A good fighting game, however, a step back and a limited gameplay compared to Soul Calibur 4
Soul Calibur 5 is not the Soul Calibur that fans of the serie are used to play.
The elaborated and deep gameplay mechanic has been replaced by an easier, more straightforward, and faster gameplay.
This time noobs will have a chance to win a match without too much efforts, as the "just push the buttons" tactic can be succesfully employed in Soul Calibur 5.
Skilled and malicious players will soon realize that many tricky moves and tactics are no more necessary, and, surprise, no more possible to perform...
To contrast or to deviate attacks is not possible, some stances (like Mitsurugi's Relic) have disappeared, some strong attacks have gone.
Maybe Namco attempted to balance the game, unfortunately, it has limited it.
Anyway, some new addition and new characters are present; in my opinion, the new characters are nothing special, and the new super critical moves (or how the hell they are called...) don't give a real change to the gameplay.
Namco has made Soul Calibur 5 similar to the standard fighting game à la Capcom, and this is really bad.