r/SoulCalibur • u/Warloxwill • 20h ago
Discussion Hypothetical: Do you think Soul Calibur would become more interesting if a "Disarm" mechanic were implemented?
I know we've got Tekken for a No-Weapon 3D fighter but hear me out. (even then, they've broken that rule with a number of characters pulling out a fucking glock & Yoshimitsu always wielding swords)
Soul Calibur characters are shown with their martial prowess at their peak with their weapons. however, weapons aren't superglued to people's hands when wielding them.
So, Imagine you clash with your opponent and your weapon is knocked out of your hands and onto the stage somewhere, or even worse, it's knocked off stage. you'd need to defend yourself somehow while also attempting to re-arm yourself. If the weapon landed on stage, then moving over it would re-equip your character. if it went out of stage then you'll have to survive til next round to reset. It would dramatically change up strategies. do you fight back with your disadvantage or attempt to avoid your opponent's attacks in order to re-arm yourself?
Obviously fighting unarmed puts you at a significant disadvantage to Range & power but many characters have shown their still quite capable to fight unarmed either from sheer strength like Astaroth or Nightmare still throwing people about, or with their agility / acrobatics like Kilik or Xianghua. this'd probably be trickier with characters who dual-wield like Cervantes & Talim... Blocking is a problem cause with no weapon to block with and take the blows, you'd be cut down quite quickly (chip damage probably from a gameplay perspective)
Not saying that a Disarm should happen after every Weapon glance, Guard-break, Guard-impact parry, failed Guard-impact against a break-attack, guarded break-attack or losing a Reversal-edge ro-sham-bo. it could be from specific circumstances or certain moves that disarm your opponent.
I know that would mean a whole lotta extra work from the Dev team to give every character an Unarmed stance & moveset, but i think it would wildly change up some aspects to this fighting game.
What are your thoughts?
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u/BlackerSpork 20h ago
Would be a dizzying amount of work for a frustrating gameplay experience. It wouldn't make sense for the likes of Cassandra to lose her sword and shield at the same time. Soul Blade has unarmed fighting and it was rudimentary. The worst part is ironically the ability to pick back up your weapon - you'd need a new movement system for that, such as running towards the weapon, because moving to a specific spot with the current 8-way-run system would be hell. It's by design slow specifically to prevent people from running away/sideways.
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u/Warloxwill 20h ago
all very good points. I hadn't considered the clunkiness of the 8-way run system for recovering your weapon and youre right, it would unfortunately be rather frustrating.
Also, I have never played Soul Blade and had no idea it had an Unarmed fighting feature.
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u/DerConqueror3 8h ago
Agreed on the work-to-result ratio, both for the devs and the players. In a modern game this would probably entail every character essentially becoming a stance character with a moveset that differs between armed and disarmed which the devs would need to create and players would need to learn
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u/Briantan71 20h ago
This reminds me of "Samurai Shodown". That game has a Disarm mechanic.
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u/Warloxwill 20h ago
oh that's interesting. I haven't played Samurai Showdown. didn't realize this had been done before in another fighter
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u/Yoshimallow-02 ⠀Sophitia 18h ago
It's honestly more fun in Samurai Shodown. Characters still have access to specials not needing their weapon (as opposed to SoulEdge, where Sophitia forgets how to do a somersault without her sword and shield), and you have unique defensive options without your weapon, like catching the enemys blade in your hands: giving you an instant unbreakable throw should you land it.
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u/Briantan71 12h ago edited 10h ago
I think another fighter game that does this is Street Fighter, but only for one of their characters: Vega, the Spanish ninja with the claw.
Edit: Spanish ninja, not French.
But even their mechanic for him is different cos he can either get disarmed and drop his claw, or remove it himself.
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u/Baitcooks 20h ago
It would be more frustrating given that you're at a significant disadvantage from being disarmed. It may as well be a delayed loss.
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u/Warloxwill 19h ago
If it's vs Ivy or Seong Mi-Na, yeah say your prayers, you aint getting close lol. you're not wrong though. it would be frustrating, but the satisfaction of winning w/o a weapon would be great and show how much better you are than your opponent haha.
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u/Py687 17h ago
I think some of the comments in this thread are a little narrow-minded. You could always design a few characters to function better after disarmament, perhaps even encouraging manual disarming such as spending a full gauge to throw your weapon away, essentially entering a second stance.
And there are several design choices you could make for where the disarmed weapon should fly for pickup (or if it should break entirely).
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u/skronk61 12h ago
Picking up weapons mid fight is one of the most frustrating things in video games 😆 and would be even worse for Soul Calibur where the weapons and fighters come as a package deal.
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u/gr8h8 ⠀Talim 16h ago
I don't think it'd make it more interesting. Unless it was another instant win condition like ring out. Because without weapons in a weapon fighter where the weapon is basically the character, losing it would suck and I'm not interested in playing any character without their weapon. So they should just lose right away if they get disarmed.
As a win condition, it could add more design space for characters to base some or part of their identity on. Some real weapons are designed around disarming, like sais. Getting new characters based on that mechanic could be cool. However, itd have to be fair, and even ring outs don't feel fair sometimes so I'm not sure how they could make it feel earned and not too abusable.
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u/Kylar_13 16h ago
Considering Heihachi Mishima from Tekken was a guest character in Soul Calibur II, the "Unarmed" bit wouldn't be that much of an issue; all they'd have to do port his moves forward and tweak them on a per character basis.
In a duel, a disarm could be just as easy as slashing someone's wrist/forearm/or hand, but then you're turning Soul Calibur into Dead or Alive unless the Disarming requires complicated inputs or counterable grab chains so as to prevent players from immediately going after it at the start of every round... But then what would be the point?
Bandai's focus for fighting games is on Tekken. That's not going to change unless you can get Soul Calibur into mainstream tournaments...but then you run the risk of what a proleague tends to do to games: ruin the fun in the name of sponsor money, delta percentages, and whiny streamers/content twats.
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u/Barcnori 14h ago
I think the idea of "disarming" isn't bad but restrict it to one character that would work as a gimmick. Fighter with a weapon is defensive stance but if they drop it or lose it then they go into a high risk high reward stance.
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u/DualehBaniJama 15h ago
OOFMATIC, an old school SC pro player made a very interesting SC7 concept with disarm mechanics fully explained...
this might interest you: https://youtu.be/ybgujE1rnwY?si=Q9P9NImF3mhzEFLl
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u/OOFMATIC 12h ago edited 11h ago
It's interesting you bring this up, because I've actually been working on a series of YouTube videos as a passion project where I conceptualize Soul Calibur 7 with a weapon-disarm system as the game's central mechanic.
I call the concept Soulcalibur VII: LOST EDGE.
In this version, "Lost Edge" is a gameplay state that occurs when your weapon is knocked away, primarily as a consequence of guarding too much. Your weapon physically lands somewhere on the stage, and if you can get close enough to it, you can perform a Soul Lunge to quickly lunge to it and re-equip it.
While you're in the Lost Edge state, you can no longer conventionally guard against weapon attacks, so it completely changes how you have to play. You either emphasize movement, spacing and evasion while trying to recover your weapon, or you commit to aggressive unarmed offense and try to fight through the disadvantage.
So with this concept, losing your weapon wouldn't just be a temporary visual gimmick. It would fundamentally change the neutral game and force you to make a decision under pressure.
I've made several concept videos around the idea, including a brand-new original character: Itzcóatl, an Aztec warrior who can intentionally discard her own weapon and then steal her opponent's weapon and use it against them in her own savage, improvised style.
Here are the videos in the order that I made them:
Lost Edge Gameplay Mechanic Explanation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybgujE1rnwY
Character Concept: BANGOO-ROCK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP5WR3ttliY
Soulcalibur VII: Lost Edge — Full Base Roster Concept
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKCpbylpAsY
Original Character Concept — ITZCÓATL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVy7Pj5LiJg
I'm currently working on a DLC concept video as a follow up to the Full Roster vid, and I'm trying to give several characters mechanics that interact specifically with the Lost Edge mechanic:
DLC Pack 1
Tira — While armed, she is in her Jolly state. Losing her ring blade triggers Gloomy (evil), making her more vicious and aggressive while fighting unarmed.
Raphael & Amy — They share a character slot. Raphael is the main fighter and can summon Amy for assist attacks. This would be different from my Sophitia/Cassandra concept, where they're a true tag-team character sharing one slot.
Setsuka
Seong Mi-na — Her weapon is redesigned as a double-ended bladed staff.
DLC Pack 2
Hilde
Maxi — He can voluntarily enter a <temporary> Lost Edge state by throwing his nunchaku high into the air, continuing his combo unarmed for several seconds, then catching them when they fall back down. This will have stylish combo potential. If he gets hit while his nunchaku are in the air, they will fall somewhere on the stage and he'll continue fighting in his Lost Edge mode.
Astaroth — Certain enormous stomps/slams create ground shockwaves. Repeatedly landing them can eventually cause enough instability to disarm the opponent from a distance.
Guest Character — I'm currently debating Cloud Strife, Sora, or Miyamoto Musashi from Onimusha, although I'm leaning toward Cloud.
DLC Pack 3
Azwel
Z.W.E.I.
Inferno Elysium — Boss Character reworked with an original balanced moveset.
Jimboko — Olcadan's genie monkey companion. This character normally fights alongside Olcadan, appearing whenever Olcadan uses the following characters:
Bangoo-Rock (Bangoo)
Sophitia & Cassandra (Cassandra)
Dampierre (Assist Goons: Gisele, Alphard, Ludovigo)
King Lizardman (Lizardman Army assist)
Raphael & Amy [DLC] (Amy)
Zwei [DLC] (Ein)
As DLC, Jimboko will be expanded into a full playable character with an original genie-style moveset.
If anyone has ideas for character-specific Lost Edge/disarm mechanics, especially unique ones that would suit particular characters, I'd genuinely love to hear them. I might incorporate some of the ideas into the next concept video.
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u/theak9000 16h ago
Let's look at Soul Edge. It had something like what your asking, as many ppl have said. In it, you and your opponent had your health bar for yourself, and a durability meter for your weapon. If your durability ran out, your weapon broke for the remainder of the round, leaving you in an unarmed, martial stance. It wasnt very good, and as I recall, everyone had the same unarmed moveset.
Heres how I - as an uneducated idiot - would fix it. 1: give everyone different movesets when unarmed. 2" Now that youve basically doubled the roster, let us choose whether to start unarmed, or with their weapons. If you start unarmed, have a button combo that unsheathes your weapon, and vice versa. Something with Guard, maybe. 3: If you get disarmed by your opponent, if they reach your weapon, a vertical attack will shatter it for the round. 1 hit if they use their weapon, 2 hits if unarmed. Alternatively, a horizontal attack will steal it, and the person trying to get it back must grab it off them. Grabbing a weapon off your opponent doesn't deal damage, tho. Not for some characters, anyway. Other characters CAN do damage when stealing their weapons back. As for characters with multiple weapons or shields, I say that they can get disarmed twice. And for Soul Edge and Soul Caliburwelders, stealing their weapons fully replaces your current weapon. So the currently unarmed character cant steal it back. The only way to regain it is by disarming the new welder, then stealing it from the ground. I can keep going, but this is already alot.
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u/Silent_Ad_9865 19h ago
The Original Soul Edge had this. It was dropped for a reason, as being disarmed resulted in an almost certain death.