Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Amazing"

Alright, so the new Soul Calibur came out, the fifth one, and it got, like, a 7.5 rating. Yeah, it lacks offline games modes, some characters were taken off, the story mode is too short, but I think it's still one of the most fun games EVER! I mean, if you really want to take it this far and keep the old characters, go play soul calibur 3 on your playstation. What I liked about this game is the new, fresh characters. Hello! this is 17 years after soul calibur 4! Talim is like, 32! Zasalamel, (we've had enough of him. what else do we want to know about his attempts to stopping his immortality?) Yun Seong and Seong Mina, yeah they were cool, but they didn't have much of a story. Now I was kinda annoyed Cassandra wasn't in there but we get a replacement even better! Patroklos Alexander. His fighting style is a lot faster and easier for newcomers and veterans. His personality is almost exactly like Cassandra's. Bold, aggressive and arrogant, but loving and sweet as well. And both are loving and caring for their older sisters. (see how they're both the same?)
Speaking of older sisters, there's another replacement to Sophitia. Pyrrha. Yeah, she may be a little too whiny and too much "I'M SORRY!!!!" type, but she's sweet and meek, and anyway, we get an aggressive and meaner version of her when she transforms to Pyrrha Omega. Pyrrha's fighting style is a weaker version of Sophitia's, but her Pyrrha Omega style is a lot stronger.
I heard a lot of complaints about Patroklos and his newer style when he becomes "stronger". Alpha Patroklos. His style replaced Setsuka's. She's a really good character, but honestly, I didn't like her style as much. And Alpha patroklos' style was not better. His first style was much easier to handle. I heard lots of people upset and saying they hated Patroklos because he replaced Setsuka. Patroklos is like, my best fighter. Yuri lowenthal (voice actor for pat) did an amazing job voicing. The newer characters may have been replaced with the older ones, but you know, this WAS taken place after 17 years. Taki will be like, 40 or 50! and we've got natsu who's even better! She's got a personality! Most of the characters would be too old to be the fighters you used to fight with, that's why Namco took out those characters. But what I didn't understand was that how come Maxi, Kilik, Voldo and others are still here, but they haven't aged at all, but Siegfried and Mitsurugi are the only ones who actually look like they aged. And there is little explanation as to why some haven't aged and some have.

I was kinda annoyed by the story mode cutscenes. like, 75% of the entire thing was sketch scenes. And they weren't even in color. Why couldn't they make more cutscenes into the great animated versions? I could name like, 10 scenes in story mode that shouldn't be in sketch.

The offline game modes were the most complained about. There was the Arcade, Legendary Souls, Training, Quick Battle, and others. Arcade was fine, it had 6 modes in gaming an you could chose the asian route or the european route and the routes meant which characters you were going to fight. But all of them ended up fighting the boss, Nightmare.
Legendary Souls was my least favorite. It was for the really good players that wanted a challenge. But this was too much of a challenge even for the best of players! The opponents beat you in seconds without you ever knowing what the heck happened.
Training changed and got a little more challenging. People still want the "hold your hand" training they used to have. What do you expect? This IS the fifth game. Shouldn't you all already understand the mechanics and handling of your character? And it's not that hard to understand the newer character's moves.
Quick battle was the best mode in offline games. You could choose an unlimited amount of characters and battle against them. You could fight against different character creations, or real characters. It was almost like online play, except it wasn't.

I liked the new characters Z.W.E.I and Viola, they had a very mysterious look to them. And the asians were by far the best! Xiba was my favorite with his obsession to food. But the guest characters were really cool this time! I mean, in soul calibur 4, yoda was too little to fight and the apprentice was so hard, it was really difficult to pass him. But these characters like Ezio Auditore and the Devil Jin style, were very unique! We don't see styles like Devil Jin and Ezio much in soul calibur, this added a modern touch to it. I mean, Devil Jin had Laser Eyes!!! and Ezio had blades on his hands.

The DLC character I wanted really bad was Dampierre. He's the type of character you never see in SC series. He's got hidden blades in this hands and his critical finish is where he slides in between your legs and kicks your butt! The edge masters were quite cool, Edge Master was hilarious when doing leixia's critical finish, and he's just too awesome. I was really happy to find out that Kilik was in the game, but surprised he was an edge master,too. he looks really weird when doing lizardman's moves or other styles. then we have elysium. a copy of sophitia's look, but not personality. she's a really cool "malfested with the good" type character. she's also an edge master, but only for girls.
The things I was amazed by were by far
1.The Music and sound effects
I listen to the soul calibur 5 music everyday! They composed the music so well, you could listen to is on your ipod. I find the music entirely impressive. Written by the 18 year old prodigy Tomoki Miyoshi,Inon Zur, Cris Velasco,and Andrew Aversa, (and others I forgot to name) these guys made an impressive move to writing the music. Their music really livens up the battles. The music, along with the sounds of swords clashing against each other make it sound awesome and epic, much better than soul calibur 4, which lacked a lot in music and sounds.
2. The characters
I really was floored by the cool, new characters they made up. I mean, the asian's were adorable, the europeans were so awesome, they made a great choice choosing Ezio and Devil Jin, and Patroklos and Pyrrha, well, they were by far my favorites.
3.The graphics
Namco did an amazing job animating for these characters and game modes. The scenery for the games and the characters are just fantastic. Everything looks so realistic. The camera options were fine to use and you could see everything fine.
4. The character creation
This was one of the HIGHLIGHTS of the game. I thought this character creation was much better than soul calibur 4 or 3. In this one, you could even put tattoos and better clothes on the characters! you could even change their eye color to make it so their whites are black and their
eye color is reddish yellow to make it look like a malfested. you could change their voice level to make it look like a malfested. The best part about it was that the clothes didn't have a skill bar or something that made your gauge or magic or style or whatever better. so you can make the character any way you like without worrying about making them weaker or stronger.

So maybe there weren't as many offline game modes, the story was too short, some characters were taken out (but for good reasons) and the story mode cutscenes were too sketchy, but it was still quite an amazing game... if I were rating it, i would give it a 8.5-9! The music, new characters, and story (I almost cried at the end) were all amazing! This game is for those who want something new and fresh, but still want to hold on to some of the older Soul Calibur stuff. I would recommend this game to both veterans AND newcomers. This was a success, but with the time constraints, it DID make it a little disappointing. I hope Soul Calibur 6 will be better, so it could be the best Soul Calibur of the series.