
	Platform Xbox 360 Genre Fighting Publisher Namco Bandai Developer Namco Bandai ESRB T (Teen) Released January 31, 2012

- Online play saves the short single-player experience with plenty of hours of online fighting entertainment - Continues the rich tradition of being one of the best-looking fighting games around

- Single-player story mode is extremely short - Voice acting and dialogue can be laughably bad

Review: Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (360) Review: Batman: Arkham City (360) Review: Soul Calibur IV (PS3) Feature: Top 10: Best Cleavage Part III
Newsletter
Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly. Enter E-Mail Address Below: Subscribe \| Unsubscribe

SoulCalibur V

Score: 8.0 / 10

Along with Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Tekken, SoulCalibur is one of the true classic fighting game franchises. The defining signatures of SoulCalibur games have been the amazing graphics and spectacular blade fighting, with characters using all kinds of deadly instruments of cutting and chopping bad intentions to secure victory in battle. And SoulCalibur V on the Xbox 360 (also on the PS3), the newest iteration of the series that began way back in 1996, retains

Advertisement

- Xbox 360 Game Reviews
- Fighting Game Reviews
- Namco Bandai Game Reviews

those signatures "with more of the same": it’s visually impressive with all the slicing and slashing swordplay gamers could ever ask for.

Story-wise, the plot takes place 17 years after SoulCalibur IV’s finale (in the 17th century; 1607 to be exact), where Siegfried vanquished Nightmare. This time, the main character is Patroklos, and along the way his sister, Pyrrha, joins the

Advertisement

fray. They are the offspring of Sophitia and Rothion (not exactly a bunch of common household names, are they?). It’s been a very rough and tumble childhood for both, as their father and mother both supposedly died when they were young, and Pyrrha herself was kidnapped and has no memory of her childhood at all. The plot doesn’t really make much sense from beginning to end, and the dialogue and voice acting can be truly awful at times, but with all the attention needed to attack and defend in the battles, the lack of a really coherent story isn’t noticed as much.

There are 27 stages in the single-player game, where gamers will battle through SoulCalibur V’s character roster. There are a lot of returning ones, too, including Nightmare, Viola, Hilde, Siegfried, Mitsurugi, Astaroth and Ivy, among others of the over two dozen in SoulCalibur V, and there’s even a cameo by Assassin’s Creed’s Ezio Auditore (because it just wouldn’t be a SoulCalibur game without a cameo appearance).

Even with all those stages and characters to fight, the single-player story goes by in a sword’s slash. Average gamers should be able to complete the entire story mode in two or three hours. It does look great throughout those few hours, however, as the game is absolutely gorgeous, with fast and furious fighting in nicely designed environments with weapons of various sizes and shapes – small and sleek to big-ass and heavy to wield, too.

Fortunately, as fleeting as the single-player mode is, SoulCalibur V has good online play to extend gaming time plenty. Ranked and unranked matches can be undertaken, and there’s even a lobby that serves as a social media outlet. The Global Colossco, as it’s referred to, allows gamers to chat with other SoulCalibur V gamers, and challenge them to individual or tournament fights.

While there’s nothing revolutionary in the gameplay of SoulCalibur V from its predecessors, fans of the franchise will enjoy once again the blade battling that looks just as good as it plays.

- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com

(March 7, 2012)