Soul Calibur 5

[Skull Commander]

I spent ages making characters in the last game. That's almost a game in itself.

[monel]

Everytime I tried that in 4 I had to pick some weird items for some reason, the game seemed to force me to do it a certain way. I probably didn't get it. That game was such a waste of money, I must've played it for about six to seven (quite enjoyable) hours and then never touched it again. Lack of local 2 player games kills most fighters for me nowadays.

[JU!]

Was very pleased to get hold of this recently and believe the actual combat in this is much more accessible and stable than Soul Calibur IV and armour breaks work better as well as the Critical Edge move working really well. Graphically this is by far the best looking game Namco have made too, so much is always going on in the background and the flashes of swords and weapons hitting is brighter than ever. Some of the cloth movement is also very impressive. In the making of DVD I saw on You Tube the team explain they got rid of some a lot of ring out stages as they thought there was too many. The finish move in SCIV imo was awful and I never even used it.

Other things I like about this sequel especially is the character creation which for some strange reason I did not use on Soul Calibur IV . As Flabio said in the first post the Story seems not upto much guess that's what you get for farming it out to another studio. The Arcade mode could do with some endings too, but is highly enjoyable. The Selection of characters while a nice amount and varied could do with some more of the old characters back in like perhaps Rock. Viola and Patroklos seem very popular to use online and I thought Viola especially seemed a good alternative to Ivy range wise. As an Ivy player I'm glad to see they got rid of all the stances from SCIV as they made her even harder to use and were 100% not present in her iteration of SC or SCII not sure about SCIII though as only played the Arcade of this. The new characters are a bit of a mixed bag as Xiba for some reason I feel is quite annoying and nowhere near as cool as Kilik and as mentioned by other Devil Jin style seems terribly unbalanced and is a ball ache when you have to fight someone with his style.

Quick match is great fun to see peoples creations and ranks A-E, being able to choose the rank you fight is great, especially searching and there are some amusing creations, this could perhaps be why they skimpt on Arcade mode. Along with Online being the best online system in a fighter I have seen/played. Online wise this is amazing being able to either join a group and watch opponents matches on a screen or go on a large board and pick who to fight via squares and choose Europe, Americas or Asia which is a nice touch plus the ability to see who is playing where on a world map or the old fashioned search, quick match etc. Other great things about the online is the card that you can add by pressing start on the menu and put your created character on there. Combating created characters is fun to like quick match seeing various creations.

It seems the Project Soul team has spent lots of time on the online mode which while absolutely brilliant, they have neglected old SC staples like Team battle, Edge Master mode etc. If they had included these it could have quite possibly be 10 out of 10 as it is it's a very solid 8 for me and I agree with Edge for once lately. The fact that Soul Calibur V is at Evo tournaments etc says a lot about it as a stable game. The best Soul Calibur combat and graphics wise besides maybe SC the Original but just needs a few extra modes, although online and quick match will keep me going . Forgot to mention the music which is still very sweeping and grand but so far not as many memorable songs as usual although heaps of old SC songs can be downloaded as DLC.

[mugetsu]

every other online fighter should be looking at sc5's online infrastructure and taking notes.