She's in the game. You can fight against her without any updates on the retail PS4 copy of the game. There's her character model, there's her moveset, there's her reveal trailer 2 months before the game's release. I had intentionally avoided spoilers because I wanted to be pleasantly surprised by what was included in the game and when I randomly encountered Tira I was eager to learn how I could unlock her.

I cannot. She has a pricetag. And so apparently does all of the additional armor options we used to be able to unlock for free 3 games ago when the Character Creator first became a thing. Why are we following the trend of scumbag fighting game developers like Capcom by making the roster smaller and sticking fan favorites behind a paywall?

The excuse given to us is that Tira uniquely required "some pretty complicated adjustments" just to get her in the game. Well that's interesting, considering you've been recycling the same character animations for a decade now and she was already IN THE BETA, one would almost think that Tira's nigh inconceivably complicated character was already virtually complete, but you chose to shove a game out the door before it was finished anyway.

But no, no, it was an entirely reluctant decision to announce her as bait for your Season Pass, a Season Pass which is to include exactly 4 characters, 4 characters which I'm sure you weren't already developing for the game, 4 characters which it would be more profitable for you to leave out of the final product and sell at a premium at a later date rather than spend the same amount of development time and man hours included in the $60 release.

I personally think we should’ve been more careful about the way we have announced all this.

No, you shouldn't have announced it at all, you should have never even entertained the idea of a Season Pass because a Season Pass is nothing less than an admission that you've scammed your consumer base with an incomplete product and will now charge them for the remainder of the content you've already invested into developing for the game RATHER than use the financial success of the game (because it's a quality complete game at release) to fund additional content you otherwise couldn't afford to include.

I know this sounds like a magical fairyland universe I'm describing here, but this actually used to be how DLC operated. It was a perk of the internet to be able to add more content onto a game after it's been successful for a few months, it was not a convenient excuse for developers to simultaneously release unfinished games and charge additional money for the leftover content.

Who wants to play Groh or Azwel instead of Tira? Who wants to play Groh or Azwel instead of Hilde? These characters are new, need to be developed from scratch, don't already have an established fanbase, or a pre-existing archive of character animations you can copy and paste from... these characters would be the easiest for you to include in the game at launch, but you risk it anyway with that discombobulated robot werewolf bullshit like in SCV. What are you doing if you aren't trying to make a bigger and better Soul Calibur?

For what reason should I play SCVI, when I can pop SCIII into my PS2 and play Tira without spending a dime?

Graphics? Don't care.

Online Versus? Soul Calibur was great without it.

The Reversal Edge System? Oh yeah, cause rock-paper-scissors just makes everything better.

The more expansive Character Creation mode? Same knockoff OCs, different clownsuits. And is it too much to ask that a fighting game include a goddamn Survival Mode? You know, that option that costs you basically nothing to program, but allows people who enjoy your game to play it longer without fussing with menus and prompts every couple minutes? That option which you also had in SCIII, alongside several other unlockable game modes like Sudden Death, Hot Potato, Coin Collector, or even Final Battle where you can go in on Night Terror?

What did we trade all of that away for? I must be missing it, whatever it is, like I'm missing the epic opening cutscenes that used to grace my tube television before the Soul Calibur logo popped up. First thing I did when I popped this game in was play through Nightmare's Story Mode. He fought all of zero other characters on the roster, virtually every single fight was against a nameless custom character. Wow, I really felt in the zone, like I'd just beaten Raphael and I was about to take on Inferno, the sentient incarnate of Soul Edge.

The more I think about Soul Calibur VI, the more I'm disappointed, which is a shame because it's obviously a good game at the end of it. I just know Namco could do better, but after 2 games and a reboot it's obvious that they've lost touch with the things that kept players coming back to their earlier titles. Please just rerelease SCII and III on consoles.