Soul Calibur V (rant)

[Gabriel]

Well, now I've given this some time, and I think I can rant about this a bit.

 

Soul Calibur V is a trainwreck.

 

Now, I know I bitched about Soul Calibur IV when it first came out, but there was still a lot of game there. Over time, I grew to strongly enjoy SC4. I don't think it's the best of the Soul Calibur franchise, but it's a solid game

.

Soul Calibur V is not like Soul Calibur IV. Basically, SC5 betrays the whole franchise and becomes something utterly bland and uninteresting. Why?

 

1) The mechanics of Soul Calibur are adapted to a Capcom-esque meter-management and super-heavy based system. The tried and true Guard Impact system of SC is turned into a meter management game and largely replaced with yet another Capcomesque style mechanic called Just Guard which seems ripped directly from Street Fighter III. In short, the game was redone as a Capcom style game.

 

This sucks because I didn't play Soul Calibur to play a Capcom game. I played Soul Calibur because it was it's own thing. It wasn't a stupid Marvel Vs Capcom clone. But now it is, and it's simply another bland copycat experience.

 

2) Fighting games live and die based on their casts. Characters are the lifeblood of a fighting game series. Soul Calibur V completely excises a good portion of the cast (Sophitia, Talim, Rock, Seong Mina, and others), and replaces half the rest of the roster with brand new replacement characters. Chances are good that if you have a favorite character, then it was removed from the franchise in this game.

 

3) Not only were characters dropped, but complete styles were eliminated. Some were mostly destroyed with only bits and pieces preserved in new characters. Characters with multiple stances lost some of those stances. There are several characters which don't even have styles. They're just mimic characters.

 

4) Single player modes were almost completely ignored. No Survival. No Team Battle. No Weapon Master. No Extra modes. No character endings. It's extremely stripped down and bare bones. And that's a very bad thing for this franchise, because Soul Calibur has always had lots of single player gameplay.

 

5) It's so clear that this game is only meant to be played online. Even when playing local versus the game asumes you want to play against the CPU, not another human player sitting next to you. When you select versus, you must consciously and manually say you want to play against someone locally.

 

...

 

So there you go. That's why I don't like SC5. Admittedly, there are some good things in the game. The character creator is still fun. There's also one single player challenge mode which is pretty cool and good for pickup and play. Sadly, that's about it. Otherwise the entire identity of the franchise has been gutted to appeal to online only Capcom gamers. I've given up on the game and the next time I swing by the used game shop, I'll be dumping it.

 

In addition, I don't think there is anywhere positive the franchise can go from here. This isn't a Tekken 4 gross misstep where there were some good ideas which went poorly. SC5 is an explicit and deliberate alienation of the old audience for the game and a slavish pandering to an entirely different and incompatible audience. There is no recovery from this. I'm done with the franchise.

[Mord]

I pretty much agree with most of what you say. I've found it very hard to get into the game myself.

 

As for some of those favorite characters being gutted from the game, it's technically possible to character-create them somewhat into the game if you buy the various DLC from the in-game cepheus store. (Which naturally I'm not doing, which is why I'm also not buying the compatibility packs. Of course if you want to see how much they've gutted from the game for the store you'll need to download the packs - as the store will only show you stuff from downloaded compatibility packs. (I had to look it up on the web.)

 

Glad I waited until I could find a copy of this, new, for 19.99. I would have been livid if I had chunked down full price for this. (And I was expecting it to be like this, which is why I didn't!)

[cimerians]

I decided a while back that I won't be getting it at all and I'm a die-hard fan. There's nothing in it that I'll miss. I've got every game (started with Soul Blade) and they have steadily gotten worse and worse after the Dreamcast version. I liked the graphic quality of IV but when you really look at it, there isn't much there. I think the first couple of games (DC version and II) were the best and that's it.

[Protoplasym]

I figured it'd be worth a $10-20 purchase.... just like all Fighter Games. I waited for years for Super SFIV to drop to $15 at my local Frys... bought it and enjoyed it for mere months before they came out with the latest iteration with an extra 4 fighters. Lol.... bastards got me good there!

 

When the new Mortal Kombat came out... I was wise to their goals...muhahahaha... so I waited and bode my time. Waited for the Komplete Kollection to come out... and waited for it to hit $30.

 

 

Revenge was had.

[vrocko]

Wow I was going to buy Soul Calibur 5 but after reading this I'm having second thoughts. I loved the Dreamcast version of SC and enjoyed the other versions up to 4 but now it sounds like they've changed everything in 5 and taken out some of my favorite characters. Kilik is nothing more than an amalgam of all the male characters. No Taki! No Sophita! What the hell? I'm disappointed in all these changes and a serious lack of single-player special modes. What the hell are they doing to all my favorites now a day's? I guess Soul Calibur 4 will be the last of the series I own.