After 6 hours of gameplay these are my first impressions...
I picked up Soul Calibur V this morning. Having been a long time fan of the series my hopes were high. Soul Calibur IV was a solid entry and I expected them to top or at least equal it with the newest rendition. First off this title is 15 years into the future and a bulk of the roster is the children of previous characters. Which is fine I guess...
My favorite character in the series has been "Kilik" and he appears as a cameo character with no moveset of his own in the game. Instead his son takes his place and steals his moves. Tough luck.
Anyways the game has been stipped down to the bone. There is no more gallery, arcade cut scenes or even character specific endings! Also weapons have been severely reduced to nothing more then a few choices per character. None of which have special properties.
In similar fashion to NAMCO's other franchise "Tekken". Soul Calibur V features a storymode for one specific character. (It's no where near as deep however) It's starring Son of Sophitia "Patrokles". And the game forgoes all the usual trimmings to bring you this epic tale...
Unfortunately 90% of the game is told through a "Coloring book" format of non moving hand written scribbles and bad voice acting. It does have a precious few cut-scenes but not nearly enough. Patrokles is as expected a "Sword and Shield" type character like his mother, aunt and sister. Needless to say he is somewhat boring to play as.
Create a character mode makes it's return. It's basically the same as last time only much less movesets and variety to choose from.
Graphics are also very similar to SC IV. Not a big upgrade here either i'm afraid.
Now for the praise portion. Online multiplayer is this games bread and butter.
I suppose if you throw out most of the content, you have to excell at something. It's very similar to Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom in this regard.
In conclusion I feel slightly ripped off. Theres no reason to bother with single player nor did they put any effort into it. It's a purely multiplayer experience and a good (If not highly frustrating one). But that's all it seems to be. More then likely it will lose it's novelty in about 3 weeks.
I picked up Soul Calibur V this morning. Having been a long time fan of the series my hopes were high. Soul Calibur IV was a solid entry and I expected them to top or at least equal it with the newest rendition. First off this title is 15 years into the future and a bulk of the roster is the children of previous characters. Which is fine I guess...
My favorite character in the series has been "Kilik" and he appears as a cameo character with no moveset of his own in the game. Instead his son takes his place and steals his moves. Tough luck.
Anyways the game has been stipped down to the bone. There is no more gallery, arcade cut scenes or even character specific endings! Also weapons have been severely reduced to nothing more then a few choices per character. None of which have special properties.
In similar fashion to NAMCO's other franchise "Tekken". Soul Calibur V features a storymode for one specific character. (It's no where near as deep however) It's starring Son of Sophitia "Patrokles". And the game forgoes all the usual trimmings to bring you this epic tale...
Unfortunately 90% of the game is told through a "Coloring book" format of non moving hand written scribbles and bad voice acting. It does have a precious few cut-scenes but not nearly enough. Patrokles is as expected a "Sword and Shield" type character like his mother, aunt and sister. Needless to say he is somewhat boring to play as.
Create a character mode makes it's return. It's basically the same as last time only much less movesets and variety to choose from.
Graphics are also very similar to SC IV. Not a big upgrade here either i'm afraid.
Now for the praise portion. Online multiplayer is this games bread and butter.
I suppose if you throw out most of the content, you have to excell at something. It's very similar to Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom in this regard.
In conclusion I feel slightly ripped off. Theres no reason to bother with single player nor did they put any effort into it. It's a purely multiplayer experience and a good (If not highly frustrating one). But that's all it seems to be. More then likely it will lose it's novelty in about 3 weeks.
