The newest iteration to the series tries several new things while forgetting some of the old things that made it shine.
But as a long-time fan of the series, I can't help but feel there's something missing.
Maybe it's the lack of any real single-player modes. For every iteration so far, there's been a mode that was a real time sink, extending the replay value far beyond the arcade or story mode experience. Game 1 and 2 had Weaponmaster Mode. Game 3 had Chronicles of the Sword, which really took advantage of its brand new Character Creation engine. Game 4 had the Tower of Lost Souls, which served both as a mission mode of sorts and a survival mode. What does Game 5 have? Uhhh, it has an "arcade" mode which is only 6 matches long. It has... Legendary Souls, which is just an arcade mode on higher difficulty. It has... a Quick Battle mode where you fight random pre-created fighters to win titles to display for your online profile. That's it. Not even so much as a survival mode. I mean, come on, sure you put forth all this effort into the Story Mode, but I beat that in a few hours. Might I add, once again, the Team Battle Mode that people loved in SC2 for versus play fails to make it in.
Maybe it's the fact that while Story Mode tells a story that has a higher production value than usual, it only tells that story centered around 2-3 characters. Some fighters have cameo roles in this story, which vaguely explains what THOSE people are doing 17 years later from the previous game. You might even get to fight them. But others don't appear at all. I only know what's going on with them because I checked the Soul Calibur 5 wiki entry. Their only turn at story is Battle 5 in arcade mode, where they share some special lines with their combatant, but then it's business as usual. They don't even get an ending montage like a real arcade mode would have.
Maybe it's all of the characters that are either missing or just taking up space. Did we really need 3 different characters that functioned as a mimic of other fighters? Only two of them have anything to do in story mode. Kilik's just plain tacked on, no question about it. All while Talim, Zasalamel, YunSeong and others are just not there. I'd rather have more real characters than more mimic characters. But then, they'd of probably got shafted like most of the other characters in story.
At least there's some great competition going on. The new mechanics really add something to the system. The game is great fun to play against others, with many dramatic moments that can be captured in replays and shared. A Rival system lets you keep track of your friends in relation to how you're doing. It's also easy to communicate with your fellow fighters this time around, though I am reminded there are some people I'd just as soon keep at Internet's length.
So really, I guess it comes down to how much you like the fighting system and competitive play with others which determines how much mileage you'll get out of Soul Calibur 5. Otherwise, yeah, Character Creation is great, the best yet, but without an intention to sink serious time in Multiplayer, your creation will be literally all dressed up with no place to go.