ya know. But we both recently got SC6 on steam, and I mean like last month, and we been jamming that on weekends together having a pretty good time.
SC2 Conquest was the one reason why i got into SC competitively. I went outta my way to make sure my Yun-Seong & Maxi were parry gods when i wasnt there lol.
i had a soft spot for encrit but with his alt orange skin with the iron mask. as you guys said that green dude main costume was trully a momnet of "this was made by the guy who made spawn???"
Soul Calibur is my favorite fighting game serious and I thank you guys for taking the time out and given them their flowers. 5 was a total dumpster fire, and I agree that is what drove a lot of fans away. I pray that we can get another Soul Calibur game soon because it really is an amazing franchise. Thank you guys again oh and the sv3 glitch where it deleted everything was so fucking annoying I remember them days smh
It breaks my heart that this series is so snake bitten and as a result Bamco essentially refuses to support it. So many mechanics and gameplay that I feel they do way better than Tekken but it just never gets the budget/support. Despite that I have to believe a new entry will come one day, hell maybe Bamco just sells the IP since they don't care enough...
Soul Calibur is a good example of how a publisher is intentionally starving a property to the benefit of another, complaining about its underperformance, and then using that underperformance to justify it receiving LESS support for the next iteration.
Another thing is that the inclusion of guest characters in 2 did two hideous things: It fucking ruined Soul Calibur's chance at appealing to casuals without guest characters, and it created and raised expectations that there would be Link-level guests in every game going forward. The dropoff from 2 to 3 was absolutely caused by casuals having 0 attachment to Soul Calibur's cast. They were only there for Link. It's all casuals mention when they remember Soul Calibur.
Lastly, the guys were absolutely right. The double whammy of SCIV being shitty and SCV ejecting beloved characters meant that it set up SCVI for failure. SCVI is beloved and respected, but good god. I can't blame casuals for not coming back after 4 and 5. I also can't fault them because Bandai Namco fucked over VI hard. The reason it looks like SCV, is because many of those models are near-straight rips from SCIV and V. Taki, for example, still has the clearly stumpy flat polygonal fingers from IV.
If SCVI is the last Soul Calibur, I'm glad it went out with a great game. What sucks is that with DOA dead, the 3D fighting game genre is effectively just Tekken. It's not even a genre at this point.
You're so right it hurts.
Bro, I was literally playing SCII at an anime convention with some guy, and after I picked Nightmare's 3rd costume (which is just Siegfried), he pointed at my character and said, "Oh cool, where's he from?" I was obviously confused and asked what he meant and he clarified, "What game is your character from?" I just stared at him and said, "...THIS GAME...He's a Soulcalibur character..."
@@spiffythealien That is absolutely painful. Oh God.
Yeah, if SCVI is the last SC, I'm kind of glad the series ends with SCVI roster.
Virtua Fighter is the other big 3d fighter that may yet come back.
great points!
“We could have had Soul Edge, then Soul Calibur, then Soul Edge 2. Then go back to Soul Calibur.” Somewhere, the Legacy of Kain series stirs…
The soul still stirs
For those wondering about why SC6 is named 6: Even though there is a new timeline, the old timeline still existed. Kinda like the Mortal Komabt games. In Cassandra's story, she fights a corrupted old timeline version of herself, so everything from up to 5 is still canon.
Also Max seemed to misremember something about 5: There was NO DLC characters for 5 post launch. Dampierre as an early pre order bonus was the sole character DLC for the entire project.the game was infamously rushed to the point where most of the canon story was cut to save time, leaving about 80% of the planned plot to the art compendium of 5.
When Matt said "I was a Gamecube ONLY warrior." That hit too close to home 😂😂😂
To answer your spawn question. It's because medieval spawn was tied up in a legal battle at the time. Neil Gaiman created him along with Anglea. The legal battle went on for years. Eventually Gaiman obtained the rights to Angela, then sold them to Marvel. This is why Tiffany was created as a replacement.
the SoulBlade intro theme is incredible!
Best fighting game into ever created
TO SHINE!!
"He looks like Shrek"
"Shrek? Like Pixar Shrek?"
Justin that's. . .that's not. . .
I had the same reaction.
I am so happy you guys are finally doing SoulCalibur!
I grew up during the so-called "dark age" of fighting games and Tekken, DOA and of course SoulCalibur were doing pretty well at the time and it's definitely thanks to games like Tekken 5, DOA2 and SoulCalibur III that I love fighting games so much to this day!
Mitsurugi was banned in the Korean arcade version of SoulEdge and replaced by Hwang who then became a worldwide character in the PlayStation version.
The European censorship Matt is thinking about was for Li Long's nunchaku being changed into a three-sectioned staff due to a British law banning nunchakus.
Arthur replaced Mitsurugi in the Korean arcade version of SoulCalibur and Hwang was on Xianghua's slot instead of being a locked character. Arthur returned as a bonus character in SoulCalibur III.
Soul Calibur, the sword, was owned by Xianghua's family after her father stole it from the monasteey where Kilik, her lost sister Xianglian and her parents trained at and gave it to her mother, but was in a concealed form named Krita Yuga. It revelaed its true form at the end of SoulCalibur when Xianghua defeated Siegfried / Nightmare. At some point, I keep forgetting how and why, it came into Siegfried's possession and he used it to pierce the eye of Soul Edge at the end of SoulCalibur II and he finally stopped transforming into Nightmare (Nightnare in SCI, II and VI is Siegfried possessed by Soul Edge, Nightmare in SCIII and SCIV is a manifestation of Soul Edge / Inferno and Nightmare in SCV is Raphael possesed by Soul Edge) It turned into it's crystalized, "final" form after Nightmare wounded Siegfried at the end of SoulCalibur III and created crystals around Siegfried's fatal wound to keep him alive long enough to destroy Soul Edge.
SoulCalibur Legends is between SoulEdge and SoulCalibur but the playable characters use either their SoulCalibur II or SoulCalibur III costumes and it confuses people for that reason 😂
It's so bittersweet that SoulCalibur is in the state that it is but, honestly, the guests and the character creation are a big part of this. When a huge part of your promo for whenever a new SoulCalibur game comes out is split between 1. Look at this IP we borrowed and won't be around for the next game, cool right??? 2. You can make a horse with a huge penis in character creation and 3. Ivy has huge breasts and you make little to no effort to make your characters, who have lore on the same level as NRS, stand on their own and sell their own game on their own then it's bound to be in a state like this. SoulCalibur I had no guests and everybody loved it. Games like Tekken or DOA also had guests, and sure, they will be part of the promo, but it's not it's main appeal or only marketing tactic. I mean, even Matt said it himself that he was dissapointed when SCIII had no guests and I imagine many others felt this way and didn't end up buing the game or subsequent games if they didn't like the guests.
I find Tekken's comparative popularity bizarre. Outside of a few joke characters and wacky endings, I find the characters themselves have almost no appeal. SFxT gave them a huge injection of character that really made it clear to me how bland Tekken normally is.
Distractions like guests and character creation should only be a bad thing if the main cast is unlikeable (like SCV I guess), but for the most part I feel SC always had fairly strong characters, certainly recognisable.
@@garjian0 neither SoulCalibur characters nor Tekken's are bland. They can, and should, very much hold their own, they're just rarely given the chance to shine properly. The way SoulCalibur V's and VI's story modes were presented didn't help much either, it's hard to convince people your characters are cool through still images. And I get It, you can't CGI the fuck out of everything (that money is for Tekken only, apparently) but I feel like better alternatives could have been chosen.
@@xxigeorge I consider these story modes to be telling-not-showing. SCIII's intro cutscene will always be miles better than two characters exchanging plot details in engine.
Appeal comes from voice work, design, animation, and yeah, maybe the plot, but most of our beloved fighting game characters found their popularity long before these story modes.
Ryu learning how to text is more endearing than anything he's done in years of him being the main character. You couldn't have one without the other but the point still stands; tiny, humanising detail over grand, sweeping plot.
@@garjian0 Soul Blade's story was amazing, the best I've experienced in any fighting game. Each character had 2 lengthy real time endings and they were really well done. Mitsurugi even had a mini game to decide which ending you'd get. The Edge Master mode went into each character's background. The story went downhill after that.
@@atuls55 Only one I've never played sadly. SCIII stories sometimes had lengthy branches too, and the endings had QTEs with a simple alternate scene for pass/fail. I don't claim its the same, but it's... effort?
Still, SB must have had its weaknesses considering how many of its characters would eventually get dumped.
Soulcalibur is my favorite franchise ever, so I have a lot of comments to make:
Arthur indeed came back. He was a bonus character in Soulcalibur III and an alternate costume for Mitsurugi in Soulcalibur VI.
Soulcalibur went from a Chinese straightsword to a zweihander in Soulcalibur III, but it didn't get all icy and crystalline until Soulcalibur IV.
Soulcalibur II was originally going to be much more "next generation." There were plans to replace Mitsurugi and Taki with younger characters named Setsu and Seidou.
The anime girls from Soulcalibur IV were not guest characters; they were all OCs of guest artists. One of them went on to appear in a manga though.
Algol wasn't just in Soulcalibur IV and Broken Destiny. He was in Soulcalibur V also.
Soulcalibur Legends takes place between Souledge and Soulcalibur, but it was non-canon... kind of. Soulcalibur VI revealed that Legends was actually all in Siegfried's head.
Soulcalibur V only had one DLC character: Dampierre. He was also a pre-order bonus.
Yeah, Kilik was also in V if I remember right, as the Swordmaster character. Had a big eagle helmet I think lol.
Arthur was also in the single player mode for spul calibur 6 as well! You can fight him in a duel and even has a minor backstory!
seriosuly, you and Mark yoon aka REAL Soul Calibur fans should do a podcast regarding this franchise, not these three
@@luisestrada4443they should just all do podcasts so the series gets more attention overall
So on the Soul Edge/Blade situation, there was a man in the VG industry (One Tim Langdell) who claimed the trademark for the word "edge" and was very litigious against any use of the word, leading Namco to rename Soul Edge to Soul Blade in the West, and with its follow-up Soulcalibur being a success, Namco decided to simply unify the series world wide as Soulcalibur and go from there.
This video here goes a bit more in-depth on the "Edge" trademark situation, which is an interesting little rabbit hole.
th-cam.com/video/lCMT8nif0oY/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=LarryBundyJr
EA took his trademark away
@@RusticRonnie yeah, years and years later. When it was too late to matter for this series
Soul Calibur is the only 3D fighting series I've ever been able to get into gameplay-wise. A big reason being its buttons: you have dedicated buttons for horizontal and vertical attacks. Horizontal are for stopping sidesteps, vertical tend to be quick mids but can be sidestepped; there's exceptions of course, but it's easy to figure those out through experimentation. Instantly so much easier to wrap your head around than Tekken or VF.
I wish it would come back. SC6 got screwed by netcode and coming out so close to Smash Ultimate, but it was fun for what little time I spent with it.
It's probably also because this series was developed with 3D sidesteps in mind from the start, unlike Tekken and Virtua Fighter which didn't have universal sidestepping until their 3rd iterations.
Same here, there was something about Soul Calibur's gameplay that just flowed really well to me that Tekken didn't really hit for me, even though I like playing Tekken too. Admittedly Smash Ultimate took most of my time and I honestly forgot I bought SC6 so i'm hoping they'll give it another shot at SC7.
Okubo was a gem. Freaking awesome dude, always showed support for the community. He even still tweets things out every once in a while for the game.
His focus should've been an improvement in lacking parts of the game. Did a good job, but dropped the ball on several things.
@@darksiders2002the game had a terrible budget. He did what he could.
And also the dude bounced back real well as he is now the CEO of Cygames America.
Heh I gotta STRONGLY disagres with Max on the graphics of Soul Edge, at the time, the graphics were AMAZING. No other fighting game had detailed backgrounds that switched from night to day during the match, and Rocks stage with the moving blades of grass was DOPE. The thing is... it moved at 30 fps, because that was the sacrifice for having all of that detail. If you look at Tekken and VF 2 and even Doa at the time. Yeah they were smooth at 60FPS, but to do that... They basically had super flat backgrounds with 2D drawn texture and very little detail
Also VF3 came out in 98, not 96
VF 3 was 96 in arcades. It was 98 for the Dreamcast version.
IIRC, the reason Soul Edge had its name changed to Soul Blade is because Tim Langdell owned a game company named Edge games and tried to sue anyone that used the word "edge" in the titles of their games.
He tried that on EA over Mirror's Edge and EA counter sued him and the court ruled in favor of EA.
Soul Blade is the game that started my love for the franchise because of the content, story, and amazing music. It's unfortunate that the series hasn't been given the love that Tekken gets from Namco over the years, but I will continue playing regardless because there isn't another fighting game like it that's out there.
Hopefully we'll see another game after Tekken 8 that's placed in a better position to succeed since SC6 was setup to fail from the start on top of needing to repair the damage from SCV where people assumed that the franchise was dead because of it.
Have a random topic idea for y’all! Newcomers: Best and Worst. Sometimes, they become staples of the franchise after one appearance, other times they’re condemned to the pits of “oh yeah, that one.” Also, how many newcomers are too many or too few? Maybe it’s part of a larger conversation on roster diversity in general, IDK.
To this day, even after professionally reviewing fighting games during what's looking like another golden age, my heart still belongs to Soul Calibur.
SC1 and a Virtual On title were my go-tos in my childhood arcade, and the Nintendo Power feature narrating a staff SC2 tournament that I think ended with Link beating P2 Ivy lives in my head forever. I've even played SC2 since SC6 came out to confirm that 2 really did feel the loosest.
And don't even get me started on Create-A-Soul in Soul Calibur 6. That was worth the price of admission for me. I have no idea if the franchise has a future within the boundaries of this console generation, or even at all, but I still love it to death.
SC is one of my favorite series, so happy you guys are talking about it!
- The SC3 memory bug didn't just wipe your SC data, it wiped THE WHOLE CARD
- I'll stand up for the SC5 cast, there was potential but they were done dirty by the budget cuts. The story in particular is the biggest victim, a lot of their plans ended up in interviews or as written tales on the website. If Maxi and the new kid's quest to find Kilik was in the game you could have given them a bit more personality. Seeing Setsuka train Petrokulus would do the same, Nightmare confirmed as Rapheal and tying that in with Viola. Expanding all this into the game would have helped for sure and made it all feel connected. Focusing everything on Sophitia's kids, the worst new characters, was a death blow.
The Viola/Amy, Raphael/Nightmare, Zwei story had way more potential than the Patroklos and Pyrrha story.
This series turns 30 next December. Fingers crossed for the future of my favourite series
Seriously, Bandai-Namco flat out said they were happy with Ace Combat 7 and Soul Calibur 6's sales. We know Ace Combat has a another game in the works, but SC has essentially been dead for 5 years.
SC will return, probably in 2026
If they announced Soul Blade 2. People would lose their minds!
@@IronBrotherhood4 Depends, Max basically said SC is dead but I hope Okubo is interested in being a Co-director if the opportunity comes
At best, a remaster probably. If its SC2, then it has to be Switch exclusive because of Link, if they want him in the game that is. Another selling point is Heihachi is not in Tekken 8 but he can be in the remaster. Spawn is up to Todd.
How did I not know that this podcast existed?? I could listen to max talk about soulcalibur for hours lol! Love this, definitely gonna watch the whole thing!
Im probably one of the few that played soul calibur lost swords regularly until it fully died. Getting weapons, characters and outfits that werent on scv and sometimes even for free was a blast
Thanks!
1:05:05 JWong creating a custom Daigo character is like the Marvel vs Capcom 1 Ryu: "Oh let me copy my rival Ken's movelist and play as him..."
SoulCalibur in my opinion is awesome yet underrated at the same time. The series lore was just as interesting and treated with just as much care as Tekken. Plus they were always feature rich. I believe it was 2 and maybe 3 but getting everyone's weapons was an awesome way to add replay value. Everything he had a wide range of cooler looking weapons a joke weapon and a souledge and soul Calibur version of there weapon. And the SoulCalibur version would heal you during battle while soul edge drained you. I really wish they would put them out again . I'd buy 1-4 again no question
What are we even talking about here? I'm only a few minutes in, but Soul Blade was AMAZING on the Playstation. I remember thinking it was BETTER than Tekken. And the music is astounding. It's so stirring. Presentation-wise, Soul Blade looked even better than Tekken! I'm so lost here. Am I living in an alternate reality with this episode???
Definitely must be peering into a different universe because Soul Blade was lit af back then too.
You're not alone. I grew up with tekken 2-3, and only played Soul Blade 5 years ago, and the game still exuded so much charm. It's a huge leap from Tekken 2 and rivals T3. Its edge master mode is still better than most tekken's. Maybe I'm a sucker for low poly, but I think Soul Blade is one of the best visually looking PS1 games
Yep, for my money it was far superior to Tekken 2. Not Tekken 3, certainly, but Blade had so much more to it than Tekkens 1 and 2.
Yeah idk if they are misremembering or if they just had a different experience, but Soul Blade released between Tekken 2 and 3, and definitely looked better than T2. It looked pretty great at the time. The cgi intro and the music were amazing too (I liked the remixes a lot).
Soul Calibur 1 is still my favorite from the series. Soul Blade definitely aged pretty bad but it still holds a special place in my heart and that intro is just pure greatness!
Soul Calibur is my all time favorite fighting game series.
I would love to see a comeback for Soul Calibur.
man, SC2 was one of my favorite fighting games back in the day. The amount of time I put into learning the movesets, going through figuring out Yoshimitsu's hidden moves, finally pulling off Ivy's crazy inputs for that special attack we see in the intro movie on a cpu lol. It was the first game I played that made me really think about quick-tapping vs pressing vs holding within the structure of a move to pull it off. Bunny hopping with Link.
Freakin good times man. I miss that era.
They renamed Edge to Blade because of trademark troll Tim Langdell, who would threaten to sue anyone using the word "edge".
THANK YOU!!! They could have done that small bit of research.
@@brianpbillingsley3687Any, really.
I was going to comment saying I wonder if that was why it was changed to Blade
god damn drove me NUTS listening to that intro lmao
As a SC lore enthusiast, I was actually pretty surprised that they reused concepts from the anime chicks from 4 into 6, like some of the create-a-character races. The automatons, hidden village, and whatnot. It's better than letting concepts go to waste, way I see it.
The shittiest of those was always Angol Fear anyway which was literally just the Sgt. Frog artist making a deviantart OC of one of his existing characters. At least the others make an attempt (key word attempt) to fit into the world. Then again it is the same game with Yoda in it so I'm not sure if the pot can call the kettle anything in this case, anwyay.
On that topic, I still wish dearly they had just catapulted off 4 to make a Star Wars fighting game with SC combat before Disney bought it.
1:15:00 Namco knew the coomers would have been like "No Ivy, no Money".
I actually loved the music in Soul Blade. And especially the Khan Super Session soundtrack (have to select it in Options). I felt that Soul Blade wiped the floor with Tekken on console back in the day. Game also has the best intro/music ever to date, imo.
And Cervantes had a fantastic stage theme.
Soul Calibur II is the Smash Melee of soul calibur
And Soulcalibur 3 is Smash Brawl the casuals favorite.
@personaphantom5543 soul calibur 3 is not a casuals favorite. 2 is. You're analogy did not land
@@Kmatt_9262 Casuals just care about how much content a fighting game has even if the core game is competitively unviable and broken which Brawl and SC3 fit that so well my point still stans.
And yeah sure casuals love Soulcalibur 2 but so do competitive players.
@@personaphantom5543 no it doesn't because brawl and Sc3 are nowhere near the fan favorites of there respective franchises, the honor for both goes to either the 2nd in both series or the latest (Smash Ultimate/Sc6) so no. You're wrong.
I really liked how in depth soul calibur 4-6s create a fighter was just which they kept the extra characters instead of just reskinning original characters
Now we need the DOA episode.
“Edgy” was totally a thing in the 90s. Although you were more likely to hear things being described as “on the edge” and “edgy” evolved from that
Loved Soul Blade. Everyone played that and MVC1 at our local Godfather's Pizza. That was when i first fell in love with the Soul series.
Always loved Soul Calibur series--starting with Soul Edge in the arcades. One of my most popular cosplays was Kilik from SC2.
Wished that SNK and Namco would collaborate and make Samurai Shodown vs Soul Calibur. We got a taste of that in SC6 with Haohmaru being DLC. Now we need a full crossover!
So glad this is getting some time to shine. SC2 is on my list of personal favorites.
I absolutely loved SC back in the day. Probably my favorite fighting game series. Thanks for this!
I remember something about the name change being the usual trademark dispute over the name: In this case, "Edge". When I saw Soul Edge for the first time on the original PlayStation, I found it was one of the most beautiful games I'd ever seen. And the music? So many bangers:
Epic Calling (character select), Recollect Continent (Rock), Future Dancing (Taki), The Wind and the Clouds (Mitsurugi), Dragon's Call (Li Long), Gears of Madness (Volvo), Heavenly Engage (Sophitia), Haunting Wind (Taki Khan Mix), Soul and Sword (Siegfried), Horangi Arirang (Hwang), Bravely Folk Song (Cervantes)
Such a shame what happened to SoulCalibur VI, well, the franchise as a whole because that entry is actually my favorite.
Correct. A guy by the name of Tim Langdell owned a game company named Edge Games and decided to sue anyone that used the word "edge" in any game title.
Our college arcade had a Soul Calibur arcade machine with the secret characters not unlocked initially, and since the Internet was in its infancy, my friend and I would speculate who would appear next. Given Namco’s collab with Square on Ehrgeiz featuring a lot of the FF7 cast, I held out hope that Squall would be an unlockable character in Soul Calibur. Obviously it never happened, but man did my heart break learning years later that the breakdown between Squeenix & Namco meant we lost Cloud in Soul Calibur 2 on PS2 and had to settle for Heihachi (yes, I see it as settling). Hopefully Tifa will finall appear in Tekken 8…
Soul Calibur 2 and 3 specially 2 drove me crazy when i was a kid. It took the fighting game in another level compared to tekken for me. Sad it ended like that.
Arthur was for Korea. They didn't allow depictions of samurai due to historical concerns
I thought he’s European?
Perfect choice to put Taki and Ivy on the thumbnail.
So. Matt. Lore time.
It's been a long time so may get some details wrong.
Soul Edge was originally 2 swords wielded by the dread pirate Cervantes, but during a battle with Sophitia and Taki (I think) one was shattered and Siegfried ended up picking up the remaining sword, becoming Nightmare. In a final battle with him, Xianghua's sword turns into Soul Calibur, and she defeats him, shattering this one as well, but the pieces end up dispersed and affecting multiple characters in multiple ways. As a result in SC2 you could unlock Soul Edge and Sould Calibur versions of your character's sword in Weapon Master mode
You were right that everyone in SC2 had grotesque Soul Edge versions of their weapons.
But only 3 characters got to wield Soul Calibur as their ultimate weapons.
Xianghua, aside from being one of the 3 also had an “Evil” version of Soul Calibur she can wield.
@@Wolfedge75 yup and I think there were game modes that specifically allowed you to use the extra weapons.. like a boat paddle... or a calligraphy brush...
@@neah2k11 There's basically an alt version of the stock game modes (Arcade, Team Battle, Time Attack, Survival & Practice) which had the extra weapons enabled, called "Extra [game mode]" which you can unlock by playing Weapon Master or Arcade/Team Battle for solo/team VS.
My played the first SC game SC6 in 2018, I love the game the moment I saw character creation. Aside from creating biggest muscle man, I love SC6 gameplay the most, with all those new soul mechanic, critical edge and sparkling effect, to me it's the best SC game. Then I tried SC4 and 5 too, which were pretty fun, I love character creation the most. Hope one day our soul will burn again with Soul Calibur 7
Soul cailbur 3 was pretty peak
Some of the best single player content in fighting games, even to this day
One of my favorite games overall even today.
Kilik was in SC5, they made him just edge master which is a complete waste cause edge master is here too.
There were 3 goddamn Mokujin/Dural characters. Kilik = Male Character movesets, Elysium = Female Character Movesets, Edge Master = All Movesets. Absolutely bottom of the barrel dogshit.
Not to mention redundant, too.
Personally Kilik should’ve just replaced Edge Master entirely to go along the whole “New Generation” aesthetic.
Kilik was male characters only, shorter, and had some extra moves when he rolled Xiba.
Not that that means he wasn't a waste of a slot. V was famously rushed.
Soul Edge did have a story mode like what soul Calibur 2 has kind of which I remember really enjoying when I played that game before
Hmm... Since you guys are debating on Soul Calibur, I think it'd be cool if more fighting games series could get their own spotlights (episodes). Just a suggestion.
Totally agree, could lead to some fun discussions
Well, multiple games have already been covered thia way.
@@triplek.o.2192 Like I said, just a suggestion. Other than that, keep up the good work :)
@@triplek.o.2192 wait... So we won't be getting a breakdown of BlazBlue lore? 💀
@@MrGonz801 Thorgi did that last week. 😂
I actually liked Algol because he was from a truly forgotten civilization.
Soul Calibur II was my introduction to the series, playing it at my local Toys R Us' Gamecube Demo Kiosk during the store's Yu-Gi-Oh locals. It made me buy the Gamecube version to play through the whole game, Weapon Master Mode and all. If I didn't live in a rural area with limited internet access until a handful of years ago, I would have jumped on V and VI during their actual lifespans, but alas...
also i've said this before but SCIII sold well enough to become a Greatest Hits title.
And it was on only one platform, while SC2 was multiplatform (and most of its sales come from the GameCube version, for obvious reasons).
I’m really glad you guys did a ep on this. It was unfortunate because as fun as SCVI is, it lacked story/single player content. Namco really let this thing die. I’ll always appreciate what Soul Calibur did as a whole. Hopefully someday it’ll get a chance to do a proper reboot.
From my understanding gif the lore (which can easily be my head canon Mandela’d from what I thought I read), Soul Edge and Soul Calibur take on the form of the weapon the wielder prefers, not unlike the One Ring from Lord of the Rings always being the perfect fit for the one who wears it. Hence why every character had a “Soul Edge” & “Soul Calibur” version of their weapons.
Sad to hear it’s really dead…SC 6 was so fun. Love the characters, love the music, love the franchise…
Though it's not really dead. I don't know why people say this. Bandai Namco said that for Soul Calibur to continue after 6 it needs to sell 1 million units, and it sold over 2 million
@@DragonAge87 yea I heard that, but when the main person (Okubo) who fought to bring the franchise back leaves. That’s never a good sign. I’m sure it’s not dead dead…but I don’t think we’ll see it for many years…hope I’m wrong tho
@@Slim.31 Ive been hearing people say that it isn’t dead but I have seen people say it is dead
@@AmotivatedIndividual right same lol. I just know Tekken 8 is upon us, so if it’s truly not dead I still don’t plan on seeing it any time soon
@@AmotivatedIndividualJust wait, Namco is not gonna say anything about SoulCalibur when they are developing new Tekken, if they didn't say anything in 3-4 years after Tekken 8 is out then yeah I guess the SC series is dead.
It's been ages, but I'm pretty sure the armor break and the instant kills were separate mechanics that Max is just randomly linking in his brain for some reason.
Armor break was not per body part, it was just head, body, legs, and it happened all the time.
Instant kills were tied to a guard break mechanic, where if you blocked too much you would get guard broken, and if your opponent was ready and mashed every button when it happened, you would go into a crazy super move animation and instantly die. I specifically set up a Yun Seong gear set using the corn cob sword designed to guard break enemies so I could see his absurd Segata Sanshiro style "toss you so high into the air that you explode when you hit the ground" super over and over, and I was able to do it basically every round with his heavily advantaged on block attacks.
Instant kills are a SCIV system, and in that game, there was only a singular tier of armour/guard burst. During the stun, if you pressed A+B+K, you would trigger a cutscene and win the round.
In the PSP version, every character was given a universal B+K guard break, and if that caused a guard burst, the instant kill would be automatic. The previous system was still in place though.
That system was removed in V and replaced by the 3 tiers of armour break, a much less punishing guard burst system, and supers tied to meter for your cool animations.
I really hope the next installment is called Soul Edge.
I had that memory loss glitch on Soul Calibur 3 happen to me twice I lost all the parts all the creative characters all the weapons damn shame too cuz I actually really enjoyed this game
I like the SC5 characters, if they came back without being replacements that would be dope
I'm surprised Max didn't mention that Cloud Strife was cut from the PS2 version of SC2, forcing Namco to shoehorn Heihachi in his place
My God it would've destroyed the GameCube version of that happened
SC2 and SC6 are some of my fav fighting games ever! This episode is making me really miss Soul Calibur :(
EDGE OF SOUL by KHAN
BEST INTRO / INTRO SONG EVER!!
Great episode! It really saddens me to hear that SC6 might be the last game in the franchise, at least for a very long time... Also, I didn't know Lloyd was in Legends, that's rad!
Leixia replaced Xianghua so well they didn't even remember the switch.
Soul Calibur is an incredible series that deserves more love.
I can't wait for SCVII and I pray its awesome.
@@myuugi If Tekken 8 does extremely well, I'd imagine it would be a possibility.
After seeing this episode, I’m not sure if a SC7 will happen but it would be nice but it looks like it’s going to the Darkstalkers treatment
@Beforezzz The main guy championing the game is gone from Bamco. Harada can get a lot of pressure but they have to find someone willing to do SC again.
Surprised this wasn't a Tekken episode since 8 launches next week. I'll listen to you guys talk about anything though!
thats what we needed for the Soul Calibur series, an utterly confusing title like the fast and furious series, 2 Fast 2 Furious -> Fast Five -> Furious Seven
1:21:10 I don't actually think Bandai Namco owns Dark Souls. In Japan all of From Softwares games (except Demon's Souls and Bloodborne) are published by FromSoft themselves so I think Bandai Namco is only a licensee to publish the games in the west.
But Miyazaki said Dark Souls is owned by Bandai Namco.
Medieval Spawn likely wasn't in SC2 because the rights to the character were actually being fought over in court between MacFarlane and Neil Gaiman. That's because Image, in the early days, allowed writers and artists to own what they created for the company. Since Gaiman introduced both Medieval Spawn and Angela in issue 9, he argued (successfully, might I add) that he had the rights to said characters.
This is why Medieval Spawn is MIA as well as why Angela was killed off in Spawn only to reappear in Marvel Comics in the early 2010s.
I was worried last episode y'all forgot about SC and you do a whole episode AWESOME
The coolest option I can think of is SoulCalibur merging with Tales. I love SC6, but I think there’s hope if the brand can get a new life with some changes.
I think Tales’ aesthetic would make SC look like its art for once. They could have a solid single player RPG adventure. They could work back in Multiplayer, and do a big guest character thing with all the SC and Tales characters, like how Square did for FF with Dissidia (but not gameplay wise).
There was a Soulcalibur 3 cabinet at my local mall's arcade back when it was open. Can confirm it's a huge improvement over the console version.
Soul Calibur is one of the greatest fighting game franchises of all time.
I think you all should have your own awards. This our game of the year. This is our story of the year. They won't get anything but clout.
"I have not played that mode in so long..."
Incoming flophouse video?
3:04 if I remember correctly, in the late 90s - early 2000s things were referred to as "extreme"
"Soul Blade's music isn't that good."
Laughs in Bravely Folk Song, Future Dancin, Another Fanatic, Wind and Clouds (the leitmotif is in every one of Mitsurugi's themes going forward).
No, Namco came up with Necrid’s traits, his role, and his physical build, and then had McFarlane complete the design
“they gave us some descriptions of some of the things they'd like this character to do in terms of what his role was and whether he'd be a good or bad guy and how he'd interact with everyone. They draft up these bibles, if you will, on the characters in the game as they're putting it together. So they came to us with like a paragraph or so--I don't think he had a name at that point--and we said, "OK, let's take a whack at it and see what we come up with."”
which is why Necrid can be mentioned by name in the timeline of SCV’s New Legends of Project Soul artbook without mentioning McFarlane unlike in SCII.
58:30 “It feels bad to play” No it doesn’t, I’ve played it more than you have and it feels better than SCIII.
Tekken 7 had/has trash netcode but people play it while citing 'bad netcode' as the reason they won't touch SC. It’s a really weird, blatant, double-standard against Soulcalibur. Namco made educational VHS tapes to advertise Tekken 1, 2, and 3 by teaching people how to play. There was an animated move, a CGI movie, a live action movie, a Netflix anime. SC? Nothing. Meanwhile, Namco executives literally ask if SC needs a character creator and single player content at all while STILL giving it shit netcode.
Other comments have pointed out that the Guest Characters have harmed the series more than they helped (and this is from me, a guy who had all 3 versions of SCII). I also gotta point out that while SCII may be a favorite that's fun to play, they won't stop to realize the inherent problems with it (and how to retain fun while avoiding the design problems in SCII). 8wayrun.com/threads/hate-speech-a-seasonal-feast.9103/page-2
1:32:53 …Max… Soulcalibur on DC had 19 characters... Soulcalibur VI launched with 20 characters, plus Inferno, plus Tira who was basically done. So NO, Soulcalibur VI did not launch with less characters than Soulcalibur 1.
If something, I actually think SoulCalibur music is one of the best among fighting games.
Yoshimitsu is a guest character technically, and in every Calibur. (Not in Blade/Edge)
We never had a weapons game crossover, Bamco vs Koei Tecmo would be insane, basically SC/popular souls characters vs DW/DOA, three team tag mode, CaC, with constant guest characters…..a man can only dream 😢
heihachi was the coolest character in Soul Caliber to me. I wasn't aware of Link in the GameCube version of Soul Caliber 2. Funnily enough, this game taught me how to do the wave dash motion and I learned Heihachi's 10 hit combo from this.
For me, the reason why soul caliber 4 was the highlight of the series for me was that everyone I knew could play and enjoy the game, from people with fighting game backgrounds to none at all. Once they started to add meter and supers and all that, I remember my buddies girlfriend just being lost in all that vs us having no issues, it felt like it kind of shit the door on the casuals and beginners. Was it balanced? No, but that’s what made it fun and exciting for everyone that was playing at the party
I think one of the best things about SoulBlade that you don't mention is that each character can unlock an armory of different weapons each with their own buffs. It makes the game super broken and unbalanced but it's a load of fun to muck around with the different weapons and see what they all offer. It's one of the things that always disappointed me about the SoulCalibur because they basically remove that for obvious balance reasons.
Soul Calibur is one of my fav fg series. I played it from Soul Edge on PS1/Arcade, skipped SC 1 because i don't have Dreamcast back then, and played all 2-6. It's really sad that Bamco pretty much buried the series just because it doesn't sold as much as Tekken.
Not only was Yoda green so therefore Xbox, but Darth Vader goes on the PS3 because he literally looks like a PS3
Hell yeah! My favorite fighting game series of all time and the one I'm still the best at. Radical.
heyyy, Ken Ishii/Koji Morimoto pfp, nice!
The more I listen to Soul Blade’s music, the more I enjoy it. I think it takes time to grow on you.
Damn, I miss SC2. SC6 is a good return to form though.
Not really.
I was lucky enough to have been able to play Soul Caliber on Dreamcast back in the day. Me and a friend of mine enjoyed playing so much when 2 came out we both got our own copy. I got the PS2 version and he got the Gamecube version. And we would play whoever's depending on who's house we were at. Link was def OP and my friend def preferred playing on his Gamecube so he could cheese like crazy. When 3 came out, again we both got our own copy. I remember we had a really good time with it, though we were not aware of the glitch that is being talked about. However, that is the last we played like that because rl stuff started happening ya know. But we both recently got SC6 on steam, and I mean like last month, and we been jamming that on weekends together having a pretty good time.
SC2 Conquest was the one reason why i got into SC competitively. I went outta my way to make sure my Yun-Seong & Maxi were parry gods when i wasnt there lol.
Ive always had problems with them not bringing any of the great ideas from SC3 to the future games
i had a soft spot for encrit but with his alt orange skin with the iron mask. as you guys said that green dude main costume was trully a momnet of "this was made by the guy who made spawn???"
90s = (Normal)
00s = "Emo"
10s onwards = "Edge"
Ahh now we all see why SC wasn't mentioned in the lore vid lol
Welcome...To the stage of History!
Soul Calibur is my favorite fighting game serious and I thank you guys for taking the time out and given them their flowers. 5 was a total dumpster fire, and I agree that is what drove a lot of fans away. I pray that we can get another Soul Calibur game soon because it really is an amazing franchise. Thank you guys again oh and the sv3 glitch where it deleted everything was so fucking annoying I remember them days smh
These games had some of the best stories before we got dedicated story modes.
It breaks my heart that this series is so snake bitten and as a result Bamco essentially refuses to support it. So many mechanics and gameplay that I feel they do way better than Tekken but it just never gets the budget/support. Despite that I have to believe a new entry will come one day, hell maybe Bamco just sells the IP since they don't care enough...