Some reviewers thought it was a lost cause. Now Bandai Namco has announced that Soulcalibur: Lost Swords will die on Nov. 30.
Bandai Namco will stop selling continuation tickets and potions Sept. 30 and it'll shut down the free-to-play game's shop in full on Oct. 27. About month after that, the game will be taken offline.
Soulcalibur: Lost Swords was released for the PlayStation 3. The game was poorly received, earning aggregate Metacritic score of 38 based on 9 critics and a 1.9 score based on 86 user ratings.
Eurogamer's Matt Edwards rated the freemium brawler a 3 out of 10, suggesting that Soulcalibur: Lost Swords was little more than a cash grab.
"To call Lost Swords a failed experiment would be an insult to every ambitious game that fell flat on its face," wrote Edwards. "It feels like Namco put barely any thought into making the not-so-micro-transactions justifiable or even making sure that the single-player focus felt consistently engaging."
Since launch in the first half of 2014, Lost Swords has seen just over 2 million downloads, according to Bandai Namco. Players collected more than 16.2 billion fragments from Soul Edge, the series' cursed sword. Lost Swords players maxed out more than 26,000 player characters.
While Soulcalibur: Lost Swords is nearing the end of its life, Bandai Namco indicated that the series, which has gone mobile, still has a lot of living left to do.
"The curtain is closing on this tale of two swords, but the legend of the warriors will live on," says Bandai Namco.
The Soul series, different from the developers Souls series, was born in the arcades nearly two decades ago. The fighting game series quickly made its way on consoles and that's where it has lived, though that could change for good on Nov. 30.
All that's left alive in the Soul series is iOS exclusive Soulcalibur: Unbreakable Soul. It's a card-based fight game, similar to the mobile version of Mortal Kombat X and Injustice: Gods Among Us. It's also doing little to inspire hope in core gamers who'd like another full-fat Soul experience on console.
