My history with the Soul Calibur franchise is one that goes all the way back to the Dreamcast. The first Soul Calibur is one of my all-time favorite games, and I spent a truly baffling amount of time playing Soul Calibur III back before this site was a thing. The second and fourth games didn’t quite “click” for me, however, though I eventually came around to the latter and can’t help but begrudgingly admire the fluidity of the former (outside of its ill-advised Weapon Master mode, at least). Then there’s Soul Calibur V, which released to fairly mixed reviews and nixed my favorite characters in favor of some new ones. If that wasn’t enough to kill my interest in it, trying to wrap my head around the story by wiki-hopping for spoilers definitely did; everything about the two central characters—who happen to be Sophitia’s children—struck me as whiny and petulant. That’s one of many criticisms that could be leveled at Soul Calibur V, and yet I found myself enjoying the gameplay overall. It doesn’t feel quite like the other games in the series thanks to some questionable additions and subtractions, but there’s plenty of enjoyment to be found here so long as you’re picking it up with the aim of having fun.

A tale of brats and swords

As always, my experiences here are limited to the single-player content, and while I’ve seen Soul Calibur V’s single-player maligned for being bereft of content, it really isn’t any worse than II and IV in that regard. Granted, many of the achievements (and one or two minor mechanics) revolve around multiplayer and can feel slightly insulting to those who don’t partake, but there are also things that Soul Calibur V does really well in this department. For example, its Story mode follows a small group of characters as they develop. I found that much easier to follow than the disparate, possibly non-canonical story threads of previous games, and this added clarity allows the inherent weirdness of the Soul Calibur mythos to shine. Of course, it also makes the plot holes more apparent and egregious, but the structure is solid enough to be a “win” regardless.

Story mode is a good place to start playing, as its difficulty is incredibly forgiving for the first 17 or so chapters. It’s only the last few that grind you down for not magically knowing how to deal with certain kinds of attacks, and that itself turns out to be unexpectedly good practice for the game’s difficulty curve (which I’ll get into in a bit).

Soul Calibur V takes place something like 17 years after the other games, and Story mode revolves primarily around the now-deceased Sophitia’s son Patroklos—a hotheaded and surprisingly gullible kid. He’s looking for his sister Pyrhha, who’s been raised by Tira and is screwed up as a result, and his search causes him to come into contact with Siegfried, Soul Calibur, and new characters Z.W.E.I. and Viola.

Basically, he’s a jerk to everyone around him until plot magic occurs to make him slightly less so, and that’s not the only thing plot magic accomplishes. There’s also this whole time travel contrivance that comes out of nowhere. I certainly don’t remember time travel ever being possible before, but even if it was, the rules for how it works are pretty ill-defined in this game. Pat only seems about halfway aware that it even happens, and there really isn’t a reason as to why he only goes back a little way instead of farther back when he could have more easily fixed things outside of it not being very dramatic to the story. As much as I appreciate the structure of Story mode, a lot of it consists of Pat being unlikable to people (to the point where you find yourself rooting for your opponents) and bumbling around until evil is conquered through some unbelievably convenient contrivances that cover up for the fact that both he and Pyrhha are weak-willed and generally incapable of accomplishing anything without the deus ex machina factory operating at full capacity. Speaking of Pyrrha, she’s also playable, as is Z.W.E.I., and this is one thing that Story mode does absolutely wrong; rather than allowing you to get used to a single character, it periodically throws you into the shoes of an unfamiliar character whose moves you have no experience with and expects you to button mash your way through. Doing so is possible, but it’s also awkward and not very fun.

The gameplay is fun so long as you don’t try to master it

Outside of Story mode, your single-player options are Arcade mode (whether that be the normal Arcade, one of the alternate routes, or the super-tough Legendary Souls version) and Quick Battle mode. Some characters have special pre-fight dialogue when they go up against specific opponents in Arcade mode—Edge Master versus Kilik, Tira versus Pyrhha, Algol versus Mitsurugi—but it’s otherwise a fairly unremarkable 6-fight gauntlet. That is, until the sixth fight; the most notable thing about Arcade mode is the huge difficulty spike for the final fight, whether your opponent is Nightmare, Siegfried, Cervantes, or Kilik. You can breeze through the first five matches without losing a single round and still find yourself unable to so much as think between the last enemy’s flurry of combos. It’s a huge spike in the difficulty rather than a ramp up to that point.

Quick Battle is a simulacrum of online mode, complete with all kinds of original character creations with names that make them seem like real users, as well as useless “titles” that you can earn for yourself by winning. The strength of opponents is measured using a letter/number system, with E5 being the weakest and A1 being the strongest, but online play is the only way to raise your own rank. That means that single-player gamers are going to have to get used to forever being an E5 rank regardless of how many computer dudes and dudettes they manage to beat.

Gaining experience is the main draw of Arcade mode and Quick Battle mode, honestly. As you win (with any character), you gain experience and level up, and these levels are a hassle-free way of unlocking new stages and characters. There are other ways of unlocking things, of course—for example, unlocking Algol requires either reaching level 31 or refreshing the Quick Battle opponent list until you find someone who uses him and then beating them down. I like this, as it means that even those who are awful at the game can unlock a ton of stuff through perseverance.

You know what you’re getting for the most part when you buy a Soul Calibur game, though there have been some small changes that have had a big impact on the overall feel. The most obvious change would be the new “Critical Edge” attacks. Basically, damaging and being damaged by your opponent fills up a gauge, and that gauge can be spent to perform a special attack that plays out as a cutscene. The effects of these vary, with some characters unleashing a flurry of unblockable attacks and others possessing normal attacks that can be easily guarded against, but successfully pulling one off always feels rewarding. On the flip side, Critical Edges can be canceled if you get hit, and even after hours upon hours of playing, I’m still not sure what can and can’t hit you after you start one. There’s nothing more frustrating than losing two Critical Edge attacks in a row (and you don’t get refunded the gauge you spent to perform them, either) because something somehow managed to hit you despite time stopping for the animation. Still, when these manage to go right, they’re a fun little spectacle.

Missing: characters and a natural difficulty curve

Sadly, the gauge is also used for Guard Impacts, and this is where the gameplay changes start to make Soul Calibur V feel like an entry in an entirely different series. Guard Impacts used to be nice and simple (and arguably optional if your attack timing was good), but the button combination for it has been changed to be much less natural. Not only that, but “Just Guards” have been added to emphasize last-second guarding, and this doesn’t feel very natural or Soul Calibur-y either. If these were things you could work around like Guard Impacts in previous games, that’d be one thing, but the difficulty is all over the place here. As mentioned before, the final enemy in arcade mode represents a huge difficulty spike, and that’s really just a taste of the absurd combo abilities of the computer. Midair juggling is more of a thing than ever, and going up against an enemy only to lose 40% of your health before you even hit the ground can be absolutely infuriating. Trying to get good at this game is a weirdly unrewarding experience.

For one thing, the new emphasis on long combos represents a pander to normal fighting game enthusiasts, and that’s a disappointing shift away from the series’ general accessibility. That’s not to say that you could ever enter a real-life fighting tournament and come out on top without learning a specific way of playing, but you could absolutely make it through all of the games’ single-player content without having to become a quick-fingered combo master. Combos becoming such a huge thing means your Just Guards have to be on point if you want to stand a chance against the computer, too. Especially since the computer doesn’t have to enter button combinations to pull off moves. The second you start to do the Critical Edge inputs, the computer recognizes what you’re doing and starts to block, but the side-to-side walking isn’t something it has to do, which means your normal guard game has to also be tight. All of this stuff undermines that old Soul Calibur vibe once you venture outside of normal matches.

Finally, we have the elephant in the room: the characters. My two go-to characters are Seong Mi-na and Xianghua, and both were cut out of this game along with many others. Taken on their own, the new characters are balanced well and can be quite a lot of fun to use—Xianghua’s daughter Leixia plays a lot like her, while Taki’s disciple Natsu likewise plays much like her absent teacher—but using them or an imitation made in the character creator simply isn’t the same as having your go-to character available. Familiarity was a big factor in previous games, with Sophitia, Taki, Seong Mi-na, Xianghua, and others being series mainstays that are inexplicably missing here. Not only that, but their fates aren’t even made clear. Xianghua receives one vague mention in Story mode, but that’s it; seventeen years have passed, and some people are simply missing. While their absence is what initially caused me to pass on Soul Calibur V, the lack of closure they ultimately end up receiving is what stung the most after finishing the game.

But hey, it’s pretty and sounds nice

Nothing drives home the way game visuals have peaked (for the most part) like going back and playing games like this from 2012-2013. Soul Calibur V is a hyper-colorful, gorgeous game even by modern standards. Some of the blurring doesn’t quite hold up, which isn’t surprising since ugly blur effects were a staple of the time period, but the lighting is absolutely beautiful. It blows me away that this wasn’t only possible on an Xbox 360, but possible while delivering a rock-solid 60 frames per second. Even the textures hold up for the most part, and the animations are great (there’s nothing quite like Tira surfing across the stage on someone’s face). The music is also a high point. Not all tracks are winners, as a small handful are easily forgettable background fluff, but others are much more fun and memorable and end up bettering the game.

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