An excellent addition to the ongoing Soul series, Soul Calibur 4 is excellent but is lacking in some aspects.
This game brings many new and exciting additions to the Soul series, such as:
Online Multiplayer ( an excellent but rather expected addition)
Enhanced Character Creation and Customization( A very cool upgrade to the previous Character Creation, possibilities are limitless (almost))
New Characters ( Algol, Hilde, Shura, Angol Fear...others)
Star Wars! (Yoda for the XBOX360 and Darth Vader for the PS3. The "Apprentice" on both versions. It's a nice addition but it's not as fun as you'd think)
Tower of Souls ( A single player mode which is really cool, in my opinion. I guess this replaces the "Chronicles of the Sword" mode from the previous game.)
Stat Modifier ( In certain modes you can equip customized characters (even characters from the original roster) certain clothes and armor to improve their stats (Health, Attack, Defense). It's cool, no doubt about that. But one flaw I and I'm sure others have noticed is that if you want to be competitive (high stat), you're characters are going to be ugly ( big, hulking armor).
Tag battles (You can play with 2 or more character on one side and tag each other in and out. I guess SC4 is taking a page out of Tekken's book. I like it and I welcome this new feature)
For the most part, I was impressed and happy about the "NEW" of this game . I kind of hoped that there would have been more new features, but I guess I'm wanting too much.
Soul Calibur 4 retains much from its previous predecessors.
The Story Mode still exists but I've got to say, I'm not liking it too much. The Story Mode for each characters are very short ( 5 fights each characters). And in each go on the Story Mode, the same cutscenes are used for every characters. However the everyone's ending is different from each other (thank god). The endings are short, unexplained and kind of disappointing. I was really waiting to see what was going to happen to each fighter in great detail. oh well...
SC4 also has a media section included. It includes illustrations, CG models and videos. However I felt that it was lacking as the CG models are only available to several characters. (Why Namco why?)
Soul Calibur 4 brings a lot to the table. It improves on many of the things in Soul Calibur 3 however I found a few faults in the game that devalued the quality of the product. All in all, I'm happy with this game. It should keep me busy for quite a while. But i'm still a little sour about the Story Mode.
In conclusion, fans of this series should definitely buy this game (It's a must). Enthusiasts, Casuals, others be sure to at least check this out because it deserves some recognition.