Soulcalibur 6 brings back Hwang as final Season Pass 2 fighter: Patch notes and release date

Hwang is the final Soulcalibur 6 Season Pass 2 DLC character.

Developer Bandai Namco confirmed Hwang’s arrival following the EU West’s tournament of the Soulcalibur 6 Online Challenge - debuting a trailer for the returning fighter. 

A free update will also arrive alongside Hwang, which includes new stage Motien Pass Ruins, Seong Mi-Na’s classic costume parts, additional Tekken-themed character creation parts, and new Mitsurugi and Nightmare episodes. 

Hwang will be released in Soulcalibur 6 on Wednesday 2nd December, with the free update set to roll out soon.

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It’s unclear if this will be the last season pass for Soulcalibur 6, with Bandai Namco yet to announce whether they’ll be supporting the title moving forward. 

The patch notes for Hwang have been posted on the developer’s Japanese site, while you can check out the English patch notes below.

Soulcalibur 6 Hwang patch notes for update 2.30

You can check out the general adjustments below. For more detailed character adjustments, you can download the official patch notes document here. 

Version 2.30 adds the new playable character Hwang (You must purchase DLC Pack 13 to use this character.) 

Character Features

Hwang is a character who excels at close and mid-range with his long-reaching podao strikes and swift kick attacks. He is equipped with a variety of horizontal attacks that can control opponents' movements and can go on the offensive in virtually any situation. 

In SCVI, Hwang can now employ "lifeforce techniques" using Taoist talismans to instantly close distance from far away, activate special effects, and perform high-damage combos. Using these techniques too often, however, comes at the cost of his lifeforce. 

Lifeforce Techniques and Lifeforce

Hwang can use talismans to unleash special "lifeforce techniques", which allow him to attack opponents from afar, chip away at opponents' guard stamina upon hit, and more. Every time Hwang uses a talisman to tap into superhuman power, it consumes lifeforce. Lifeforce is displayed as a number below the health gauge. It can range anywhere from -9 to 9, and slightly recovers at the beginning of each battle. Hwang can perform lifeforce techniques even when his lifeforce is at 0 or below, but he will start the next battle with lower health. 

The key to victory is knowing when to risk using lifeforce to attack and when to play it safe and preserve health. 

Auras 

Lifeforce techniques can be used for more than attacking—Hwang can also stick talismans to himself to imbue his body with special auras to power himself up. There are four kinds of auras available, and they all carry over between battles, so it's important to consider your overall strategy when using them.

Version 2.30 sees Hwang added as a playable character, along with various adjustments made to the battle system and existing characters' behaviour, etc. 

Battle System Changes 

While all characters deal more damage while soul charged, using soul charge sometimes ended in very one-sided fights, so we've lowered the damage increase percentage on soul charge. We've also adjusted the properties of certain soul charge moves for various characters to prevent them from limiting opponents' options too much. 

If a character is attacked before the defensive properties of a guard impact or reversal edge become active, it is now treated as an impact counter. We've also added combo damage scaling to reverse impacts. These changes were done to make it easier to attack than in the previous version and to prevent creating even more cases in which defensive options were too strong, discouraging players from attacking more proactively instead of waiting and watching. For a similar reason, certain characters' unique abilities also underwent balance adjustments. 

Changes to Vertical Attack Tracking 

To make it easier to be proactive in attacking, vertical attack tracking improves when certain conditions are met. However, this resulted in certain high-damage, combo-starting vertical attacks to be unavoidable by moving to the side, making other characters' moves harder to read.

To address this, we've adjusted the conditions required for vertical attacks to have improved tracking. Characters heavily affected by this change have undergone further balance adjustments, such as improvements to their close-range horizontal attacks. 

Changes to Unique Commands for Reversal Edges 

Some characters have commands like ‘b, b, b” that can unleash a reversal edge. This was meant to be an easy command for reversal edges, but based on feedback, this resulted in players often using a reversal edge when not intended. 

To fix this, certain moves that combo into reversal edges no longer do so (this applies to Voldo, Ivy, and Tira).