SoulCalibur VI might be the Last Game in the Series if it’s not a Success

While dating as far back as Street Fighter II, SoulCalibur has been with gaming since the dawn of  3D polygons. The series first made an appearance as Soul Edge, or Soul Blade in North America, where it, along with the Tekken series, cemented the PlayStation as the premiere console for fighting games.

Later in 1999, SoulCalibur was released on the Dreamcast to dropped jaws everywhere, delivering the most cutting edge graphics ever seen. Few fighting games in the history of video games have ever received such universal acclaim. Seriously, SoulCalibur’s reception is the stuff of legends, and the positive reception of today’s fighting games is baby food compared to how much the Dreamcast masterpiece shook up the video game industry.

SoulCalibur II released to nearly the same level of acclaim across three platforms, the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube, going to far as to include Link on the GameCube version, by far the gaming community’s preferred version.

Since then, the series has seen ups and downs. SoulCalibur III never managed to find the same fame, being released on just the PlayStation 2. SoulCalibur IV enjoyed a warm reception and a boost in popularity with mainstream gamers thanks to the inclusion of Yoda and Darth Vader, but SoulCalibur V struggled to repeat that success.

As for SoulCalibur: Lost Swords, the free-to-play experiment from 2014… yeah, we won’t go there. I hope this game’s failure isn’t the reason executives don’t see SoulCalibur in a positive light anymore.

However, it is clear that a sense of stagnation has entered the venerated series, and its developers have endured great struggles helping it stand out in a crowded market. Tekken always provides Bandai Namco with greater revenue, and it makes no sense for the company to run two competing fighting franchises. I can only hope that SoulCalibur VI beefs up its RPG story mode, something that has always helped it stand out, and provides the same jaw-dropping reaction that its Dreamast debut did back in 1999.

Otherwise… we might be seeing the end of one of gaming’s titans. At least, we’ll always have this! Never forget!

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2018/08/27/soulcalibur-vi-last-game/