SoulCalibur V Review (Xbox 360)

SoulCalibur V arrived at a good time; for all my love of 2D fighting games, I have only limited experience with their 3D brethren and now have a great reason to change that. This latest installment in the weapon-based fighting series plays to its historical strengths, but tries a few new things as well. The result is something that should appeal to both serious competitive players and those who enjoy the genre on a more basic level.

What immediately stands out is how much thought went into the fighting mechanics. Each character has dozens of moves, and they’re all governed by a very smart set of rules. You have the usual array of high, middle, low, and jumping attacks along with throws, plus defenses against most of them such as blocking, breaking or ’teching’ out of the throw, ducking or sidestepping, and so on. Yet for all this depth, beginners can still perform some combos with a little experimental button mashing. This is a good way to let players choose how committed they want to be; it’s something you could spend hours upon hours learning, but nothing stops you from just popping the game in and immediately having fun with a friend.

This carries over to the roster, which offers about twenty characters to start with and allows you to unlock several more. While a few are fairly similar to one another, most of them play very differently and wield a nice variety of weapons ranging from different types of swords, to a staff, large axe, and even limited forms of magic (SoulCalibur is not exactly a realistic series). Sadly, a few characters from previous games have been cut. While some got fairly similar replacements, others did not and it’s entirely possible your favorite may be gone.

On the other hand, if you don’t like any of the official characters then an extensive creation system allows you to make your own. They mostly take their combat styles from existing characters, but you get a lot of flexibility in how they look and sound plus can earn even more things for them by playing various modes. While custom characters probably won’t be allowed in some competitive venues, not every feature in a fighting game has to be. If you’re just looking for some creative fun, the ability to make your own character is precisely that!