SoulCalibur VI Review (Sterling Archer)
To start, I want to say I do not recommend people buy this game. The game is fun, it's a good game at its core but it's abandoned by the developers, online community no longer exists and to get the full experience you need both season passes. Bandai once again ruined what could have been a good fighting game with a greedy buisness model.
Now for the actual break down of my review. Full disclosure I played this game on the steam deck so my overall time is not accurate since most hours were done offline. I have completed the games story mode and completed the arcade mode, along with some of the other side content the game has to offer. Now that that's out of the way:
Graphics and Gameplay: The game looks great and feels great playing. It captures the soul calibur games prior very well and the new, rebooted story mode is actually really fun. For single player content I was impressed with what they had to offer especially considering what a let down 4 and 5 were in that area. Despite the combat being fun, it is an unbalance and wonky disaster. Nothing makes sense and because of the way the game handles reverals and combos, the stronger characters always have an advantage over the weaker ones. Playing this game for just fun and relaxing, or playing with friends this is fine. But for fighting fans looking for more competitive and balanced playstyle will be seriously disappointed here.
Character Roster:
This is where the game let me down the most. The base game roster is small and most characters struggle to keep you engaged in playing them. Fan favorites return and all of the important characters are there, however they do not feel nearly as unique and fun as previous entries. This is due to some new mechanics that were added, hard to really explain but most matches end up dissolving into reverals and rock, paper, scissor moments that give the player who wins a significant advantage. Going back to my earlier comment about balance, this makes slower characters or those who don't hit as hard less likely to win. If you aren't playing competitively and don't care about quality this shouldn't bother you to much, but this becomes an issue later into the story mode as you encounter stronger enemies and you will feel helpless against the AI spamming the same, obnoxious moves. With the DLC characters this isn't as bad (go figure) where the extra characters have better balance to them and have more interesting movesets...but that goes back to my earlier comment on why I don't recommend it.
Customization:
It's...OK. It's better then previous games and there is alot more here. But there is also a lot less due to certain restrictions on equipment, races, and a small variety of alternate weapons. You can now use guest characters weapons and gear, and have a lot more freedom with how you create your characters outfit even being able to alter weapon colors. However most of the vanilla outfits are bland and boring, and you can't mix up certain outfits due to conflicting pants/cape/helmet etc. This makes it way more limited to how you can actually create your character, but thankfully mods fix this.
Overall:
I give the game a 5/10. I would suggest if you really want to buy it, get it during a sale where you can get the game plus DLC for, I'd say 20 dollars is a fair price. The single player content is good and it is a fun fighting game. It's just a shame that it was abandoned and left in such a poor state.