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I was originally going to review Soulcalibur V exclusively, but considering nobody here currently knows me I figured it would be more informative to review the entire thing so that people have scale on which games I liked and didn't like, to have a better understanding of what to expect on agreeing or disagreeing with me.
Game: Soul Blade
System: Playstation
I actually never heard of the Soulcalibur series until the insane levels of promotion SC2 got, so I'm not going to lie; I didn't play Soul Blade until over a decade after it was released, so upon playing it I tried my best to judge it solely for its time.
Shockingly, this game played very smoothly and intensely for those days. It felt a little slow with certain characters, sluggish even, but even the king of 3D fighters in that era (Tekken) didn't escape those issues. What Soul Blade did bring to the table, however, were weapons. Not just on one or two characters, either... but everybody. And the weapons weren't just glued to the fighter's hand, they were able to unlock and equipped new weapons, and over time if you blocked too much your weapon broke. This helps a lot with obnoxious block spamming, an issue even modern fighters often have trouble with.
The characters, while at first feeling a tad boring, really felt original entirely because they were based on radically different regions of the world, and they fought mostly like real-life warriors. They even spoke their native languages. While this made conversations pretty limited between characters, it really added an authentic and charming feel to the title.
Everything about Soul Blade felt ahead of its time, which surprised me considering how late I was playing it and how much it had to live up to. Would I say it doesn't show its age and lives up to modern generations? No, but the game does shine for what it was, and deserves respect for giving us everything that it inspired.
Game: Soulcalibur
System: Arcade
I've had limited access to the 'first' Soulcalibur, as I've only had time to play it on an arcade cabinet. This prevents me from really fairly judging the title, but I don't remember it really standing out to me all that greatly. I hadn't played Soul Blade by this time, but I had played Soulcalibur II, and this likely didn't give it a fair chance in my youth. I do remember enjoying it, and Nightmare as the story boss was very intense, but I won't even try to rate it beyond that.
Game: Soulcalibur II
System: XBox, Gamecube, PS2
This was my first taste of the Soulcalibur franchise, and I think that was a good thing in the long run, though it probably hurt my chances of ever really enjoying the prior titles. I heard this game constantly worked up for months before its release, and had never heard of the series before that point. Commercials for every version were constantly aired on television (great ads, too), and every gaming magazine I looked at seemed to have at least a small article on it. It wasn't until the commercials I even knew it was a fighting game. But when it finally hit the shelves, I made sure to be one of the people who got it right away, and since I hadn't had my XBox long by that point, and since I'm a huge fan of Spawn, that's the version I'll -mostly- be rating.
Immediately, SC2 impressed me with its presentation. The game just screamed epic from the moment you turned the system on, and never once let up. Everything seemed to live up to the hype it had been getting, and I hadn't even actually played it yet. When I did... I didn't stop playing it. For a solid two months I worked on that game religiously, completing Story Mode with every character, finishing every mission in Weapon Master Mode and unlocking everything. By the end of those two months, nothing in the game was a mystery to me anymore. I had everything, and was still craving more. This lead to me playing the game regularly for years to come, and semi-frequently clear up until about two years prior to this review. I learned the game and loved the game quickly, and dedicated years to mastering it.
I played the game so much that when I finally started to tire of it, years after purchase, I just decided to buy the Gamecube version and unlock everything all over again with a new character. I missed Spawn, but Link was a load of fun in his own right. I even rented the PS2 version at a certain point in between the other two, but wasn't that crazy about the controls or Heihachi, so I never ended up buying it. But to this day I say Soulcalibur II is one of the greatest achievements in 3D fighters, and it more than lives up to today's standards. I'd probably still play it sometimes, were it not for it eventually being completely surpassed for me.
Game: Soulcalibur III
System: Playstation 2
I've had some odd luck with this one. By the time it came out, I had already lost my PS2, and was spending a few years without one. Since it was Sony exclusive, whereas its predecessor loved to share itself as much as it could, I was left desperately wanting the game without having any way to try it. It didn't help that it had a character creation system (something that can literally make a bad game enjoyable for me), and the featured new character wielded a scythe (my favorite type of melee weapon at the time.) Eventually, I borrowed my roommate's PS2 for a long stretch and was able to buy this one, and at this point I can't tell you how excited I was for it. Even after hearing 'meh' reviews, nothing was going to dampen my excitement.
When I got to play it... I was honestly very happy with what I found. Was I as impressed as I was with SC2? Well... in some ways I was more impressed, to be honest. But in others, it definitely felt like it was lacking something. There was easily twice as much content in this new title. New characters, a creation mode, new styles, and an entirely new single-player 'adventure' mode that was sure to last a while. The problem was that the game felt considerably less balanced than the previous title, and while the game WAS very addictive, it lacked the things that kept me playing SC2 for so long.
Still, it had character creation, and this mode alone kept me playing it more frequently than I ever played SC2. Insane numbers of styles to choose from (many styles exclusive to created characters), and an entire adventure mode basically dedicated to making up characters and putting a story to them. In many ways, I preferred this title to SC2, and in some ways I still do. But while Weapon Master mode was an incredibly addictive, rewarding adventure that taught you more and more about the game with new challenges and rewards... Chronicles of the Sword felt very stale and repetitive, not to mention completely unfair in its difficulty. This really hurt things for me, and in the long run I was left wanting a bit more. The most important thing I wanted was a Vs. CPU mode, though, so that I could fight my own creations rather than simply using them, or having to have an eternal struggle on CPU controlled Practice Mode.
I did love the change to story mode, though. Not only were character endings fully animated and voice acted, but each one had the ability to branch it into multiple different events with the use of quick-time events.
In several ways SC3 was better, and still is better, to me than SC2. But SC2 was just more solid of a game, and were it not for the insane levels of content that SC3 offered, I wouldn't even consider playing it over my previous obsession. In the end it ended up being a rivalry of quality against quantity, and there never really was a winner.
Game: Soulcalibur IV
System: XBox 360
This was one of the three games I got with my 360. At this point I was ridiculously addicted to the Soulcalibur series, and everything about this one looked like what the previous games had offered, but perfected and even more overloaded with content. Just one look at the unbelievably gorgeous graphics was enough to get me desperate to try it, and in my mind there was no way the character creation system could be anything but oustanding. The SC3 character creator had already been the best creation system I'd ever seen in a fighting game, so certainly they went all out with this one. And hey, they even added Star Wars characters!
...Then I played it. What I got was a very lazy rehash of Soulcalibur III that, instead of fixing that game's issues, simply changed the issues into something else. The combat was a little more even between characters, but everything felt very sluggish and unpolished. Many characters I had found incredibly fun to play in the previous games were no boring or just a chore to use, and the story had devolved into one-track thrown together endings that didn't really feel comparable to SC3's spectacular finales. The graphics were absolutely breathtaking, but it seemed like that was about the only thing the game focused its efforts on.
Even the presentation had taken a turn for the worst. While the main menu was beautiful to stare at for long periods of time, the characters were simply thrown into your lap haphazardly, and the secret characters were very obviously just greyed out 'can't have this yet' screen fodder. There was no air of mystery anymore, and even the methods of unlocking characters had gone from something that too exploration and effort, to simply getting a small chunk of in-game gold and purchasing whichever one you wanted.
But maybe they didn't see a reason to keep it mysterious when you only have four new characters to feature. No version upon release had all three Star Wars characters, and it wasn't until years later that this changed. The only new SC characters were Hilde and Algol, so you knew right there the series itself had only really gained two new characters at best, and one of which was a very awkward boss character who was not only incredibly unbalanced, but goofy. The other, Hilde, felt very sloppy and awkward to play as, and if you finally got the trick to her style it always ended up exploiting her ridiculously overpowered slash.
So how about the character creation? Never in my life had I been so disappointed in a feature I looked so forward to. Where the SC3 creation system felt like you could do anything with it, SC4's felt like you were just trying to glue together various overly specific parts to recreate slightly different versions of the same characters again and again, and where SC3 featured a ridiculous amount of styles... SC4 only had the styles featured by the main characters. Even the four 'bonus' characters just reused the same styles as other characters, and their weapons and clothing couldn't be used for customization, nor could they be customized in any way. Not even Algol and the Star Wars characters could be customized or have their styles and weapons used in creation, and if you're going to give me Star Wars characters and a creation system in the same game... let me make my own Sith and Jedi!
Nothing about Soulcalibur IV, outside of the wonderful graphics and the admittedly addictive rehashed Spawn style of the Apprentice, felt like there was much of any effort in it or heart. It all felt thrown together for money, disguised until a superficial mask of 'pretty'. Even the lacking Chronicles of the Sword mode from the previous game felt glorious in comparison to the insultingly lazy "Tower" mode this one had. It wasn't long before I decided to sell it and be done with it for good. Luckily, that was around the time I got to try...
Game: Soulcalibur V
System: XBox 360
After my incredible disappointment with SC4, it was hard for me to look forward to this game. I had loved the series so strongly before, and now it had taken one of the most tragic dives of any series I had ever seen. Every video of SCV looked exactly like what SC4 had offered. The same gorgeous graphics, and very little else seemed changed. It wasn't until I saw what they did with the creation system that my interest sparked. I had hoped for good character creation in SC4, but I had very little reason to have raised hopes other than SC3 having done very well with that mode. But this one... I was seeing video of tattoos, decals, and patterns being applied to every part of the characters. Everything seemed customizable and deep. For once you could actually do things other than change clothing colors. No longer would you have to HOPE items had the right shades and designs to match each other.
And I think, after loving SC2 and 3 so much, then hating SC4 as much as I did, hope started to get the best of me. I felt myself getting as excited for SC5 has I had so many years before with III. My girlfriend and I decided to trade in a few games (including SC4) to fully purchase the game while it was still a pre-order, and the day it was released we made sure to get our copy.
This... was the Soulcalibur I had always wanted. The moment I turned it on I felt like it was better. The menu system had seemed a tad limited. Fewer modes, fewer options... but the presentation itself was still breathtaking, the character creation system was as deep as I had hoped (with a few exceptions), and the gameplay itself? Phenomenal. While there were a few characters who clearly felt unbalanced, the combat itself was the smoothest and most fluid the series had ever seen. All the tedious, obnoxious issues with the previous game immediately felt washed away, and I found myself very quickly addicted to it.
But... it didn't take long for me to start seeing issues. The game had no story mode to speak of, other than a very lazily done three hour mode that consisted of nothing more than fight after fight using the same three characters, and there were absolutely no character endings for arcade mode. You beat arcade mode, you see your final scores, and you're done. This was a disappointment for me, because SC had always done so much to build up its story and finalize things with unique endings. But... if that was the worst problem this game had? I could sacrifice it in favor of the superior gameplay.
The new characters were another thing I was questionable about. So many veterans were simply gone now, including their styles, and instead replaced by new, similar characters that used a style that mixed together two previous ones. No Kilik or Seong Mi-Na to be found, instead there was Xiba, who fought like a combination of the two. This happened with a few others, as well, and for the most part... I found the new combination styles to be more rewarding and enjoyable to play than what they replaced. Sadly, Zasalamel, and anything resembling a scythe, were nowhere to be found in this newest entry, and my all-time favorite character (Sophitia) had entirely been written out (presumably dead.)
Fortunately for me, I actually preferred Sophitia's daughter Pyrrha to her in several ways, and adored the introduction of her darker half, Pyrrha Omega. Though there were three Sword & Shield styles, one of which was spear-headed by Sophitia's son Patroklos (who I admit I'm not fond of), they all played radically different from one another and never felt like lazy cloning. Sadly, there were three 'mimic' styles to speak of, and I can't really defend those... but at least it brought back the epic Edge Master as a character, and -sort- of gave us Sophitia once again.
The story was gone, the cast was different, and instead of a Weapon Master Mode, Chronicles of the Sword, or even the disappointing SC4 tower, we got nothing more than a lazy 'story' segment... but as a pure fighting game, I had never felt anything as satisfying or as intense in this series. This game certainly didn't escape being lazy (Algol's style still isn't playable in character creation, nor is Ezio's), but the game itself is without question the most fun and addictive title Soulcalibur has ever released. I can't say everyone's going to love it as much as I do, but for a gamer like me? All the sacrifices this game made were in favor of improving what makes a fighting game important; replay value and gameplay. I'm hoping Soulcalibur VI learns a lesson and keeps these marvelous additions, but puts more thought into the other fans as well, but for now? We're happy having spent $60 on this title, as well as the $30+ we've spent on DLC.
The best I can recommend to anyone interested in SC5 is to rent it first. The game isn't going anywhere, the retail is still reasonably steep to simply go out and pick it up, and the DLC is already finished adding more. But if you're a gamer like me, I think you'll be able to look beyond SC5's shortcomings and grow to love it. Will it be your favorite of the series as it was mine? Probably not, but I can't imagine you'll hate it either... as long as you go in knowing what to expect.
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