• PS3

by Arcee on 02.16.12

Way back in 1997, I remember seeing the original game in the Soul franchise, Soul Edge, in the arcade break room at my work place. My buddies and I would spend some of our hard earned cash nightly at that machine trying to see who the master swordsman of the group was. I wish I could say it was I – but that would be a freaking lie as my friend Brian bested me and the others nearly every single time. As fun as Soul Edge was, (I even used to blast a downloaded copy of the theme song in my car on the way to work) I didn’t expect that 15 years later I would still be playing this series, now going by the name Soul Calibur. While some things have changed with the release of Soul Calibur V – a lot is still the same. Now that knife cuts both ways, and I will explain to you why I believe that.

First, the good: I love the way this game plays. The fighting in the game is fast and fluid and hasn’t been this good in any incarnation of the series. The controls seem to be super responsive, whether you are using an arcade stick or not. And while you can win most matches mashing away at your controller, the higher in level you opponents are, the more strategy you will need to input into your fighting style. The game is friendly to both novices and veterans because of this. Of course, if you want to cheap win your way to completion, you can. Just be prepared to pay for it when facing seasoned opponents. 

Likewise, the visuals in the game are superbly stunning. Characters look, move and feel “alive” and their fighting movements are executed with little to no glitches. This is the best that I have seen this series look. The lighting effects are also something to admire. They are a lot more colorful and really pop out at you – especially when executing power moves. These moves look amazing and can devastate your opponent when they least expect it. To bring the characters to life even more, the voice acting in the game is also top notch. You still get some cheesy acting and one-liners here and there; but for the most part, this game really did a good job with voice talents this time around.

Finally, the Create a Soul option, where you can create custom players or edit existing players to your delight, is an improvement over previous incarnations of this option. Though it has been simplified a bit from Soul Calibur IV, the CaS mode in this game is really the highlight of the game. No kidding, I think I have spent more time creating and editing characters than I have actually playing the fighting portion of the game.

This leads me to what I found wrong with the game. The most troubling part of Soul Calibur V is the shortness of the campaign in Story mode. And it is not only that it is short but the fact that you do not fight every character at some point or another. In fact, some characters don’t appear in story mode at all. What the hell is that? I easily breezed through Story mode in under THREE hours. There is no way a story in a fighting game could be that bad. For you to even see some characters in the Story mode leads me to believe that the game was rushed as the promised release date was looming over their heads.

As a lot of you know out there, I am a big stickler in making sure that the story of the game makes sense. Now, while the story in Soul Calibur V isn’t that bad (to get to the gist of things, the story takes place 17 years after Soul Calibur IV and mainly focuses on the children of Sophitia Alexandra, Pyrrha and Patroklos), but when you leave out about half of your playable roster, can you really call that a complete story mode? I don’t think so and I believe that it hurts the game in so many ways. To be brutally honest, it seems half-assed. I love the series, but that is the way it goes. There is no excuse for not using characters in the story mode. If anything, it would have expanded the replayability of the game to more than just 20 episodes. 

In the end, Soul Calibur V is more of the same, and not always in a good – or bad – way. For fans of the series, the familiarity of the game will be the biggest draw. The improved fighting mechanics and customization of characters are the best aspects of the game. As far as fighting games go, Soul Calibur V is the best in the series in recent years. On the flip side, a short and unrelatable story mode hurt what some fans of the series are looking for. The misuse and nonuse of half the roster is a sin that no fighting game should ever commit. Depending on your personal views of the game, Soul Calibur V will most certainly be a hit or miss. For me personally, I think of it as more of a miss... a big miss with cheating Seigfried's sword following up for a cheap hit.

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