Review by: Connor Cleary

When it comes to the actual fighting, Soul Calibur V knocks it out of the park. Unfortunately, nearly every other part of the game is stunted and poorly executed. Soul Calbur V steps up and delivers where it really counts, but the single player content is a big step down from what we've come to expect from the series. Unless you plan on playing with friends, or making use of the online features, don't count on getting your money's worth. But it should be noted that longtime fans are guaranteed to enjoy the direction Project Soul has taken the fighting mechanics.

Until now, the series has failed to top its excellent second installment. But this time Project Soul took the fans' wishes to heart and played to their unique strengths, emphasizing the things that set Soul Calibur apart, those things you can't get from the other guys in the fighting game world. The battles are incredibly fast and fluid. Each character's fighting style is entirely unique. The balance of reach, power, and speed across such widely different fighters is really impressive. And as we've come to expect, it's a very approachable game for newcomers as well as being deeply strategic at higher skill levels.

Each fighter's move list is a little different from their incarnations in previous games, but the overall feel of each returning style will still be familiar and easy to pick up for veterans. Continuing the long-standing tradition of guest stars, Ezio Auditore of Assassin's Creed fame and Devil Jin of Tekken both make appearances and fit right in with the rest of the crew. A new emphasis on projectile attacks adds a new strategic level to some fights, but does so without ruining the melee weapon system at the core of the franchise: Ezio's crossbow, Devil Jin's laser beam, Cervantes's pistol-sword, Z.W.E.I.'s wolf-spirit, and Viola's weird... magic... ball-thing. Soul Calibur has always had an anime-inspired aesthetic, but the character designs in V are more Final-Fantasy-ized (Nomura-ized?) than they ever have before, which can be good or bad depending on where you're standing.

After repeatedly failing to incorporate a special-gauge in any practical, relevant way, Soul Calibur V's Critical Gauge/Brave Edge system finally manages to organically integrate itself into the fight. A handful of moves for each character can be bolstered into more powerful versions with a well-timed tap of the Brave Edge button; these are unique to each character though, so there is an aspect of move memorization that should appeal to certain audiences. Each character also has unique and cinematic Critical Edge special moves that act a bit like a Marvel vs. Capcom's super-crazy-seizure moves in that many of them can be thwarted by a simple guard—so they have to be timed just right—and that they use up a portion of the Critical Gauge—so they have to be rationed as well.

There's some bad news though; in a really poor decision Guard Impacts have also been linked the Critical Gauge. These parry moves used to be an integral part of Soul Calibur strategy, but their current implementation makes them so clunky and unreliable as to be almost pointless in many circumstances. On the other hand, some characters have dedicated parry moves not linked to the Critical Gauge which can be incredibly powerful if mastered.

The story of Soul Calibur and its characters has always been pretty difficult to keep up with. Unless you took the time to read every character bio, you had to infer everything from vague blurbs at the beginning and end of an arcade mode pretending to be a story mode. This time there's a distinct, linear storyline that specifically incorporates a couple of the new characters and is revealed through occasionally cool illustrations and decent voice overs. That's the good news. The bad news is that the story is awful, the writing is eye roll inducing—“How many times do you think we can say the made up word 'Malfested' in one playthrough?”—and the worst part is you don't get to choose your character. The majority of the story mode is spent playing as Patroklos, and if you don't like his fighting style? Well, tough noogies. There are no towers, no world maps, no dungeon exploration, no special-challenge matches. Frankly, this is a massive disappointment, and it makes me wonder if paying full price is justifiable. Besides the story mode, there's a classic Arcade mode, the Legendary Souls mode is basically arcade set on ultra-hard, and Quick Battle is (I guess?) an attempt to simulate online play in offline mode.