Soul Calibur V Review

Its been three years since the last Soul Calibur game and Namco has decided it was a good time for another game. Not too short that fans are tired of the game, but not long enough that they’ve all forgotten. Should Soul Calibur V have stayed in Namco’s closet? Or is it a worthy buy? Let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with.

You start out as a holy warrior, Patroklos, trained to slay the Malfested. He faithfully served Graf Dumas for years in hope to find his sister, Pyrrah, who was kidnapped when she was a child by the Malfested and to also get revenge on the vile creatures for killing his mother.

Throughout his journey, he meets people to give him clues on Pyrrah’s whereabouts, so he persists on the journey, fighting and proving his worth to carry the legendary Soul Calibur.

In time, he finds that the only way to rid the world of the Malfested is to destroy Soul Edge – the cursed sword who transforms its wielder into the ultimate evil, Nightmare. All sounds well and easy, but nothing is that simple. The journey for Patroklos is personal – he is torn between either saving his sister or obeying his Athenian guardian mother. Which will he choose?

Well, you have to play through the storyline to find out.

Online play is generic – you both pick your character, choose your settings by difficulty, time limit, and how many rounds you’ll play. You pick your arena and it has the typical soundtrack with the poetic narrative intro, and each character says their starting line. "Aaaaaaaand FIGHT!"

You both beat the crap out of each other until someone wins. It's the same type of setup as any other 3D fighting game. A new feature of the SC series is it picked up the gauge strategy – from taking and dealing damage, it fills up the gauge. Once it is filled, you can blast out a pretty nasty move.

The great thing about Soul Calibur V is that the fighting system is simple enough that mostly anyone can pick up the game and look fancy doing it. However, speaking from personal experience, button mashing will not be an optimal strategy like it was in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. SCV is simple enough that you’ll pick up on the pattern of what button does what, but challenging enough that once you learn each individual’s fighting style, you can cause some serious damage.





Some characters are naturally slower than others and other characters may be easier to use, but there’s a graph akin to Dance Dance Revolution on the difficulty of the character’s use. Another new addition to the series is the very robust character creation feature, which is absolutely incredible.

Soul Calibur lets you customize either one of the fighters or completely create your own from the bottom up. As far as original characters, you can customize their body size, height, voice, pitch and tone, hair, and tons of clothing and accessories. The possibilities are endless.

I have some friends right now recreating Dragon Ball Z characters - that's how customizable this new feature is. I know a lot of you have some original RP characters from your middle school days. Here's your chance to bring it to life, not to mention it's a lot of fun. Pick up the game to explore more possibilities.

Between the easy to pick up and hard to master fighting style, Soul Calibur will satisfy its fan base. With its simple, yet well done storyline, and an amazing character creation option, SCV packs a lot more than your average fighter. That being said, unless you're a die hard Soul Calibur fan, SCV is more of a rent than a buy.

It's definitely a game that's enjoyable to play alone or with a bunch of people. Every game has its quirks, but then again, what game doesn't? If you don't like it right away, give it a little while. You'll learn to love it like I did.

Verdict: 8.0