Two swords, two siblings and a bad story full of cliches that follows the most common evil vs. good template – with a minor twist, but I’ll refrain from spoilers. All this spiced up with some corny voice acting and plenty of space for the players own creativity.

I won’t go deep into the story as this is only minor, it’s the fighting that’s interesting in this game and more so playing with your friends locally and online. In the story, we follow Pyrrha and Patroklos, son and daughter of Sophitia and Rothion, two characters fans of the series know from earlier games. After the malfested killed Sophitia and scarred Pyrrha, the siblings grew apart. Now their paths crosses again because of two swords both with mighty powers, Soul Calibur and Soul Edge. As the story unveil, they discover that only in partnership with both swords they will be able to stop the evil for good.

No button mashing!

I discovered that button mashing through this game was not the way to go. While i really disliked the setup and especially how the controls are explained in the game, it kind of grew on me. You can’t just start a mega combo by button mashing like you can in other fighting games, you have to be careful, foreseeing and chose the right moment to make an attack against your opponent.

Compared to other fighting games, more than others of course, Soul Calibur V seems to have the most varied and colourful roster. Guest stars such as Ezio from the Assassins Creed series might just lure fans of that series to become fans of the Soul series. I haven’t paid attention to this game series before, and I was kind of surprised to see Yoshimitsu appeared in several games in the Soul series, since I know him from the Tekken series. He appeared as a secret character in Soul Calibur that hit the streets in ‘98, and have been a part of the Tekken games from start.

Who’s in the fight?

Other noticeable characters is Z.W.E.I. that have a wolf-soul fighting with him, Xiba that moves quick and making witty comments that make me believe that he’s either gay or very young. Maxi reminds me of Law from the Tekken series whipping his opponents behinds with his nunchucks and Tira with her very interesting weapon, a ringblade.

Soul Calibur V have a creation mode where you can either make changes to an existing character or make a character from scratch. You can choose gender, height and adjust various things such as weight and skin colour. When it comes to clothes and accessories it’s kind of limited what you can choose from, but at least there’s the possibility of changing colours and patterns which can be enough for most players.

I had some problems in the matchmaking process when I was testing the online part of the game. I’m unsure if the reason was because not that many people played at the time I was trying it out, or if there’s some matchmaking problems in the code somewhere. Just be aware that if you plan to play this a lot online, be prepared for a waiting game. Also, I got my ass handed to me numerous times by what seemed to be high end players that have been practising a lot more that I even could make space for in my calender because I had to expand my search criteria just to find somebody that the game would connect me to.

If you liked Soul Calibur V, you might like Tekken Hybrid and Mortal Kombat.

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