I did manage to get a peek at Siegfried hiding underneath Nightmare's armor after my opponent bashed my helmet clean off my head. The meter management introduced in SC5 is back, and you can still break away pieces of armor - but it's purely aesthetic, fuel for the fanservice that's long been a fixture of Japanese fighting games. That vague sluggishness has been completely eradicated in Soul Calibur 6: movement is swift, attacks are speedy, and rounds can end in a flash once you've found your groove. Soul Calibur 5 was enjoyable, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the fighting felt stiffer and heavier than the classics. I'm ashamed to say that Soul Calibur 3 somehow never made it out of the shrink wrap, but I quickly grew weary of the Force-pulling, lightsaber-wielding Star Wars guest characters of Soul Calibur 4, and the costume-destroying Critical Finish mechanic didn't add much due to how rarely it was ever relevant. That's something I haven't felt with the mainline Soul Calibur sequels of the past decade, despite buying them all. Simply darting about the arena, experimenting with different attacks and reveling in lethal-looking throw animations, is a treat. All I wanted to do was sit there playing indefinitely, whether against the AI or a human opponent.
