So I know what you must be asking yourself now. How did they improve the basic gameplay? To be blunt, they didn’t. The gameplay is exactly the same as before, except for a few minor additions. One of those additions is the new critical finisher, not unlike Mortal Kombat’s fatalities, where you can successfully kill your opponent in a single blow. Sadly, I only had the opportunity to use this skill one time throughout my experience. The problem comes from the fact that the critical finishes can only be activated after your opponent blocks for a very, very long time. It really is a disappointment that these moments don’t occur more often, because they really are a nice addition to the gameplay, even though some of the character’s finishers looked awfully similar.

The other big addition to Soul Calibur IV was through the use of equipment and the bonuses they provide. Most of the characters can be outfitted however you so choose and each piece of apparel will have a direct effect on your character’s stats. The Create a Character mode is back and is deeper than ever. All of the options for customizing already created characters are at your disposal and more. I would have really liked to create a custom Jedi, but it looks like that dream will have to wait until another day.

One of the things that intrigued me the most about Soul Calibur IV was how Yoda and Vader ended up into the Soul Calibur universe. I wasn’t expecting much, I mean really…when was the last time anyone was impressed by the story of a fighting game. What I got from Soul Calibur, however, cannot even be considered a story. Throughout your entire five fights, yes five fights, throughout the story mode you will see the same two to three cut-scenes in everyone’s story with their character model copied and pasted in. The other two gameplay modes are much longer and provide a much more difficult challenge, especially the Tower of Lost Souls mode, but still lack any type of coherent story.

Once you have fought your way through all the single-player mode has to offer, most people will turn their attention to the online play. Sadly, the online component hasn’t lived up to the hype most people were expecting. There is only one mode to choose from besides the ranked and unranked matches, and the online matches seemed to suffer from a fair amount of lag. For the most part, the lag is bearable, but it does make the combat feel a bit awkward at times by being just a second or two off. My biggest complaint with the online, however, was from all the trouble I had getting into the matches. At least four out of every five attempts to join game resulted in me either failing to connect or the match was full. This was incredibly frustrating and confusing considering only two players can be in a match at a time.

All in all, Soul Calibur IV is a good fighting game that is a lot of fun, but its complete lack of a story and its poor execution of an attempt at online play will frustrate fans and non-fans alike.