Soul Calibur V Collector's Edition -Xbox 360

Soul Calibur V has the best online experience and character customization seen in this franchise to date, but the worst single player experience and arguably its worst changes to the fighting system and roster. The graphics and animations are a treat as always, the music superb and the controls tight and responsive. After that there are a few quirks that take away from the experience, and a few short-comings that prevent the game from being great.Soul Calibur V is a lot of fun when it comes to multi-player combat, but lacking in single player modes. If you want to spend hours tweaking your costume with stickers or patterns to show off in online modes then this is the game for you. To me, adding a plaid pattern to medieval metal armor set is cheap and tacky, but to each his own. The new character customization system uses many of the armor pieces from Soul Calibur IV, but now you can adjust their look more than you could in the past. This particular improvement doesn't really compensate for faults in other areas.Fighting against friends is still a great thrill but if you have come to love the single player missions of the past SC games, this one is a letdown. You are forced to use Patroklos for the majority of the story mode, and personally I didn't like his fighting style. This mode can be beaten in one sitting, which is a blessing in disguise. There are not many good modes of play in this game; you have the poorly done story mode, classic vs mode, online play, quick battle and arcade/time attack. There are a few options in online play and they work well especially the coliseum mode. Arcade has been simplified down to 6 battles which you are racing against the clock to get the best time. There are no character specific endings in arcade (there isn't any ending at all), so there is no real reason to try out different characters here. Quick battle reminds me of VF5 arcade mode, you fight against opponents that look like they are wearing randomly generated outfits to win titles. Quick battle is a snore fest.Kilik, Taki, Sophitia and Xianghua have been displaced for new younger characters that have annoying personalities and voices. Taki's replacement, Natsu could be called Notso, as she is a direct clone of Taki but with blonde hair. She even uses Taki's victory stances but her statements fit more along with an anime and not the melodramatic epic that is Soul Calibur. Many fans will notice a lot of missing characters, but there are some new additions to help with the loss.There are some genuinely new characters to the game like Viola who has an interesting fighting style using an orb who fits well in the SC universe, and then you have Z.W.E.I. the werewolf summoner who seems like he may belong in another game altogether (FF maybe). There is a new lizard type dude that uses dual axes, as well as the Assassin of Florence, Ezio. Ezio is a perfect fit for this game, much more so than Z.W.E.I. or Notso.The new super move system is a poorly implemented gimmick borrowed from other contemporary fighting games. You build up a charge meter by attacking or taking damage so you can do a super move that looks flashy and over the top. I'm sure there will be some debate as to whether this addition is needed to keep SC fresh, personally I would have passed on it. The new blocking system removes parrying in favor of using some of your charge meter to do a guard impact that has the same effect parrying used to. This is a bit of a shame as it takes away from blocking properly, and parrying was ton of fun in prior games.Aside from this the combat is still intense and enjoyable and worth some time, but maybe not as much time as prior releases. Your heart will skip a beat when it's a close match, you my scream out in delight when you win and groan when you are defeated. There are a lot of characters to pick from, and at least a few of them are going to appeal to you.

So far I'm disappointed with Soul Calibur 5. I have found the stories in the previous games pretty amusing and I also enjoyed creating my own character. Story mode in this version is just not as good. It seems as if only one character has any sort of story. That story is just illustrated with drawings, no real cut scenes. Arcade mode doesn't appear to have any story element either. I can,t comment on the online play as I haven't used it. I didn't buy the game for online play.The collector's edition wasn't enough to make up for the disappointment from the game itself. I found the book it game in to be fairly well made. The art book was better made than I was expected, but could have had more art.

I don't know why people are hating the game because the lack of story mode. If you are looking for a story go read a book or watch TV.The developers have a limited budget and time, and I'm glad that they put most of it into making a fun fighting game to play with other people, in person and (very importantly) online.The character creation is a great time consumer, the attacks of every character actually looks like it would hurt, the graphics are pretty, the tutorial/practice room offers a lot more than what many other fighting games does, the online connections are great, the game is fun with friends even if everyone just mashes, there are a ton of things this game did right.If you have internet connection or friends, get this game.If you don't have internet or friends, get either of those first, then get this game.

As said in the title, this release of Soul Calibur is one of my least favorites of the series. I don't like the new system for getting items, nor do I like the fact that they got rid of a lot of old time favorite characters. Sophitia's children really aren't that great of follow ups to their predecessors and some of the other new characters are just... meh.I do like the extent of things you can do in character creation, but again, getting items is kind of a hassle. All in all, I give SCV a 3.

Great addition to the series. Soul Calibur has always been amazing. One of THE best fighting games. Two issues though. First, the story mode is not very good, so much wasted potential. Second, many old characters did not return, and worse, there are a number of characters that use other character's moves. A definite case of less is more. Online speed is great, customization is great. New meter system pretty good too.

I've always played the soul calibur games and 5 is a nice addition to the series but as always the online is terrible horrible kids with leg sweeps and same moves using them over and over ruined the game for me. The new characters are fun and fresh the story is solid as well. For a die hard fan a must own. Casual gamer might wanna rent it.

Huge disappointment on my end, They used their budget to enhance the multiplayer and screwed over the story. If you are not a fan of fighting games you are gonna have a hard time playing this game...I bought this because all my friends played it, And allot of the prosthetics and clothing DLC should have already been added to the game but you still have to buy it on top of just unlocking it through lving up. 3 was the best just saying.

Always loved the customization of Soul Calibur games, despite that the fighting is great with the exception of some of the bosses in single player mode where they can be stupidly annoying to fight against.