Soul Calibur V review (Xbox 360)

Admission up-front: the last time I played Soul Calibur was way back in the PS2 days with Soul Calibur II – and I recall that back then it was probably my favourite fighter.

The quick action and level of skill and timing required to master the game made it such an appealing bout of smashing when compared to Tekken 4’s sluggish motions and Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance’s interesting, yet flawed, style-shift feature.

Of course, this is a very different time, and much has changed since then – including Soul Calibur.

Over the years Tekken refined it’s tried-and-true stylings, while MK went through a few dips, only to rise up to the top – so how does Soul Calibur V stack up in fighter evolution?

Pretty damn well.

A tale of swords

Having lagged behind in the story of Soul Calibur, I took it upon myself to catch up with what happened over the past couple of games – only to discover that I was essentially trying to make sense of a plot that revolved around two legendary swords that possessed worthy wielders to take the other out.

Then I had a giggle and moved on.

Frankly, the “story” the Soul Calibur series tries to carry is almost as ridiculous as the way it tries to tell it. Yes, that damn irritating arena voice-over guy is still there, and still saying things we don’t care about.

It’s been 17 years since the events in Soul Calibur IV, and Sophitia is dead, but she did leave behind two darling children – a brash young lad named Potrokolos, and a meek and mild daughter, Phyrra.

They sound very Greek, which is apt, considering the game takes place in that area of the world – and plays out like a Greek tragedy. Which also means the appearance of Assassin’s Creed’s Ezio amongst the 25 or so fighters make a little more sense. Not really, but who cares?

Along the journey to destroy the malfested (again), the game does its best to introduce and develop the new characters in the game – but really, it’s just silly story, fight, silly story, fight, silly story…

A tale told…badly.

What makes Soul Calibur a contender for biggest disappointment in story-telling is that, in Story mode, it teases you with cutscenes that are highly cinematic and very well presented – but then proceeds to tell 95% of the tale through sketch drawings on a piece of tanned leather.

Subsequently, the voice acting that carries the story ends up being laughable. It’s tough enough for voice actors to match up emotions to digital cutscenes – but I imagine voicing pictures is even more difficult.

Luckily, the music is great, setting the scene for each epic battle – and we don’t play games like Soul Calibur for their riveting stories and AAA-voice acting, anyway – we’re here to smash things – and smash things you will.

During the actual gameplay though, the game looks amazing – and vastly improved since Soul Calibur IV. Characters’ skin-tones are prettier, and clothes are detailed and flow with movement. Everything just looks sleek and smooth – and even more so in motion.

Blade to the face

Soul Calibur’s fighting is as exhilarating as ever – the character motions are so fluid that it often feels more like your characters are dancing in the arena. Dancing with dangerous weapons – which they use to bludgeon, stab, slice, dice, whack, whap and otherwise hurt their opponents.

Landing hits is especially satisfying – as throws and super-moves are inescapable; and if your super bar hits level 2, the arena goes dark, your weapon goes super-Saiyan, and leaves thick energy trails as you crush your opponent in painful ways.

The combat and combo system can look a bit daunting, until you realise that Namco-Bandai have actually simplified things a bit. By assigning movement combinations to one button (such as the left trigger being equivalent to the ‘down to forward + block’ combination), executing combos has become a lot easier.

A lot of fighters can be cheated through the process of button-mashing (also known as the ‘cheese move’ method of play) – but Soul Calibur V is quick to slap your hands and waggle its finger at you. The AI learns quickly, and counters your repeated movements – though moving to easier difficulties will obviously stop this.

Playing with human opponents, both online and locally, will make things even tougher for you, if you don’t familiarize yourself with skill-sets and moves – because people take this stuff seriously (read: I got my ass handed to me on more than one occasion).

Customise me, baby

The biggest draw to the Soul Calibur games, that has been present in the series for while now (and mimicked by the competition) is the ability to create and customise a character.

The feature returns for Soul Calibur V; you can create a character from the ground-up, or make changes to existing characters on the roster; instead of being able to create and tune your own fighting style, though, you simply select one of the pre-defined styles of the game characters.

The customisation feature is vast (and admittedly one of the things I spent a lot of time on for some weird reason) – from vocal adjustments, to changing the pattern, colour and saturation of your character’s chain-mail underwear, there are millions of combinations.

The end

When it comes to fighters, the popular series’ have shown us one thing – we like new, but not too much. Soul Calibur V doesn’t venture too far into new territory, coming across as feeling very familiar even to someone who last played it at number II – but that’s not a bad thing.

Mortal Kombat tried to go somewhere new – but the best in the series so far was the latest, which went back to its roots. In the end, all we want to do is smash people in the face without the risk of bleeding ourselves.

If you can ignore the story mode (which you can), Soul Calibur V will deliver that in the quickest, most fluid way out of all the fighter games.

It may not be as murderous as Mortal Kombat, or as technical as Tekken – but it is certainly the slickest.