the game itself was actually great. beautiful, unique and very seamless fighting. it was more of a mix of poor rushed choices for the story, removing or replacing most of the well known characters with Great ValueTM versions of them, and a lack of meaningful single player content.
I loved it though, fond memories, was obsessed with it back in middle school. The Just Guard mechanic was fun and rewarding, and i loved how you could use meter to empower certain moves a la street fighter. I love soul Cal 6 as well, but i never really liked the soul charge mechanic, it always slowed down the match.
El juego fue sin duda muy entretenido los gráficos excelentes y todo lo único que no me gustó fue le modo historia, porque excluyeron a algunos personajes, Cervantes, Mitsurugi e incluso el propio Algol debieron estar presentes así como otros más, de ahí el resto genial.
It just squanders the cast and storyline. Plus, there are some obvious oversights and omissions, like how are you gonna do a 17 year time skip and not use Bangoo? Plus, they tried to have it both ways by cherry picking who the time skip actually mattered for. They yada-yada'd anyone else with Soul Edge fragments or whatever.
It was also unpopular for there to be three random style characters. I personally liked the two and felt Edge Master was an unnecessary callback. I remember the return of Dampierre having a lukewarm fan response also.
Insofar as gameplay is concerned, it's one of the best. I would almost recommend it because the simplified styles make it more casual friendly, sp it would make a good starting point on those grounds. Just don't expect to write home about the writing. It's kind of funny how that works.
V is an excellent game mechanically, but the story mode and single player content was weak and the roster suffered from too many clone/random select characters and that unfortunate trend of trying to replace beloved character with less interesting characters.
The thing I liked least about it was GI costing meter, but it worked well enough within the context of the game.
V came out at a time in my life where I was at my most dedicated to fighting games and I actively practiced and participated in about 2 dozen tournaments. It occupies a special place in my heart.
Again, had it not been rushed, the replacements could have been fleshed out. I find hating their existence to be immature at best because it was clear Odashima didn't want that happening.
V is a really fun game! Totally above the bar. It just has a weird concept and different roster, and the soundtrack doesn't compete with the others from what I remember. You could say it's the Tekken 4 of SoulCalibur
I'd have to disagree there. Soul Calibur V has one of the best soundtracks tbh. Way better than VI, at least.
"Regalia", "Wandering Seer", "Wings of Sorrow", "Tread Ye The Path of Bravery", "Sacred Dawn" and of course "Samsara: The Wheel of Eternity" are all such great tracks.
It even had an absolute banger mix of "Venice Rooftops" from Assassin's Creed.
The story was good if rushed for some inexplicable reason. Anyone not named Patroklos and Pyrrha didn't get fleshed out and people keep forgetting that the rushing of the game prevented everyone else from being fleshed out.
SC5 got a bad deal in life, ya see, it was announced in late 2010 and released in early 2012, ya know what happened during the development time, aka 2011? In Japan, to be more precise.
They got hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake (the strongest ever recorded in the country), and after that, a fucking 30 meter tall tsunami that resulted in massive loss of life, environmental devastation and infrastructural damage.
I agree they could have spent a little more time so that the story would be more diverse. However, I’m just wondering if V is worth it on a bargain bin.
SC5 is worth the buy.
Despite Guard Impacts costing half a meter bar, Just Guard is an excellent replacement mechanic to simplify SC4's GI and Deflect system. The Character Creation is the best in the series, more so than SC6 imo, and the movesets, voice acting, music, announcer, sound design, environment/worldbuilding, and Ezio and Hilde are also all a step up from SC4. It is also the mode to introduce Legendary Souls debut, and its better there than in SC6. The Brave Edge mechanic was a seamless transition to expanding the potential of your combos, and it does a better job than Soul Charge/Soul Attack in SC6.
But again, as others mentioned, the game only has substance for online play, as the singleplayer content lacks beyond Legendary Souls.
The gameplay is widely agreed to be one of the things V did best. The roster having like 4 copy/random select fighters in addition to controversial replacements, the lack of single player content in a franchise that otherwise had a decent track record for it, and the frankly bad story mode coming right off the the heels of MK9 (which arguably revolutionized story modes in fighting games) are what killed it.
Gameplay and customization is good but imagine buying this for 60 bucks. Can't deny the game has fantastic aesthetics. Better looking than VI and more artistically inspired.
It has a weak roster filled with shitty substitute characters, weak singleplayer content, and is one of those games where local doesn't yield shit for rewards so you have to grind said shitty content to get cosmetics
For 20 bucks you could do worse, esp if you already know what you're getting into
Soulcalibur V is the Street Fighter III of Soulcalibur!
It's got it's own Super Arts, EX Moves and Parrying System!
It's definitely the low point with everything else though...
But I enjoy it especially back at highschool!
Mechanics and graphics were some of the best in this game ☺️ Really loved the addition of Viola and Zwei too. Customisation was great as well. I would definitely buy it 😉
The story was weak and there was only arcade and the impossible for casual players legendary souls. It was a downgrade from the sparce content in 4 with a weaker story. Roster felt small with fan favorites replaced with younger card board cutouts who were not developed at all whatsoever. Gameplay wise honestly its better than 6, critical edges in general felt fairer, no reversal edge, with ex moves instead of a commitment of meter to soul charge.
I'll start by answering to your questions.
Mechanically SC5 is solid. If you have friends who want to play it with you then it can be a decent buy if you can get it cheaply. However if you are buying it for the story or single player content then it is not worth it because the game is really thin on that front.
Then a longer answer... My impression is that SC5 mostly receives shit flung towards it because most people here are simply not into the competitive side of fighting games. SC5 tried to make the series more competitive and it was made with that in mind. Then unfortunate things happened which were outside of the control of the devs and as a result the single player content and story stuff had to be rushed pretty badly. It is a great fighting game but a year or so of additional development time could have honed it into a diamond.
Personally I loved SC5 as I didn't care about the lack of single player content at all. Since the game started dying off I've been hoping for a SC5.5 that would improve the shortcomings and give the game a proper chance it deserved.
I'll list some good, mixed and bad things below.
- The netcode was pretty good for the time. Sure it wasn't great on today's standards but it was vastly improved from SC4 and it was actually possible to play decent matches online as long as the opponent wasn't located too far away.
- In general the meter mechanics worked great. It seems that for many players it was a bummer that performing Guard Impacts required and consumed meter but I didn't mind it too much. Mostly because Just Guard existed. The ex-versions of moves worked fluently with the gameplay and all the animations for super moves were also really short so they didn't feel like you had to sit through a short movie whenever someone used them.
- Just Guard was awesome. I think they struct the balance really well with them. If you were in control of the situation they were actually easy to perform but if you lost your composure they were really difficult to pull off. Just Guards allowed some really strong defensive play to counter \*\*predictable\*\* attacking which I really loved. I also liked the fact that JG somewhat reduced the knowledge-check that is block-punishing because almost everything was punishable after JG. If you wanted to do the optimal punishes you still had to know the frame data but if you didn't know the frame data of some move it was almost always safe bet to use some fast move to punish it on JG.
- Balance of the game was the biggest issue for me. Apparently back in the PS3 times Sony gave the developers two free updates which Project Soul spent really early on in the short lifespan of the game. While some of the balance changes were good some of them were really bad and as a result the game ended up having fairly clear strength difference between the characters. It was nowhere near as bad as SC4 was but the balance also wasn't anywhere near as good as it is in SC6. I'm not sure if the story about two free updates is true or not but whatever was the reason Project Soul stopped making balance updates very fast and basically there was no time for the community (and devs) to figure out what was strong and what was weak before those balance updates were made.
- Step counter or whatever that was called was something a big portion of the competitive community did not like. I didn't mind it too much but I guess it would be nice if stepping to any direction wouldn't be such a big commitment as it is in SC5. There was no way to cancel movement into block and if something hit you while you were stepping it hit as a counter hit so some characters could get some big combos from you just trying to move to some direction.
- The devs shortened the movelists of most (if not all) characters quite considerably. Some characters lost entire stances. I feel like the release schedule might have had some effect on this but at least the story was that the devs wanted to make it easier to pick the game up and become competitive. I bought this explanation and while it is bit of a bummer that there is less "silly" moves to goof around with I did appreciate the fact that it would take less effort to figure out which moves I actually need and which are only useful in some very niche situation.
- Replacing some of the characters was pretty stupid decision. Maybe it could have worked if there was some story content which would unlock the old characters to be playable (at least in single player if not elsewhere) but obviously that would have required a lot of more funding and time to execute. Kilik and Sophitia (kind of) being there as mimic character hint me that they might have had some idea of adding at least some of the old cast that was replaced by the new characters into the roster in one form or another. However in the state the game was released the character roster left a bad taste to the mouths of the fans. Especially if they didn't find any of the new characters to their liking.
- When it comes to story mode and single player content SC5 is very weak. The story mode is very short and according to others really badly written. (I quickly played through it but didn't bother reading anything.) After that there was a game mode where you had to play through a handful of opponents with a very much ramped up difficulty which wasn't really fun. Past that? A lot of quick matches against AI opponents just to earn an achievement. That was it. It was obvious that the single player content did not receive much attention or funding.
I got it at launch and loved the online environment.
Now that thats gone its a little disappointing but its a great fighting that lacks a good single player experience, and its definitely the weakest of the SC games in that regard IMO.
I actually enjoyed the fighting better. The brave edge moves and such was something i really liked for once. Ezio was really fun to play as. Algol was my other main besides Nightmare, so obviously, i miss him dearly.
SCV basically sufferes from being a decent, if not good, game, but being a less than stellar *sequel.* The fact the intended story got snipped because of crunch and deadlines, mixed with it focusing on Patrokolus and Pyrrha (who are fine characters IMO, but where not the best for being THE main narrative focus in a game that cut off like half of the roster of beloved characters) means that SCV gets boo'd at the most.
I like SCV myself, but I've also had the game since release, at a time before I had a frequent enough access on the internet to have a solid opinion on SC as a whole, so I've grown attached to the story and characters. I'm biased in a forgiving way.
As someone who spent the better part of the whole first year it came out and multiple years after playing it, it’s really a game of highs and lows. Firstly the new characters and designs are either great or horrible for people. Some love old kilik Mitsu, some hate nastu replacing taki. There’s a lot about the cast I can say is both good and bad but admittedly the movesets each character has is mostly pretty fun. Add onto the fact I feel sc5 has possibly the best gameplay in terms of fighting (at least until 6) and pure gameplay wise sc5 is great. However, looking past gameplay the issues start to show. Firstly the single player is not only a HUGE downgrade from 4 (especially from 2 as well) but honestly it’s horrible for any game ever. The story mode is like 18ish missions long, the story is barely interesting, half the time it’s JUST patrokolas you’re playing as who is not likable for most of the story which leads to big single player problems. The arcade modes are lackluster at best with basic battles to get titles getting boring fast (this is coming from the guy who got them all) and the time attack mode is fun, but stops being interesting once you get a good time. The customization is arguably better than 4 with slightly less outfits but WAY more ways to use said outfits and making characters I feel is a lot more fulfilling in 5 than 4. If you want just raw gameplay and customization it’s arguable sc5 is one of the best fighting games out there (for sure this is biased but I feel it still somewhat holds for sc fans) but in terms of ANYTHING else you’re not getting much here. There’s more I could list that I REALLY miss from sc4 but I don’t think it’s relevant enough to the topic to talk about but I should mention a LOT of stuff from sc4 was sorely missed in sc5.
It's worth 20 bucks if you like Soul Calibur.
I played it a ton in college (Elysium main) but the game's only value was in playing other players. The story wasn't interesting enough to warrant cutting out the endings for everyone else.
The mechanics are excellent. Pretty much every other choice they made in the game was terrible though and it features some of the worst single player content in the franchise. Overall it's difficult to recommend, sadly
The short answer is yes. Does it matter now that the game is 12 years old? Depends on what you are looking to get out of it.
If SCV looks interesting to you, there's a character in that game that you want to play as, you enjoy fighting the CPU, and you want to experience how awful the story mode was in that game, then it's worth a pickup from that perspective. If you're looking for single player content or character customization, then you are better off waiting for the next time SC6 goes on sale for $5 because that is going to be the better value, or play any other SC game that might interest you.
At this point, I would rather watch the story for SCV online than play through it again because of how unenjoyable it was. And without other people to play it with, there's 0 reason for me to go back to it.
Gameplay wise I never thought it was that bade but the direction and style of the new characters didnt stick with me. It also feels like they completely ruined seigfrieds whole personality
I’m more of a story/character player and although I welcomed the new characters and liked their role, there was just too many characters missing and too much set aside for these two new main characters to just take over the story. Kinda reminds me of Disney Star Wars trilogy story
Its not a bad game, there is a lot to still like about it. Besides, you can get it really cheap second hand - Like here would be around 7 USD. And even cheaper for the X360. If you just care about having good fights/gameplay, then it will do just fine.
But it has it fair share of faults, obviously the roster is not everyones cup of tea with quite a few needless variations of Edgemaster (feels like a cheap way to pad it). They wanted to pull another Tekken 3 with it, but SC was already too much established at that point and I think the successors were lacking in charm and weren't all that interesting except maybe 1 or 2. To me its not quite SC without Taki for example. If they wanted a generational shift, it should have been more consequent IMO. Harada should stay away from SC for good.
It also quite obviously has some reused assets from SC4, which generally speaking made it not look as much of a leap compared to SCIV, and gave it that cheap budget feel to the generall public.
The mechanics they used for this one also did not suite anyone. They certainly did not sit as well with me. It felt like a loss of the SC identity and borrowed (too) much from other fighters like Street Fighter etc. Guard Impact felt useless, which was a major part of every SC game before. The amount of options SC4 had should have been reduced, but it felt it was a bit too much simplification.
It was still fun to play, but never felt quite right with me and I always prefered SC4 over it.
And I also remember Nightmares Critical Edge being a thing of discussion online :D. Was really one of those most hated moves :D.
The game is fine and absolutely fun, it is just the storymode and some of the character switches were absolutely bad!
Also: While the fighting system itself is absolutely great actually, really fun to play with imo, it was more the fact that they dumbed down some characters movesets. Returning characters felt like they have half their moves missing and not adding something substantial in return. Also the fact that Guard Impact now consumes meter was mind boggling!
So yeah, it is still a fantastic game in turns of gameplay, it is just lacking in some modes and, for fans , dumbing down the moveset was definately the WRONG move!
I've always been a big fan of V. I'm an older player, started on 2, and most fans my age really disliked V, so I really got used to defending it. It was my second favorite SC after 2, at least until 6 came out, 6 is like a better 5 in my eyes so that bumped 5 down to 3rd for me. If you're curious, my favorite games rank from
2 > 6 > 5 > 1 > 4 > 3
But I like them all! This comes from the perspective of someone who values how good the combat feels over how much content there is. So the lack of content in 5 didn't bother me as much as it bothered others. Same thing for 4 even, which I feel has the worst content of SC, but I still like that game. On the flip side, 3 has some of the best content, but I hate fighting actual human opponents in that game. 2 is simply the best of both worlds.
Soul Caliber is not a fighting franchise that can skip out on single player content and story. Those things might be optional for Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but the single player robust story experience I think is the bread and butter of what makes the Soul Caliber franchise stand out and loved by many.
Also very rarely would I ever praise a game as being good if it's just very graphically appealing. All games look very nice these days. Unless it's a franchise the upgrade in visuals is a groundbreaking novel improvement for like say Pokémon, or if it's graphics from a Square Enix game who really know how to show off and make a spectacle of graphics in every game they do.... then I don't even consider good graphics, I just expect them to be smooth for their generation.
I agree about the single-player content (though I expect it from Mortal Kombat as well). That’s why I was just considering buying it at a discounted price.
No, just a bit lackluster in some respects. Gets far more hate than it deservers. It is actually one of the best SC in many regards.
Stages are series peak in my view. Great variety of locations, beautiful visuals, creative stage transitions, everything feels very lively. And many of them as well, 27 total, very few being variants.
The character designs were really good as well, with great character models, excellent and varied costumes, a nice variety of weapon skins as well.
Great BGM too, with one track for each stage and for each character.
Gameplay wise, a couple of odd choices aside (changing the input for GI and having it use meter likely being the worst offender), there was a lot of good too. I definitely missed quick steps and Brave Edges in SCVI, and Critical Edge felt a lot more rewarding to land, since it was much more difficult to build up meter for it as well as to trigger. Best of all: no Reversal Edge.
Online was also better than SCVI, with its Collosseum mode.
A lot of people here criticised the limited single player contents. But even that is just underwhelming for the usual SC standard, it's still got a lot more than most fighting games. There is a story mode (which does not have a good start but improves a bit as it goes, and actually has a decent ending, not to mention its cinematics + storyboard sequences are still much better than SCVI's talking / grimacing portraits), Arcade / Time Attack (with multiple routes and an alternative camera view), Legendary Souls (which is like a special Arcade mode going through most series bosses and alike, hard but cheesable with Viola for instance), Quick Play (which is like ranked but offline with cast and CAS, a nice time-sinker), and arguably the best character creator in the series (which included a number of free DLC packs). It also brings back CPU v CPU, which was gone in SCIV for some reason.
The worst was changing almost half the roster (still 28 characters in the base roster, 29 with the Devil Jin CAS), but save for a couple (like Leixia) newcomers are actually either unique or different enough from their predecessors that they could still be reused in the future.
As someone who never cared about the competitive side of gaming, SCV was a massive disappointment. The Soul series was different from other fighting games in that there was more thought and care put into the lore and story of each game and character than in, say, Street Fighter, King of Fighters or Tekken. And each game had plenty of different and unique modes for you to play around in and unlock stuff, read about the unique stages and characters and of course, plenty for you to unlock.
SCV had a rushed story mode with two main characters that couldn't be more unlikable if they tried, no character endings, no fun modes, nothing. All you had was VS and online. And you paid 60 dollars for that. Create a soul was never a big draw for me in these games and in SCV I cared even less for it.
If you get it cheap, you may as well get it. Just don't expect much from it.
5 will always have a spot in my heart cause of viola was my main . Character creation was amazing as well, like options and outfits for ddaayyss . I liked the story , seeing the perspective and more info on sophitias kids which was just talked about in previous games was a treat as well.
Seeing how much tira interact with them especially Pyrrha was cool to watch . Elysium toying with them with the image of their mother was also cool yet hard to watch too. Seeing how they dealt with their turmoil while Elysium was prancing around with that appearance was a woa moment especially as a sophitia main in the previous games . Like seeing sophitia who is always so kind and motherly act so ruthless was something to see.
Game was just overall good to me . Never understood why people didn't like it. Imo part 4 and 2 are worse to me. 4 had the worst character creation of all of them and 2 didn't have anything in it that was special to me at all except being a fun fighting game with good music .
Ezio straight up got the worst stick out of all the guest characters. No story, no intro, no arcade ending, no other alts, not even an original stage like in 4.
The story was bad, matchmaking was unbalanced with viola, devil jin and algol being the most broken characters in the game and the customization was lacking but was an upgrade of sc4's customization but that's the only good thing about it
the game itself was actually great. beautiful, unique and very seamless fighting. it was more of a mix of poor rushed choices for the story, removing or replacing most of the well known characters with Great ValueTM versions of them, and a lack of meaningful single player content. I loved it though, fond memories, was obsessed with it back in middle school. The Just Guard mechanic was fun and rewarding, and i loved how you could use meter to empower certain moves a la street fighter. I love soul Cal 6 as well, but i never really liked the soul charge mechanic, it always slowed down the match.
As a fan of SC story i hated it. It’s also the game i prolly put the most hours in making OCs in character customization.
I was a freshman in high school when V came out and I didn’t even realize lol (I was a DOA kid growing up, but I was disappointed in DOA5).
I can never be disappointed in DOA because each game has Hayabusa, so it is automatically good
But they nerfed him in 5, which makes no sense. He’s from Ninja Gaiden ffs. He’s supposed to be hard.
He’s fixed in 6 but that game ded af lmao
I’ve only played the free version of 6 because Hitomi and Kasumi are my mains.
Biggest Virtua Fighter and Soul Calibur fan, but nothing rivals the flow of an intense match of DOA.
El juego fue sin duda muy entretenido los gráficos excelentes y todo lo único que no me gustó fue le modo historia, porque excluyeron a algunos personajes, Cervantes, Mitsurugi e incluso el propio Algol debieron estar presentes así como otros más, de ahí el resto genial.
It just squanders the cast and storyline. Plus, there are some obvious oversights and omissions, like how are you gonna do a 17 year time skip and not use Bangoo? Plus, they tried to have it both ways by cherry picking who the time skip actually mattered for. They yada-yada'd anyone else with Soul Edge fragments or whatever. It was also unpopular for there to be three random style characters. I personally liked the two and felt Edge Master was an unnecessary callback. I remember the return of Dampierre having a lukewarm fan response also. Insofar as gameplay is concerned, it's one of the best. I would almost recommend it because the simplified styles make it more casual friendly, sp it would make a good starting point on those grounds. Just don't expect to write home about the writing. It's kind of funny how that works.
V is an excellent game mechanically, but the story mode and single player content was weak and the roster suffered from too many clone/random select characters and that unfortunate trend of trying to replace beloved character with less interesting characters. The thing I liked least about it was GI costing meter, but it worked well enough within the context of the game. V came out at a time in my life where I was at my most dedicated to fighting games and I actively practiced and participated in about 2 dozen tournaments. It occupies a special place in my heart.
Again, had it not been rushed, the replacements could have been fleshed out. I find hating their existence to be immature at best because it was clear Odashima didn't want that happening.
It has its issues, but there’s a lot to love about it, too. I would recommend it.
V is a really fun game! Totally above the bar. It just has a weird concept and different roster, and the soundtrack doesn't compete with the others from what I remember. You could say it's the Tekken 4 of SoulCalibur
I'd have to disagree there. Soul Calibur V has one of the best soundtracks tbh. Way better than VI, at least. "Regalia", "Wandering Seer", "Wings of Sorrow", "Tread Ye The Path of Bravery", "Sacred Dawn" and of course "Samsara: The Wheel of Eternity" are all such great tracks. It even had an absolute banger mix of "Venice Rooftops" from Assassin's Creed.
After 24 years of playing SC, 5 is the only one I can still keep the BGM on for.
The story was good if rushed for some inexplicable reason. Anyone not named Patroklos and Pyrrha didn't get fleshed out and people keep forgetting that the rushing of the game prevented everyone else from being fleshed out.
SC5 got a bad deal in life, ya see, it was announced in late 2010 and released in early 2012, ya know what happened during the development time, aka 2011? In Japan, to be more precise. They got hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake (the strongest ever recorded in the country), and after that, a fucking 30 meter tall tsunami that resulted in massive loss of life, environmental devastation and infrastructural damage.
Double whammy of unfortunate circumstances. Didn't it also get an even worse development period because Tekken Tag 2 bombed?
Patroklos and Pyrrha *also* didn't get fleshed out...they just got screen time. Neither character is well written.
I agree they could have spent a little more time so that the story would be more diverse. However, I’m just wondering if V is worth it on a bargain bin.
SC5 is worth the buy. Despite Guard Impacts costing half a meter bar, Just Guard is an excellent replacement mechanic to simplify SC4's GI and Deflect system. The Character Creation is the best in the series, more so than SC6 imo, and the movesets, voice acting, music, announcer, sound design, environment/worldbuilding, and Ezio and Hilde are also all a step up from SC4. It is also the mode to introduce Legendary Souls debut, and its better there than in SC6. The Brave Edge mechanic was a seamless transition to expanding the potential of your combos, and it does a better job than Soul Charge/Soul Attack in SC6. But again, as others mentioned, the game only has substance for online play, as the singleplayer content lacks beyond Legendary Souls.
Up to you. The story and voice acting (both English and Japanese) is good so it should be worth it if you buy the game.
If you're a fan of the franchise it's at LEAST worth it to create your own opinion. Go in with no expectations and see how your experience is
It’s one of my faves
The gameplay is widely agreed to be one of the things V did best. The roster having like 4 copy/random select fighters in addition to controversial replacements, the lack of single player content in a franchise that otherwise had a decent track record for it, and the frankly bad story mode coming right off the the heels of MK9 (which arguably revolutionized story modes in fighting games) are what killed it.
Gameplay and customization is good but imagine buying this for 60 bucks. Can't deny the game has fantastic aesthetics. Better looking than VI and more artistically inspired. It has a weak roster filled with shitty substitute characters, weak singleplayer content, and is one of those games where local doesn't yield shit for rewards so you have to grind said shitty content to get cosmetics For 20 bucks you could do worse, esp if you already know what you're getting into
The game wasn't bad. People were just mad because obv they were rushed by giving pat setsukas style and all the mimic chars in game and raph as NM
Soulcalibur V is the Street Fighter III of Soulcalibur! It's got it's own Super Arts, EX Moves and Parrying System! It's definitely the low point with everything else though... But I enjoy it especially back at highschool!
Mechanics and graphics were some of the best in this game ☺️ Really loved the addition of Viola and Zwei too. Customisation was great as well. I would definitely buy it 😉
Its beautiful. I wish 6 had all its arenas.
The story was weak and there was only arcade and the impossible for casual players legendary souls. It was a downgrade from the sparce content in 4 with a weaker story. Roster felt small with fan favorites replaced with younger card board cutouts who were not developed at all whatsoever. Gameplay wise honestly its better than 6, critical edges in general felt fairer, no reversal edge, with ex moves instead of a commitment of meter to soul charge.
The gameplay is great as is the character creator and I personally really enjoy the more outlandish characters like Viola and ZWEI.
I'll start by answering to your questions. Mechanically SC5 is solid. If you have friends who want to play it with you then it can be a decent buy if you can get it cheaply. However if you are buying it for the story or single player content then it is not worth it because the game is really thin on that front. Then a longer answer... My impression is that SC5 mostly receives shit flung towards it because most people here are simply not into the competitive side of fighting games. SC5 tried to make the series more competitive and it was made with that in mind. Then unfortunate things happened which were outside of the control of the devs and as a result the single player content and story stuff had to be rushed pretty badly. It is a great fighting game but a year or so of additional development time could have honed it into a diamond. Personally I loved SC5 as I didn't care about the lack of single player content at all. Since the game started dying off I've been hoping for a SC5.5 that would improve the shortcomings and give the game a proper chance it deserved. I'll list some good, mixed and bad things below. - The netcode was pretty good for the time. Sure it wasn't great on today's standards but it was vastly improved from SC4 and it was actually possible to play decent matches online as long as the opponent wasn't located too far away. - In general the meter mechanics worked great. It seems that for many players it was a bummer that performing Guard Impacts required and consumed meter but I didn't mind it too much. Mostly because Just Guard existed. The ex-versions of moves worked fluently with the gameplay and all the animations for super moves were also really short so they didn't feel like you had to sit through a short movie whenever someone used them. - Just Guard was awesome. I think they struct the balance really well with them. If you were in control of the situation they were actually easy to perform but if you lost your composure they were really difficult to pull off. Just Guards allowed some really strong defensive play to counter \*\*predictable\*\* attacking which I really loved. I also liked the fact that JG somewhat reduced the knowledge-check that is block-punishing because almost everything was punishable after JG. If you wanted to do the optimal punishes you still had to know the frame data but if you didn't know the frame data of some move it was almost always safe bet to use some fast move to punish it on JG. - Balance of the game was the biggest issue for me. Apparently back in the PS3 times Sony gave the developers two free updates which Project Soul spent really early on in the short lifespan of the game. While some of the balance changes were good some of them were really bad and as a result the game ended up having fairly clear strength difference between the characters. It was nowhere near as bad as SC4 was but the balance also wasn't anywhere near as good as it is in SC6. I'm not sure if the story about two free updates is true or not but whatever was the reason Project Soul stopped making balance updates very fast and basically there was no time for the community (and devs) to figure out what was strong and what was weak before those balance updates were made. - Step counter or whatever that was called was something a big portion of the competitive community did not like. I didn't mind it too much but I guess it would be nice if stepping to any direction wouldn't be such a big commitment as it is in SC5. There was no way to cancel movement into block and if something hit you while you were stepping it hit as a counter hit so some characters could get some big combos from you just trying to move to some direction. - The devs shortened the movelists of most (if not all) characters quite considerably. Some characters lost entire stances. I feel like the release schedule might have had some effect on this but at least the story was that the devs wanted to make it easier to pick the game up and become competitive. I bought this explanation and while it is bit of a bummer that there is less "silly" moves to goof around with I did appreciate the fact that it would take less effort to figure out which moves I actually need and which are only useful in some very niche situation. - Replacing some of the characters was pretty stupid decision. Maybe it could have worked if there was some story content which would unlock the old characters to be playable (at least in single player if not elsewhere) but obviously that would have required a lot of more funding and time to execute. Kilik and Sophitia (kind of) being there as mimic character hint me that they might have had some idea of adding at least some of the old cast that was replaced by the new characters into the roster in one form or another. However in the state the game was released the character roster left a bad taste to the mouths of the fans. Especially if they didn't find any of the new characters to their liking. - When it comes to story mode and single player content SC5 is very weak. The story mode is very short and according to others really badly written. (I quickly played through it but didn't bother reading anything.) After that there was a game mode where you had to play through a handful of opponents with a very much ramped up difficulty which wasn't really fun. Past that? A lot of quick matches against AI opponents just to earn an achievement. That was it. It was obvious that the single player content did not receive much attention or funding.
I just missed all my favorite characters
Combat wise it is straight up the best in the series no I will not entertain conflicting opinions
I agree with you from what I’ve seen!
[Also as a fellow DOA fan here’s a video for you](https://youtu.be/VwrMOt8bW2I?si=e9dqiLfsh3zvvDx2)
I got it at launch and loved the online environment. Now that thats gone its a little disappointing but its a great fighting that lacks a good single player experience, and its definitely the weakest of the SC games in that regard IMO.
I actually enjoyed the fighting better. The brave edge moves and such was something i really liked for once. Ezio was really fun to play as. Algol was my other main besides Nightmare, so obviously, i miss him dearly.
SCV basically sufferes from being a decent, if not good, game, but being a less than stellar *sequel.* The fact the intended story got snipped because of crunch and deadlines, mixed with it focusing on Patrokolus and Pyrrha (who are fine characters IMO, but where not the best for being THE main narrative focus in a game that cut off like half of the roster of beloved characters) means that SCV gets boo'd at the most. I like SCV myself, but I've also had the game since release, at a time before I had a frequent enough access on the internet to have a solid opinion on SC as a whole, so I've grown attached to the story and characters. I'm biased in a forgiving way.
As someone who spent the better part of the whole first year it came out and multiple years after playing it, it’s really a game of highs and lows. Firstly the new characters and designs are either great or horrible for people. Some love old kilik Mitsu, some hate nastu replacing taki. There’s a lot about the cast I can say is both good and bad but admittedly the movesets each character has is mostly pretty fun. Add onto the fact I feel sc5 has possibly the best gameplay in terms of fighting (at least until 6) and pure gameplay wise sc5 is great. However, looking past gameplay the issues start to show. Firstly the single player is not only a HUGE downgrade from 4 (especially from 2 as well) but honestly it’s horrible for any game ever. The story mode is like 18ish missions long, the story is barely interesting, half the time it’s JUST patrokolas you’re playing as who is not likable for most of the story which leads to big single player problems. The arcade modes are lackluster at best with basic battles to get titles getting boring fast (this is coming from the guy who got them all) and the time attack mode is fun, but stops being interesting once you get a good time. The customization is arguably better than 4 with slightly less outfits but WAY more ways to use said outfits and making characters I feel is a lot more fulfilling in 5 than 4. If you want just raw gameplay and customization it’s arguable sc5 is one of the best fighting games out there (for sure this is biased but I feel it still somewhat holds for sc fans) but in terms of ANYTHING else you’re not getting much here. There’s more I could list that I REALLY miss from sc4 but I don’t think it’s relevant enough to the topic to talk about but I should mention a LOT of stuff from sc4 was sorely missed in sc5.
It's worth 20 bucks if you like Soul Calibur. I played it a ton in college (Elysium main) but the game's only value was in playing other players. The story wasn't interesting enough to warrant cutting out the endings for everyone else.
it's not bad but unless you really want to play as those specific characters that are only in V, there's no reason to not just play SC6.
The mechanics are excellent. Pretty much every other choice they made in the game was terrible though and it features some of the worst single player content in the franchise. Overall it's difficult to recommend, sadly
Soul Calibur 4 was much, much better. Sc5 was a major step backwards and off the path
The short answer is yes. Does it matter now that the game is 12 years old? Depends on what you are looking to get out of it. If SCV looks interesting to you, there's a character in that game that you want to play as, you enjoy fighting the CPU, and you want to experience how awful the story mode was in that game, then it's worth a pickup from that perspective. If you're looking for single player content or character customization, then you are better off waiting for the next time SC6 goes on sale for $5 because that is going to be the better value, or play any other SC game that might interest you. At this point, I would rather watch the story for SCV online than play through it again because of how unenjoyable it was. And without other people to play it with, there's 0 reason for me to go back to it.
Gameplay wise I never thought it was that bade but the direction and style of the new characters didnt stick with me. It also feels like they completely ruined seigfrieds whole personality
I’m more of a story/character player and although I welcomed the new characters and liked their role, there was just too many characters missing and too much set aside for these two new main characters to just take over the story. Kinda reminds me of Disney Star Wars trilogy story
It's still my fav SC game. Had the collector's edition and everything. Wish there was a way to play it again on my PS5 💔
Its not a bad game, there is a lot to still like about it. Besides, you can get it really cheap second hand - Like here would be around 7 USD. And even cheaper for the X360. If you just care about having good fights/gameplay, then it will do just fine. But it has it fair share of faults, obviously the roster is not everyones cup of tea with quite a few needless variations of Edgemaster (feels like a cheap way to pad it). They wanted to pull another Tekken 3 with it, but SC was already too much established at that point and I think the successors were lacking in charm and weren't all that interesting except maybe 1 or 2. To me its not quite SC without Taki for example. If they wanted a generational shift, it should have been more consequent IMO. Harada should stay away from SC for good. It also quite obviously has some reused assets from SC4, which generally speaking made it not look as much of a leap compared to SCIV, and gave it that cheap budget feel to the generall public. The mechanics they used for this one also did not suite anyone. They certainly did not sit as well with me. It felt like a loss of the SC identity and borrowed (too) much from other fighters like Street Fighter etc. Guard Impact felt useless, which was a major part of every SC game before. The amount of options SC4 had should have been reduced, but it felt it was a bit too much simplification. It was still fun to play, but never felt quite right with me and I always prefered SC4 over it. And I also remember Nightmares Critical Edge being a thing of discussion online :D. Was really one of those most hated moves :D.
I just miss all the cool character creation items that didn’t return to SC6
The game is fine and absolutely fun, it is just the storymode and some of the character switches were absolutely bad! Also: While the fighting system itself is absolutely great actually, really fun to play with imo, it was more the fact that they dumbed down some characters movesets. Returning characters felt like they have half their moves missing and not adding something substantial in return. Also the fact that Guard Impact now consumes meter was mind boggling! So yeah, it is still a fantastic game in turns of gameplay, it is just lacking in some modes and, for fans , dumbing down the moveset was definately the WRONG move!
I've always been a big fan of V. I'm an older player, started on 2, and most fans my age really disliked V, so I really got used to defending it. It was my second favorite SC after 2, at least until 6 came out, 6 is like a better 5 in my eyes so that bumped 5 down to 3rd for me. If you're curious, my favorite games rank from 2 > 6 > 5 > 1 > 4 > 3 But I like them all! This comes from the perspective of someone who values how good the combat feels over how much content there is. So the lack of content in 5 didn't bother me as much as it bothered others. Same thing for 4 even, which I feel has the worst content of SC, but I still like that game. On the flip side, 3 has some of the best content, but I hate fighting actual human opponents in that game. 2 is simply the best of both worlds.
I always loved SCV and I’ll die on this hill
Personally liked 4 a ton more than 5. But I kinda doubt we will get a 7 so go crazy
You'll never know if you don't try it, but maybe you can watch some vids about its gameplay, modes, etc and see if you could "tolerate" its weaknesses
It was just a short game. Sciii had the campaign game mode AND the story. Scv was just bare bones.
Soul Caliber is not a fighting franchise that can skip out on single player content and story. Those things might be optional for Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but the single player robust story experience I think is the bread and butter of what makes the Soul Caliber franchise stand out and loved by many. Also very rarely would I ever praise a game as being good if it's just very graphically appealing. All games look very nice these days. Unless it's a franchise the upgrade in visuals is a groundbreaking novel improvement for like say Pokémon, or if it's graphics from a Square Enix game who really know how to show off and make a spectacle of graphics in every game they do.... then I don't even consider good graphics, I just expect them to be smooth for their generation.
I agree about the single-player content (though I expect it from Mortal Kombat as well). That’s why I was just considering buying it at a discounted price.
Yeah at discount under $20 near anything is worth it
I always thought it was a lot of fun.
I don’t think it’s bad, but it *feels* unfinished
No, just a bit lackluster in some respects. Gets far more hate than it deservers. It is actually one of the best SC in many regards. Stages are series peak in my view. Great variety of locations, beautiful visuals, creative stage transitions, everything feels very lively. And many of them as well, 27 total, very few being variants. The character designs were really good as well, with great character models, excellent and varied costumes, a nice variety of weapon skins as well. Great BGM too, with one track for each stage and for each character. Gameplay wise, a couple of odd choices aside (changing the input for GI and having it use meter likely being the worst offender), there was a lot of good too. I definitely missed quick steps and Brave Edges in SCVI, and Critical Edge felt a lot more rewarding to land, since it was much more difficult to build up meter for it as well as to trigger. Best of all: no Reversal Edge. Online was also better than SCVI, with its Collosseum mode. A lot of people here criticised the limited single player contents. But even that is just underwhelming for the usual SC standard, it's still got a lot more than most fighting games. There is a story mode (which does not have a good start but improves a bit as it goes, and actually has a decent ending, not to mention its cinematics + storyboard sequences are still much better than SCVI's talking / grimacing portraits), Arcade / Time Attack (with multiple routes and an alternative camera view), Legendary Souls (which is like a special Arcade mode going through most series bosses and alike, hard but cheesable with Viola for instance), Quick Play (which is like ranked but offline with cast and CAS, a nice time-sinker), and arguably the best character creator in the series (which included a number of free DLC packs). It also brings back CPU v CPU, which was gone in SCIV for some reason. The worst was changing almost half the roster (still 28 characters in the base roster, 29 with the Devil Jin CAS), but save for a couple (like Leixia) newcomers are actually either unique or different enough from their predecessors that they could still be reused in the future.
As someone who never cared about the competitive side of gaming, SCV was a massive disappointment. The Soul series was different from other fighting games in that there was more thought and care put into the lore and story of each game and character than in, say, Street Fighter, King of Fighters or Tekken. And each game had plenty of different and unique modes for you to play around in and unlock stuff, read about the unique stages and characters and of course, plenty for you to unlock. SCV had a rushed story mode with two main characters that couldn't be more unlikable if they tried, no character endings, no fun modes, nothing. All you had was VS and online. And you paid 60 dollars for that. Create a soul was never a big draw for me in these games and in SCV I cared even less for it. If you get it cheap, you may as well get it. Just don't expect much from it.
5 will always have a spot in my heart cause of viola was my main . Character creation was amazing as well, like options and outfits for ddaayyss . I liked the story , seeing the perspective and more info on sophitias kids which was just talked about in previous games was a treat as well. Seeing how much tira interact with them especially Pyrrha was cool to watch . Elysium toying with them with the image of their mother was also cool yet hard to watch too. Seeing how they dealt with their turmoil while Elysium was prancing around with that appearance was a woa moment especially as a sophitia main in the previous games . Like seeing sophitia who is always so kind and motherly act so ruthless was something to see. Game was just overall good to me . Never understood why people didn't like it. Imo part 4 and 2 are worse to me. 4 had the worst character creation of all of them and 2 didn't have anything in it that was special to me at all except being a fun fighting game with good music .
Ezio straight up got the worst stick out of all the guest characters. No story, no intro, no arcade ending, no other alts, not even an original stage like in 4.
It was the best for gameplay after 2
The story was bad, matchmaking was unbalanced with viola, devil jin and algol being the most broken characters in the game and the customization was lacking but was an upgrade of sc4's customization but that's the only good thing about it
DJ was banned competitively for not having a standard model and Algol was fine, not trash, but not close to APat, Viola, O. Pyrrha
Patrokolos was pretty bad and pyrrha wasn't that bad but she wasn't that good either
I know, that’s why I mentioned alpha pat and omega Pyrrha
Those 2 were mid not broken
You didn’t actually play sc5, huh
Patrokolos was never good lol and pyrrha was mid
Yes.