SoulCalibur V: Tips from a Pro

At a recent SoulCalibur V event, I got the chance to speak with one of the UK’s best professional gamers, Duncan Cartner, aka Hyrul, and he was kind enough to share some tips for players. If I was you, I’d take notes, as this guy worked on the game’s official guide book. We also got the chance to talk about his thoughts on the game and some insight into his experience as a pro gamer.

Cartner won the European leg of the worldwide SoulCalibur Impact tournament. Here’s the video of his final match against French competitor Akire.

What are your thoughts on the game compared to previous entries in the series?

I think fans will find the move sets very similar to SoulCalibur’s I and II, and more condensed than Soulcalibur IV. For me, SoulCalibur IV was a fantastic game, but it was a very complicated game, very difficult to learn and pick up and play. It was a good game for tournament players, but this game is much more streamlined, with a greater emphasis on the basics, making for more interesting fights. There is much more attack-and-move rather than the blocking-heavy tactics of the last game.

As SoulCalibur has been as series which has traditionally had less of a focus in professional tournaments, compared to the likes of Street Fighter, do you think this game has a place in the professional environment?

For me, any game can be considered a tournament game, whether it is a tournament game or not depends on the community. If there is a demand to play this game at a professional level, then it will happen. Street Fighter has always been popular because it was the first game of its kind, and it was a game where you keep learning new things every time you play, and exploiting little tricks in the game.

This created a whole new type of videogame experience. People began to explore the game in a whole new way, looking for exploits which they could use against other people, developing tactics which they could use [against other players]. This was the birth of competitive gaming. This continued with [Street Fighter III] Third Strike, because this game gathered a huge online community, and people started to become interested in watching other players compete.

People started to watch because they wanted to see, and learn, from the best players in the world. These games became popular because of the players, how the approached the game, and how good they became at it, which created this following. If the same kind of interest is picked up with SoulCalibur, there’s no reason why the same thing can’t happen, as with any fighting game, even Killer Instinct from the Nintendo 64!

So, when a new fighter is released, what is the first thing you look for to try and get good at straight away?

Wow, I don’t know, because my background is different to other professional fighting gamers, who pick up the latest fighting game and become great at it and start destroying other players. All the game’s I play, I play them because I love them, not because I want to become the best player. So when you are a fan of a series, when you pick up the next release, you are already familiar with a few of the characters and mechanics, and will tend to stick with the character you’re most comfortable with and develop on that.

When you pick up a new game, it depends on how good you want to get, but if you want to become a tournament player, you will want to get involved with the community, to try and find out what the most important factors are in the game. For example, I’m rubbish at Tekken, but if I wanted to get good at it, I would go speak to some really good Tekken players, to teach me some of the basics, and then try and go from there. You can go from the really technical, like counting frames, to simple match-strategies. Its very difficult to teach yourself to get really good at a fighting game.

So who is your go-to character in SoulCalibur?
Usually, it’s Xianghua, who I think is awesome. In this game, I’ve been experimenting with lots of different characters. As I was working on the guide, I was lucky enough to see characters at different stages of development. Because the move lists for each of the characters is much simpler [than in previous games], and the focus is much more on the new meter system, each character is a little bit easier to pick up, so they are all fun to play.

What are your thoughts on Ezio?

Ezio’s fantastic. Yoda and Darth Vader were unpopular in SoulCalibur IV. Even though they were well designed and behaved how you would expect them to, they didn’t really fit in the game. Ezio is a natural fit in the SoulCalibur universe. He is also very unique, because he has a more counter-focused move list. He’s not the fastest character, so you need to force your opponent to make the first move and counter.

So if a new player jumped in with SoulCalibur V, what tips would you give them?

I’d say to be aware of the three basic concepts of fighting games, attack, defence and movement. If you want to get to a decent level, as opposed to just attack-attack-attack, movement and spacing is especially important in this game. Understand the reach of your opponent’s weapon, and how far to stand away, faking attacks to force them to make a mistake. As this is a 3D fighter, sideways movement is very effective in dodging enemy attacks, but also knowing when to step, and when to just block.

For the basic fundamentals, SoulCalibur is at its roots trying to replicate a classic swords-and-shields fight. How this translates in the game is by having few combos in the game, and most attacks being only one or two hits, and once you have attacked, you’re in a vulnerable position where your opponent can retaliate. So the best thing to do is be patient, pick your attacks, the block and see what your opponent does.