Soulcalibur V Director Reveals More About The Game’s Fighting System

After a break of a few weeks, Soulcalibur V director, Daishi Odashima, finally took to tweeting more details about the game today, this time touching once again upon all the different systems in place for combat.

Directional inputs in Soulcalibur correspond to the Number Pad on your keyboard (7 is back-up; 3 is forward-down and so on), so keep that in mind as you read. The information below is comprised of direct quotes from Odashima’s tweets:

Guard Burst: If you keep guarding, the life bar flashes from yellow to red until the guard breaks. The system is called “Guard Burst”. Attacks like 3B will easily become a guaranteed hit. It recovers from red to yellow to normal after a certain time.

Guard Impact: [Returns from previous games] Single command 4A+B+K which repels all H, M, L attacks. Uses 25% of the gauge. Doesn’t work on throws, unblockables and CE. It’s pretty powerful. The existing system was OK for advanced players but others couldn’t use the repel & parry effectively.

When successful, your guard stun time reduces to a set frame. All attacks can be GI.

Just Guard: [Meant for advanced players] Just before an attack hits, press G to do a standing or crouching JG (2 frame buffer). Just Guarding big attacks will give more frame advantage than small attacks. Mapping G to multiple buttons and using slide input won’t work. Pressing G rapidly won’t work either.

Critical Gauge: Fills up to 200% at MAX. Critical Edge = 100%, Brave Edge = 50%, Guard Impact = 25%. Being active and taking action fills up the gauge. Hitting the opponent, making them block, doing ukemi etc.

Critical Edge: [Intro to Critical Edge here] The command is 236236A+B+K. The timing has been balanced to be very easy so any one can pull it off. You can think of it as a powerful version of standard attacks. Damage and speed varies (10 – 40F start-up, 40 – 160 damage).

Properties also vary: some have impact properties, some have invincibility against high attacks, etc. Until the start-up animation plays (screen freeze), it can be stopped with standard moves. Once it plays it’s unstoppable.

Miscellaneous info:

Separate background music for each character.

Replays available after each round.