DarkPrince   06 February 2012

First thing is first SoulCalibur V is awesome, plain and simple, it’s one of the best 3D fighters I’ve ever played and the only one that I would take seriously.

The game looks absolutely beautiful, visuals are incredibly detailed and stages are varied and different and have multiple levels to them. It’s a great change for the series. It feels like a 2D game in a 3D world and pulls it off great. The fighting is fast and fluid and the characters all have completely different styles to each other.

The newest addition to the game is the critical gauge, this fills up during the course of the battle and you can have up to 2 bars stored. This bar is used both offensively and defensively, for offense you can use this bar for Critical Edge attacks, these are basically just super moves similar to what is seen in 2D games like Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs Capcom. Each character has 1 critical edge attack and every character has the same motion for the critical edge QCFx2+ABK. Critical Edges vary in damage output as some characters can follow up on critical edges, where others cannot. Depending on this depends on the damage the Critical Edge deals. These attacks come out very fast and are excellent for punishing whiffed attacks.

Brave Edge attacks will use the characters meter as well and these will enhance to normal attacks of the player, they use a quarter of your critical gauge but can be very helpful in dealing that little extra bit of damage or extending a combo that wasn’t possible without it.

Guard impacting uses the critical gauge for defensive purposes, with a well times guard impact you can parry any attack and follow up with your own as you will negate all bock stun animations. This also uses up a quarter bar of your critical gauge.

Other defensive options that do not take any meter are just guarding and guard breaking. Just guard allows you to parry attacks by tapping the block button as soon as the attach lands, this is very difficult and much harder to do than Guard Impacting. Guard breaking allows you to break your opponents guard and staggers them for a moment, leaving them open to a big damage combo. This makes the game a bit more offensive as well.

Online is where all the action will take place, the online in this game is simply amazing and the best I have ever used. Every match is recorded and can be saved. There are multiple modes in online and it is really great to see custom characters when playing online and seeing what people can come up with. This game really shines in online mode because the netcode is just so good. They did a great job with this.

Offline isn’t as great, there isn’t really much in single player value, the story mode is very boring and doesn’t really tell us anything about the new characters. Arcade mode is short and has no character endings, quick battle allows you to play 240 different customized characters and legendary mode is just cheap

Other than that there isn’t much point in single player modes, there is a training mode which is a bit complicated and doesn’t really tell you anything and a character customize mode. This is where most will spend their time; the amount of customizable options in the game is huge. There is so much variety that you should be able to make just about anything you want. This mode has been given a lot of attention.

There have been many old favorites removed from the game but for me it doesn’t seem to be a negative mark against the game. The new characters all add something to the game, especially Z.W.E.I and Viola, these characters are fun to watch but seem very hard to play. While old favorites were removed their fighting styles are still present whether it is passed down from mother to daughter or from teacher to student etc. Every character has a place and every character adds to the overall game. So far no character seems over used or over powered. The game has a great balanced and fluid fighting system and it’s a lot of fun to play.

This is a great game for any fighting game fan, check it out as it’s lots of fun.

+ Character Variety
+ Stages
+ Music
+ Graphics
+ Character Customize mode
+ Awesome Online
+ Combat System

- Offline modes
- Lack of tutorial