Console: XBOX 360
Date Released: January 31st, 2012
Date Reviewed: March 10th, 2012
Reviewer: Thomas
PROS:
* New story focusing on Sophitia’s children, excellent writing and voice over
* Easy to pick up, will take a long time to master the complexities
* Incredible create a soul (fighter), overhauled and vastly improved over Soul Calibur IV
* Special guest star Ezio Auditore da Firenze from Assassins Creed
CONS:
* Some characters move lists changed commands although the moves are identical to Soul Calibur IV’s
* Characters are generally unbalanced
* There are no story endings for any of the characters in Arcade mode
Soul Calibur V is the contiuation from SCIV and such has been one of my favorite fighting series. I love this game more than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat although I love those too. Soul Calibur for me has always been great from day one. Lets talk about the game….
Presentation : A
Graphics / Animation / Sound
As always Team Soul delivers with even more animation and better sound and generally better graphics than Soul Calibur IV. Team Soul seems to bring life like animation and superb design to this beloved series each and everytime. The music is better all the way around than SCIV and the orchestration and presentation is top notch. The graphics are crisp, vibrant, and gives soul to the game so to speak, a wonderful mix of music from orchestration to rocked out music tracks that give each character a sense of purpose and pushes the story mode ever forward.
Single Player : A-
Game mechanics / Length / difficulty
The single player mode is robust with a all new story that is finally cohesive and not convoluted. It focuses on series regular Sophitia’s childen Patroklos and Pyrrha and their struggles with the Soul Edge and Soul Calibur swords and the destinies that are intertwined. The story is presented through old drawings and cutscenes that are relevant to the characters. Not all the characters in SCV show up in the story but that is ok since this mode is better than the previous entries in the series. It took me about an hour to go through story mode and is comprised of 20 episodes. The game as with SCIV has the same issue in difficulty sometimes the CPU will fight like a demon possessed and narely let you get a move in and sometimes it just lets you walk all over it. Fans of the series will tell you that is just the way it is.
Acade mode is comprised of picking your character and then choosing a path either normal, euro, asia which determines which characters you will encounter. This mode is comprised of stages which is a little shorter than SCIV but I welcome that since your mainly trying to level up and this mode is quick to do so. Instead of gaining individual levels for each character it now only levels the players game card up. There are 99 levels to gain and these unlock titles which is similar to CODMW3’s titles and create soul equipment. I also welcome this change because in SCIV you earned money to buy stuff and it could take a long time to grind and be able to get everything so this approach in SCV is so much faster and better then the previous entry. Weapons are also universally unlocked so if you unlock a new weapon, each character has a new weapon instead of just one for the character you leveled like in SCIV.
The ‘Create a Soul’ is vastly improved over SCIV’s. You can go on you tube and take a gander at what people have created Batman, Spider-Man, Venom, Dr. Strange, Lara Croft, BloodRayne, Bayonetta, Vegeta, Goku, etc…I mean you can make flawless picture perfect characters from the ground up and they look dead on as if they were already in the game. This game offers so much for the price that it is worth it.
The real gripe I have with this game is that the arcade mode unlike SCIV in which everybody had an ending including Yoda and Vader, SCV omits these and so you really have no idea what has happened to these characters since it takes place 17 years after SCIV. For example Cervantes is now human again where as in SCIV he was undead but since there is no character endings in arcade we have no idea what happened to him to change him back to normal. What is really unforgivable is new characters like Z.W.E.I. and or Xiba, who is most likely Kilik son’s because he fights with a staff, and even the guest star Ezio Auditore da Firenze because of the lack of a story ending you have not only no idea why they are in the game.Team Soul really could have done this better and in this regard the last entry handled this more appropriately. So just what the heck is Ezio doing here? and who the heck is Z.W.I.E.?
There are also balancing issues with characters that are over powered and almost all the characters are in some way over powered. For example AEON can hit you with a horizontal attack or the X button and then do this jumping attack that takes half of your heatlh. Some characters also have three hit combos that do the same thing so it can be overtly frustrating against the CPU and worse online. Blocking low also is a little bit harder to do this time around than in SCIV and such the CPU and online players will resort to hitting you alot low. People complain constantly about it in the global collosso mode.
Multiplayer : B+
Game mechanics / features / Online features
Multiplayer returns with bigger and better features. An improved ranking system that allowes you to play against online players of equal or lesser rank (skill). You can dive into global collosso mode that allows you to move your player card around an old map and text chat with people then personally challenge them, or enter a random match with people in this mode and or join a Team Soul sponsered tournament. Also you may choose your region and area of play and choose your call sign (Title) which has great stat tracking and win loss percentages so that you can challenge players of aproximate skill. There are many features in online play but I wish you had the ability to swap create a souls or upload your creat a souls similar to the WWE games.You can look at their player card which you choose amoung original and or your creations and see what people have at least created. I give it a lower score than A only because the online community spams certain combos over and over and over again and or rely almost all the time on unblockable attacks and counter unblockable attacks which again makes for a cheap tactic to win.
Replay Value : A
Lasting appeal / Bonus Content / DLC
There is a lot of DLC already available for this game including a character from the PSP game Geo “Le Bello” Dampierre along with themes and new create a soul equipment. The create a soul alone has sucked up hours of my time and I have spent over two hours at times on one character. Having said that and all the different modes offline and online this game has alot of replay value, plus you can make 50 characters and this will keep you busy for sometime. Even at my current level of 63 I m still unlocking stuff, it is awesome. Regardless of the lack of character endings Soul Calibur V is the best in the series in my opinion and does what we all have come to expect and love from the series while also continuing to move forward and adding more to the history of this game. Do yourself a favor and go get this game if your a fan of fighting games and or just a fan of Soul Calibur you will not regret it…
Overall: A
Console: XBOX 360
Date Released: January 31st, 2012
Date Reviewed: March 10th, 2012
Reviewer: Thomas
PROS:
* New story focusing on Sophitia’s children, excellent writing and voice over
* Easy to pick up, will take a long time to master the complexities
* Incredible create a soul (fighter), overhauled and vastly improved over Soul Calibur IV
* Special guest star Ezio Auditore da Firenze from Assassins Creed
CONS:
* Some characters move lists changed commands although the moves are identical to Soul Calibur IV’s
* Characters are generally unbalanced
* There are no story endings for any of the characters in Arcade mode
Soul Calibur V is the contiuation from SCIV and such has been one of my favorite fighting series. I love this game more than Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat although I love those too. Soul Calibur for me has always been great from day one. Lets talk about the game….
Presentation : A
Graphics / Animation / Sound
As always Team Soul delivers with even more animation and better sound and generally better graphics than Soul Calibur IV. Team Soul seems to bring life like animation and superb design to this beloved series each and everytime. The music is better all the way around than SCIV and the orchestration and presentation is top notch. The graphics are crisp, vibrant, and gives soul to the game so to speak, a wonderful mix of music from orchestration to rocked out music tracks that give each character a sense of purpose and pushes the story mode ever forward.
Single Player : A-
Game mechanics / Length / difficulty
The single player mode is robust with a all new story that is finally cohesive and not convoluted. It focuses on series regular Sophitia’s childen Patroklos and Pyrrha and their struggles with the Soul Edge and Soul Calibur swords and the destinies that are intertwined. The story is presented through old drawings and cutscenes that are relevant to the characters. Not all the characters in SCV show up in the story but that is ok since this mode is better than the previous entries in the series. It took me about an hour to go through story mode and is comprised of 20 episodes. The game as with SCIV has the same issue in difficulty sometimes the CPU will fight like a demon possessed and narely let you get a move in and sometimes it just lets you walk all over it. Fans of the series will tell you that is just the way it is.
Acade mode is comprised of picking your character and then choosing a path either normal, euro, asia which determines which characters you will encounter. This mode is comprised of stages which is a little shorter than SCIV but I welcome that since your mainly trying to level up and this mode is quick to do so. Instead of gaining individual levels for each character it now only levels the players game card up. There are 99 levels to gain and these unlock titles which is similar to CODMW3’s titles and create soul equipment. I also welcome this change because in SCIV you earned money to buy stuff and it could take a long time to grind and be able to get everything so this approach in SCV is so much faster and better then the previous entry. Weapons are also universally unlocked so if you unlock a new weapon, each character has a new weapon instead of just one for the character you leveled like in SCIV.
The ‘Create a Soul’ is vastly improved over SCIV’s. You can go on you tube and take a gander at what people have created Batman, Spider-Man, Venom, Dr. Strange, Lara Croft, BloodRayne, Bayonetta, Vegeta, Goku, etc…I mean you can make flawless picture perfect characters from the ground up and they look dead on as if they were already in the game. This game offers so much for the price that it is worth it.
The real gripe I have with this game is that the arcade mode unlike SCIV in which everybody had an ending including Yoda and Vader, SCV omits these and so you really have no idea what has happened to these characters since it takes place 17 years after SCIV. For example Cervantes is now human again where as in SCIV he was undead but since there is no character endings in arcade we have no idea what happened to him to change him back to normal. What is really unforgivable is new characters like Z.W.E.I. and or Xiba, who is most likely Kilik son’s because he fights with a staff, and even the guest star Ezio Auditore da Firenze because of the lack of a story ending you have not only no idea why they are in the game.Team Soul really could have done this better and in this regard the last entry handled this more appropriately. So just what the heck is Ezio doing here? and who the heck is Z.W.I.E.?
There are also balancing issues with characters that are over powered and almost all the characters are in some way over powered. For example AEON can hit you with a horizontal attack or the X button and then do this jumping attack that takes half of your heatlh. Some characters also have three hit combos that do the same thing so it can be overtly frustrating against the CPU and worse online. Blocking low also is a little bit harder to do this time around than in SCIV and such the CPU and online players will resort to hitting you alot low. People complain constantly about it in the global collosso mode.
Multiplayer : B+
Game mechanics / features / Online features
Multiplayer returns with bigger and better features. An improved ranking system that allowes you to play against online players of equal or lesser rank (skill). You can dive into global collosso mode that allows you to move your player card around an old map and text chat with people then personally challenge them, or enter a random match with people in this mode and or join a Team Soul sponsered tournament. Also you may choose your region and area of play and choose your call sign (Title) which has great stat tracking and win loss percentages so that you can challenge players of aproximate skill. There are many features in online play but I wish you had the ability to swap create a souls or upload your creat a souls similar to the WWE games.You can look at their player card which you choose amoung original and or your creations and see what people have at least created. I give it a lower score than A only because the online community spams certain combos over and over and over again and or rely almost all the time on unblockable attacks and counter unblockable attacks which again makes for a cheap tactic to win.
Replay Value : A
Lasting appeal / Bonus Content / DLC
There is a lot of DLC already available for this game including a character from the PSP game Geo “Le Bello” Dampierre along with themes and new create a soul equipment. The create a soul alone has sucked up hours of my time and I have spent over two hours at times on one character. Having said that and all the different modes offline and online this game has alot of replay value, plus you can make 50 characters and this will keep you busy for sometime. Even at my current level of 63 I m still unlocking stuff, it is awesome. Regardless of the lack of character endings Soul Calibur V is the best in the series in my opinion and does what we all have come to expect and love from the series while also continuing to move forward and adding more to the history of this game. Do yourself a favor and go get this game if your a fan of fighting games and or just a fan of Soul Calibur you will not regret it…
Overall: A
