Some of the additions are essentially modified clones of their predecessors. Whereas the newest version of Mortal Kombat decided to bring back nearly every persona in its history, Soul Calibur 5 wanted to start over with a fresh can of paint. While you may still be mourning the loss of beloved characters like Talim, Sophitia, and Kilik,* let’s face it: Project Soul had to clean house a bit. The more things change, the more things whine the same Whatever your thoughts were on Soul Calibur 4, consider this a hipper, more thought-out reboot. That said, serious players looking for a good “3D” fighting game should go into this title with the expectation that the soul still burns. The offline modes are practically nonexistent, and while many characters are now easy to play, the increased focused on meta-mechanics won’t help newbs very much. If you consider yourself a casual fighter, you can conclude this title probably isn’t worth your dinero.

It’s no exaggeration to say that in many ways, Soul Calibur 5 is Namco’s SF3… for better or worse. Fans were upset by almost every facet of SF3: lots of new characters, fewer “extras” from previous games, and a pros-only parrying system that would prove to slowly cut casuals out of the equation. At that time, Capcom had relaunched Street Fighter with Street Fighter 3 (although it was technically the 400th game in the series). These questions aren’t unwarranted, but they reminded me of similar questions another fighting game franchise faced nearly a decade ago. Why did Namco ditch so many fan favorite characters? Was the game trying too hard to copy Super Street Fighter 4? Would the online experience see the same problems as its antecedent did? And what kind of single player content would there be for people who loved the adventure modes in Soul Caliubur 2 and 3? Alternatively: who will enjoy Soul Calibur 5? But a large number of new worries arose among the most longstanding fans of Soul Edge/Soul Calibur. Project Soul’s fifth attempt seemed to move away from many of these problems, at least on the surface. Horrible online play, nonsensical guest characters, terrible new mechanics, and gratuitous TnA.

Soul Calibur 4 was, in many ways, the nadir of the series. The underlying idea was so negative, but certainly not unwarranted. Shortly after I purchased Soul Calibur 5, my brother sent me a private message over Xbox Live: “Is it bad?”

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