Soul Calibur… V! The long awaited sequel to SCIV back in 2008. This game takes place seventeen years after the events of IV, meaning that some fan favorites have been replaced. This may cause some die-hard players to dismiss this one because their favorite character isn’t in the game, but those that were removed have successors that are just as good as the original; trust me this is one of the best Soul Calibur games to date. There have also been other character additions like Ezio Auditore from the Assassin’s Creed series and Devil Jin from Tekken which both fit the SC universe a bit better than the Star Wars guests from IV. If you are into the series then this sequel will be a piece of cake to pick up and play, but this game is not beginner friendly. You might want to go into the training mode to master a character before you begin to face off against any human opponents, but even the training modes aren’t very helpful without any guidance, unless you have the patience to read all the little instructions the game gives you.

The mechanics have the gameplay have been changed slightly to give the game a faster pace. The fighters have all been given the addition of “Brave Edge” attacks that let you extend combos like never before. You also have the ability to do moves known as “Critical Edges” which can help deal large amounts of damage quickly, allowing for comebacks. These attacks come at a price, however, which is monitored by your “Soul Gauge” which builds depending on how many attacks you dish out and how many attacks you take, so learning to pay close attention to your gauge can be a valuable skill because either of these techniques could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Though the gameplay is incredible, the story beneath the battling is mediocre at best. The SoulCalibur series has never been known for it’s deep, thought-provoking storylines, and this time around was only mildly different. There is brief story diving into the lives of two new characters Patroklos and Pyrrha. The few animated cutscenes they managed to throw in are absolutely breathtaking, but these beautiful pieces of art are overshadowed by the sepia colored sketches accompanied by bland voiceovers. As a player it felt like the designers got lazy, so they added the drawings into the story mode as filler. If they would have had the beautiful animation throughout the whole thing then the bad storyline could’ve been tolerable, but hey at least they had a storyline this time.

The game of course offers multiple modes, and one of the offline modes that is definitely fun to play is “Quick Battle Mode” where you face created characters made from all over the world. It is fun to see the types of characters people have created, and it can be very time consuming because you can play consecutively for over 100 battles for you to fight. Overall this game is pretty fun if you can tolerate the lack of teaching and the sorry excuse for a plot, but you can always spend hours online building up your online rank and going into rooms where you can be a spectator for other battles. The series is, after all, a fighting game, and it really went back to the basics with this installment, so if you’re looking for a challenging fighting game that consists of pure skill be sure to grab your copy of SoulCalibur V.