SoulCalibur V Review

Soulcalibur V is the latest in the ever popular SoulCalibur series, released in early 2012.  It is set about 16 years after the previous game, and the cursed sword Soul Edge has returned.

As a fighting game, SoulCalibur V lives up to its predecessors.  Its battle system is well crafted and fun to play.  There have been massive improvements to the Critical Edge concept from SoulCalibur IV and most of the characters are balanced.  (Though I believe that Mitsurugi is overpowered, Natsu less so.)

As a game itself, SoulCalibur V shows little worth.  The story mode, which in ever other game allowed the player to choose whichever character they wanted and follow a different story in that character’s quest for Soul Edge or Soul Calibur, the best of which was in SoulCalibur III.  In SoulCalibur V this was done away with, creating much less work for the creators I suppose.  They created a story so stereotypical and bad that it reminded me of the Starship Trooper movies.  Not only that, but it forced the player to use only two characters for 95% of the story.

There is still the standard arcade mode, but other than that no real extra battle modes.  This is a major letdown.  For instance, SoulCalibur III had an entire stratrgy game built within the game with its own story, characters, and styles to use.  SoulCalibur IV had less and SoulCalibur V had even less than the previous two.  I’m seeing a similarity between this trend and what happened from Halo 3 to Halo Reach.

Another big let down of SoulCalibur V’s is the lack of character customization equipment.  Character customization has been a big part of the series ever since the third game, and while it was improved a lot from the third to the fourth game, it has severely dropped off for V.  The problem is that despite having decent voice options and a similar facial selection, etc, along with the much needed addition of being able to change height and build, there just aren’t enough pieces to effectively create the character you want.  Do you want to create a heavily armored knight character like you did in the last game?  Too bad, because you don’t have any armor pieces to do so with.  Now they have added a store where you can buy about five pieces of clothing for 160 microsoft points (about 2 dollars).  Seriously?  I have more hats and helmets than I know what to do with but I don’t really have any options for the torso, which is kind of the most important part…

I would not recommend getting this game.  The online gameplay is garbage.  Whenever you’re about to beat someone for a third time they quit out at no penalty, which leads to endless frustration.  Connection can take a long time or even lag out.  The game gets rid of the old favorites like Taki, Cassandra and Sophitia, replacing them with much less likable versions of themselves and changes Kilik into random.  Zasalamel has been removed.  Astaroth’s main costume that has been kept the same throughout every version of the game has also been removed.  The game takes away more from the last version than it adds.  It is definitely not worth 60 dollars.  So keep your money and wait for the SoulCalibur developers to actually put some effort into creating a game.

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