Soul Calibur 5 – A Review
Transcending history, and the world, a tale of souls and swords eternally retold…
No idea what that’s supposed to mean, but whatever. This is my review of the latest entry in the Soul Calibur/Soul Edge series, the aptly named Soul Calibur 5.
I’ve been a Soul Calibur fan since the second one on the GameCube. Unfortunatly, I totally bypassed the third one because that never saw a release on a Nintendo console, so my next entry in the series was 4 when I picked up my PS3 2 years ago. Naturally, when the time came I pre-ordered Soul Calibur 5, and after a long-time waiting, it finally arrived on my doorstep last Tuesday.
I find these types of games difficult to write about, I’m not exactly an expert on fighting games. Most of the time I’m just mashing buttons, wailing away on some CPU player. And so it’s been since my days playing Killer Instinct on the SNES. Suffice to say, I’m not very good.
Coming from Soul Calibur 4, the gameplay felt a bit stiff at first. This game just doesn’t seem quite as fast-paced as it’s predecessor. It was kind of annoying at first, but after a while you start to get used to it, and realize that it does give you slightly more time to react. The overall complexity has been reduced though, as you no longer have to worry about things like stats.
Another new aspect of the game are the characters. With a few exceptions, the roster for Soul Calibur 5 is almost entirely new, although they seem to closely follow the styles of their predecessors (minus Talim, sadly). Perhaps I’m just a stickler, but I don’t really like the new characters. But that’s a fairly superficial complaint.
The single-player mode is one aspect I find somewhat lacking. In previous games in the series, each character had his or her own little storyline, and unique endings for arcade mode. You won’t find that here. Also, the previous games had a more involved story mode, (Weapons Master Mode from Soul Calibur 2 was probably my favorite part of any fighting game) but you will not find that here either. What you will find is a very linear story mode, and a very bare-bones arcade mode. Not a lot of option for single-player.
Multiplayer is a different story. Like any fighting game, the multiplayer is it’s strong suite. I have yet to coax anyone into playing local multiplayer with me, but I did give online multiplayer a shot. Basically, you’re just randomly matched up with someone, and you fight them. After you fight them, you can add them to your “rivals” to keep tabs on them and compare stats.
One of my favorite aspects of the fourth* game made it’s way into this one; character creation. It’s nothing overly spectacular, but still a fun diversion. As you play more you can unlock more items with which you can outfit your creations. There are almost limitless possibilities, and it’s fun to see what kind of whacky/awesome/bad-ass characters you can come up with.
Overall, was it good? Meh. If you only care about the multiplayer, it’s pretty awesome. But if you like a good amount of single-player content as well to hone your skills you will be sorely disappointed. It’s clear the developers put very little effort into that aspect, with 90% of the story cutscenes just being story-board drawings with a Ken Burns effect. You will burn through the single-player content very quickly, even if you pace yourself like I did. That’s not to say there’s not stuff to enjoy, but if you don’t have friends who will play with you, it will get old fast.
At the current price of $60, I really cannot recommend this game, unless you really have to have it now. I personally wished that I had waited for the price to drop. It’s not a bad game, it’s just not worth the full price of entry.
*Yes, I realize that Soul Calibur 4 is actually the fifth game in the series if you count Soul Edge, but it is the fourth Soul Calibur game. For the convenience of this review it’s just easier for me to refer to it as “the forth game” so as to avoid confusion.
