Soul Calibur 4 looks and feels great
There are no long combos in Soul Calibur, but combat is very fast and animation is fluid so even though you do large ammounts of shorter attacks it might seem as though you are pulling of sick combos. Its all about reflexes here, especially if you want to deflect attacks and counterattack.
Character customization is awesome, there are so many items to unlock and ways to tweak your fighters appearance.
New soul gauge is introduced, it depletes when hit, once your opponents soul gauge is broken you have to get closer and press all 4 attack buttons perfectly at the same time, and you will pull off the strongest move and will win instantly. Not only is it hard to actually pull off, but as soon as he does anything, or you miss, the soul gauge resets, so its all pretty much useless considering he will simply start defending and you wont get a chance to do anything.
Fighters also get scars and torn clothing as they take punishment and its a nice detail. But for some weird reason custom character lose all clothing and are left naked to fight. This might look very stupid most of the time, and will deconcentrate you if one of the two fighters is a woman.
Overall nothing is wrong with Soul Calibur 4, except for the online lobby. You'll be getting error messages like "player no longer exists" that will make you go back 3 screens and wait for it to load again, each time you try to fight online. Any kind of matchmaking system could have avoided that.
The story isn't anything spectacular, but at least everyone is given a reason to fight. Its a great game if you like fast and stylish swordplay, too bad there isn't more to it, but what you get will keep you busy for a long time.