and went into town earlier today and bought soul calibur V. when amazon eventually deliver my copy, i’ll just send it straight back for a refund - boom!
i’ve been playing it nearly all day (nerd alert) and i’m kicking arse as my boyfriend patroklos!
observations that i have made thus far (please be prepared for a big rant/bitch):
- it’s a lot faster than the previous soul calibur’s (in a good way).
- they’ve definitely cranked the difficulty level up! either that or i just blow.
- the story mode SUCKED. it was lazy, badly thought up, there was no mention of anything to do with the other characters that weren’t involved and i picked up on a seriously incestuous vibe between patroklos and pyrrha (hands off you bitch). i hope to the lord above they release story mode “paths” for characters such as hilde, mitsurugi, aeon and pretty much all of the others actually. there’s been 17 YEARS between soul calibur’s 4 and 5 - i (and i’m sure many other soul calibur fans!) want to know what went on! you can’t just release a game that is 17 years apart from the last one and not explain the backstories of 3/4’s of the roster. not cool namco-bandai, not cool.
- ezio is a badarse, and fits perfectly in with the gang.
- this is my biggest annoyance - why they chose to fill three of the character roster slots with mimic characters - how cheap and unimaginative is that?! i mean, edge master is fair play because he was a mimic character in the original soul calibur, and it’s nice to have one of them for an expert player or someone who doesn’t take video games too seriously. however - three of essentially the same character though? why not just give kilik his old moveset back? and although elysium was a good idea - why couldn’t she have been replaced with sophitia - who many fans were upset/annoyed about the fact she had been killed off? she was a firm favourite!
- another big peeve is that they gave two of these precious character slots to basically slightly tweaked versions of patroklos and pyrrha. why couldn’t alpha patroklos and pyrrha omega just be “extra costumes” for the aforementioned pair? or having them selected by pressing a certain button when you select patroklos or pyrrha (tekken style)? there are several ways they could have got around this and those slots could have been given to returning characters that the fans on the soul calibur 5 facebook page were asking to see return once again - such as setsuka, talim and zasalamel amongst others.
overall don’t get me wrong i’ve had a lot of fun playing it so far! i’m really impressed with all of the online modes and a lot of thought has gone into tweaking the character creation system even further, but i just get the feeling that namco-bandai haven’t listened to the fans of the series in the slightest, which feels like a massive kick in the teeth to me. i would argue that the soul calibur series is one of the best fighting franchises of all time - on par with tekken and street fighter, and it’s almost like the producers have gloated on this and just got lazy. that story mode had so much potential, it could have been incredible, almost like an rpg in a fighting game if they’d just put more thought and dedication into it. i would have much rather them delayed the game until, say, the summer, so they could work on the story mode and the character roster more. sure it would have been frustrating to hear that the game was to be put back, but the overall product would have been a lot better.
in general i believe it’s received 7 and 8 out of 10 in many reviews, which is still very good! but i’m hoping namco-bandai will listen to what the fans asked for if they decide to make soul calibur 6.
those are just my thoughts and opinions based on what i’ve seen and what i’ve personally played so far. if you like fighting games and soul calibur in general then you won’t regret purchasing it i promise. there are plenty of good points about the game to even/cancel out the bad ones - just don’t raise your hopes too high!
