Soul Calibur V

by Namco

• A new generation - Follow the story of Patroklos, son of Sophitia as the battle for the Soul Swords continues
• Multiple fighting styles - Choose from a roster of unique characters, each with their own deadly weapons, fighting styles and visual flare
• Dynamic battles - Blow away your competition using finely tuned battle mechanics
• Unlimited character customization - Create your personalized fighter with the most robust character creation tool in the SOULCALIBUR series
• Face off against the competition - Challenge the computer AI, compete against your friends or challenge fighters from around the world with the massive online features

Product Details

Check out the Reviewers Guide for "Soul Calibur V." [PDF]

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B003O6EA4E
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches ; 4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: January 31, 2012
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #890 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #20 in Video Games > Xbox 360 > Games > Action > Fighting

Product Description

Platform: Xbox 360 | Edition: Standard

From the Manufacturer

Ezio Auditore from the critically acclaimed Assassin’s Creed™ series will be a playable guest character in SOULCALIBUR® V for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system! View larger.

The eternal struggle of swords and souls continues!
SOULCALIBUR V is the latest entry in the premier weapons-based head-to-head fighting series. SOULCALIBUR V takes place 17 years after the events of SOULCALIBUR IV and continues the epic story of warriors in search of the legendary Soul Swords in 17th century Europe. The heroic battles transpire in a beautiful and fluid world with eye-popping graphics and visual appeal. SOULCALIBUR V tunes the battle, movement, and visual systems so players can pull off cool dynamic attacks with ease and battle with complete freedom.

Key Game Features

• A new generation - Follow the story of Patroklos, son of Sophitia as the battle for the Soul Swords continues
• Multiple fighting styles - Choose from a roster of unique characters, each with their own deadly weapons, fighting styles and visual flare
• Dynamic Battles - Blow away your competition using finely tuned battle mechanics
• Unlimited character customization - Create your personalized fighter with the most robust character creation tool in the SOULCALIBUR series
• Face off against the competition - Challenge the computer AI, compete against your friends or challenge fighters from around the world with the massive online features

Additional Screenshots:

Follow the story of Patroklos, Son of Sophitia. View larger.

Tons of different weapons and fighting styles to master! View larger.

Introducing a new generation of fighters! View larger.

Compete against your friends or with fighters around the world! View larger.

Product Description

The eternal struggle of swords and souls continues! SOULCALIBUR V is the latest entry in the premier weapons-based head-to-head fighting series. SOULCALIBUR V takes place 17 years after the events of SOULCALIBUR IV and continues the epic story of warriors in search of the legendary Soul Swords in 17th century Europe. The heroic battles transpire in a beautiful and fluid world with eye-popping graphics and visual appeal. SOULCALIBUR V tunes the battle, movement, and visual systems so players can pull off cool dynamic attacks with ease and battle with complete freedom.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 30 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Namco has severely stripped down the single player experience in favor of online multiplayer. February 13, 2012

By Dawn

Platform for Display:Xbox 360|Edition:Standard

Fun: 2.0 out of 5 stars   

I'll be discussing various parts of the game in this review.

ARCADE MODE

After enjoying all previous titles in the series, I was excited to get my hands on this one. I fired up Arcade mode from the Offline Play menu, selected a character, played through 6 battles, and...no character ending? What?!

That's right. There are no character endings in the game. Period. The only "ending" is in Story mode.

There's a few more offline play modes but they're just standard variations like Quick Battles, Training Mode, and Vs Mode.

STORY MODE

Story mode can be beaten in 3-4 hours. You start off playing as Sophitia's son, Patroklos, and then you will use 2 more characters as the story progresses through 20 battles.

Cutscenes consists of still black and white drawings. The acting is overly dramatic and the story itself is full of terrible writing, forced character archetypes, and illogical decisions and actions made by characters.

It also gives the impression that a lot of the story is happening off screen.

New characters are introduced but none of their background is ever explained.

NEW CHARACTERS

These new characters are near carbon copies of characters from the previous games such as Taki, Kilik, etc. They have only slight variations to their movesets.

ONLINE PLAY

I'm not going to go into much detail with Online mode. The netcode is much better than it was in SC4 so you can actually play online against others and it won't be a laggy mess.

CREATE A SOUL

Create A Soul returns once again but doesn't have as much content and variety. It's fun creating your own characters and unlocking items for them as you play, but you can only unlock them by gaining levels. So you end up just picking one character and repeatedly hack and slash your way through battles to get XP points to level them up.

All the CaS parts will be unlocked at level 52. It doesn't take nearly as long as you think. At level 53 you unlock joke weapons and after that it's stickers and thumbnails.

There's no optional Tower of Lost Souls or achieving X amount of rewards to unlock all the parts.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

It's clear that this game was rushed. It's pretty bare bones and has much more focus on online play this time around. I'd highly recommend waiting for it to be at least $15 or just renting it.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Buy it for the combat and superb online February 28, 2012

By L. Pham

Platform for Display:Xbox 360| Edition:Standard|Amazon Verified Purchase

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

My brother and I have spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours each on this series since Soul Calibur on Dreamcast. Probably only about 100 of those hours went into single player.
I'll agree with all the other reviewers that the single player experience in this game is lacking. Story mode is 2 hours of play. After that you have Quick Battle to earn 240 titles and Legendary Souls. The A ranked AI in those modes will eat your lunch if you are uninitiated. I consider it tough but very doable. It was somewhat easier than SC4's Tower of Souls. I'll remove one star for the single player. It just doesn't matter to me that much.

The meat of this game is in the fantastic online. The netcode is among the best in fighters. 4 or 5 bar connection is very close to playing on the same console. It is possible to block low attacks and punish on reaction.

THE ONLINE MODES:

RANKED: You play for online world rankings. By default the search for an opponent is set to 4 bars or better. You get 10 seconds to confirm the fight. AFK searchers become a non-issue.

PLAYER MATCHES: Player created rooms. Up to six people can join a lobby. Cool thing about this mode is that spectating is done in a window. The spectators can use the chat window to communicate while the battle rages on. Nice addition. Again, 10 seconds to confirm the fight when it's your turn or you get bumped to the end of the line.

GLOBAL COLESSEO: Huge region based rooms where you can challenge other players specifically, join a pool of random matches, take part in tournaments, or just chat.

REPLAY: I love this feature. Anytime you play online your battle is stored temporarily. You can save and upload these replays to cherish your most awesome moments forever or study what went wrong. I've spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing myself and watching my rival's matches on replay.

The only glaring omission I've noticed is no TEAM BATTLE. I was hoping for Project Soul to bring this back.

I'm pretty close to calling this game my favorite of the series due to the combat. It's feels faster even though the frame data says that it's comparable to past entries to the series. Maybe they just beefed up the 8-way run. You can see the heavy influence of the Street Fighter series at work here, especially Third Strike. A meter has been added that builds on attacks and taking damage. The meter can be spent to change the properties of normal attacks (Brave Edge) or on cinematic Critical Edge attacks. Guard Impact has been moved from an anytime active defense to one that requires meter. To compensate it now affects lows, mids, and high attacks without having to select. It still does not work on throws.

There has been a de-emphasis on the low-mid mix-ups of the past. Many lows are now punishable even when they hit. The end of many low strings are still blockable even if you got hit with the first attack in the string. The combat is closer to the rock/paper/scissors of horizontal/vertical/step premise that the series first introduced. And I'm much happier for it. Don't get me wrong - the low-mid mix-ups on wake-up are still there. They just don't seem as effective as in the past. Chances are that if you got knocked down with a low you either got caught in a counter hit or it was slow enough to reasonably react to.

I haven't run into any glaring balance issues, yet. There are a few characters that have a leg up on me since they are rarely played and I have no experience versus them.

GRAPHICS: The prettiest fighter around. The character models are slightly improved over SC4, but it seems that the stages and lighting where taken up another notch. They are lush and gorgeous, bathed in light and shadow.

CHARACTER CREATION: I don't think there's a fighter that does this better. There are many pieces from SC4 that make a comeback here and many new pieces. In addition you can add stickers, modified special effects, and custom geometry to your character. You can texture your parts with a large selection of patterns that you can resize and rotate. This allows for some very disturbing and annoying creations online, but also very cool creations.

BOTTOM LINE: If you play fighting games for combat against other players or just showing off your creations then this is a must-buy. Otherwise, don't even bother with a rental. There's really nothing to see here if you want single player content.

26 of 32 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Soul Calibur V: NOT WORTH IT April 3, 2012

By S. Palumbo

Platform for Display:Xbox 360|Edition:Standard

Fun: 2.0 out of 5 stars   

Soul Calibur V: NOT WORTH IT

Let me start off by saying this: If all you care about is online vs. play then this game is absolutely amazing and gets a 5 STAR OMG BUY THIS NOW RATING.

If you like the rest of the 99% of people who actually want some product for their money then read the rest of the review.

Soul Calibur V is probably the weakest title in the series. I mean this game has nothing to make you want to pop it back in and play it again once you beat story mode.

STORY MODE: Okay this is where the game was suppose to shine. It fails, that simple. Why? Well first off its barely even a "Story Mode". Second the story mode takes close to 3 hours to complete. Third, the story revolves around the new main characters Patroklos and Pyrrha, the son and daughter of Sophita. You get to actually play as Patroklos, Pyrrha, and Z.W.E.I through the story mode. That's it. You can't play as anyone other than these three characters and to make matters worse the character you have to play is per-determined for each episode. The plot is very linear and not at all well fleshed out. Honestly its the type of short story that you would expect an 8th grader to write up as an English class homework assignment. Most of the rest of the cast make brief cameo appearances but don't actually contribute much to the story. Several make no appearance at all. But my ***BIGGEST CRITICISM*** of the story mode is its ***ALMOST COMPLETE LACK OF CGI ANIMATION*** With a few exceptions most of the story is told in really poor story board art that seams to have been scanned in at the last second so that they could get the game released for deadline. I mean come on, this is suppose to be the show piece of your new game, and this is what you put out. This would have been excusable back during the 8bit NEW or Super NES era but not when you've got the XBOX 360 or PS3 platforms. If all you get to play is 3 characters in this mode everything in between better be fully animated, with voice overs. I better feel like this is a movie in addition to a video game. The only thing that salvages the story mode is the fact that the ending was done right. It is fully animated and has some beautiful music. Had this not been done, I would have called this game totally worthless.

Lets move on to the next section: Arcade Mode.
This was a complete failure. Sorry, it sucks. Here's why.
-Reason number one: THERE ARE NOT ANIMATED CUT SCENES, STORY, OR EVEN ENDINGS FOR ANY OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS. That's right nothing. This is as simple as a fighting game gets. You pick a character, fight through six battles, face an over juiced boss, and that's it. No ending, nothing. If I was in an Arcade I would start kicking the machine and ask for the owner to open the coin box to get my money back. I'm sorry but even Street Fighter II had endings for its characters. There is no good reason why even brief animated endings where not included. This really diminished the replay value of the game. The ending is what you play for, its your reward for putting up with all the in game vs battle frustration. Take that away and all you have is a repackaged Training Mode and that's what this is.

Reason number two: You have 3 clone fighters. That's right not one, but 3. Edgemaster makes his return, which I'm sure the fans will be happy about. His whole gimmick is that is fighting style is randomly selected for every round so you never know what you're going to get. That's cool, but his gimmick is then cheapened by Elysium and Kilik. Elysium randomly selects her style from all female characters on the roster from round to round and Kilik has access to all the male characters. So we have 3 characters who all use the same Gimmick. Sorry but these slots could have been used to put in several more fighting styles. Its laziness plain and simple.

Reason number three: Dampierre. This character is either pre-order or DLC only. In other words you have to pay extra for him. So not only does the roster contain 3 characters that are essentially the same but now you have an empty slot to boot.

Next up we have: LEGENDARY SOULS.
-To sum this up. This is what happens when you set the game to extremely extremely pro hard difficulty. Most casual players simply will not use it or deal with the frustration very long. I understand why its there but the same thing could have been achieved by simply adding an extra difficulty mode the already lacking arcade mode.

QUICK BATTLE:
This is a sad shadow of its former self. At first it seems cool, you get to fight randomly generated characters and earn titles. Then you realize something. 1.) THE TITLES DON'T MEAN ANYTHING and 2.) YOU'RE JUST FIGHTING CLONES OF THE CHARACTERS IN ARCADE MODE. Once that revelation hits you, this mode becomes worthless. In previous editions, namely Soul Calibur III you had cool fighting modes, like wall slammer, where you had to wall smash your opponents or ring out mode. Not only did these make the game fun to play but you could practice these maneuvers in a themed fighting environment.

And now onto the CREATE A SOUL or CaS for short:
-This is really neat feature but they managed to goof this up as well. First off the same problem from the original Create-a-Soul option in Soul Calibur III is still present and in some ways worse. You can only COPY an existing character's move set. With the exception of the "Devil Jinn" Tekken fighting style, you cannot have a unique fighting style. Some people claim its because letting you select your own moves would be too complicated. For those in this train of thought let me point to Wrestlemania 2000 for the N64. You could customer build your character's appearance, entry music, and MOVE SET. Sorry, if a game of console that is 2 generations removed can do it then there is no excuse why it cannot be done here. To make matters worse, we've even seen a better create a character in Soul Calibur III and IV. In Soul Calibur III you could pick alternate fighting styles that were similar but not direct clones of the main cast. In Soul Calibur IV you could even customize your own weapon effects and fighting style with in game skill sets. While the character creator is pretty, and it allows for a wide variety of aesthetic customization, that's it. Its just eye candy.

But wait here's the real rip off: They are going to slowly release more and more parts of the create a character as items that can be purchased as downloadable content. So you have to pay more money, to improve an already lacking game.

Still Soul Calibur V does have some bright spots.
-The fighting styles have been nicely cleaned up. It feels natural. A good example of this is Ivy. For the longest time this character was very challenging to learn as you had to become intimately familiar with all her stances and transitions from sword to coiled to whip form and back again. In this version they've cleaned up her fighting style nicely, making it very fluid without destroying what made Ivy fun to play.
-Second it is beautifully animated and scored.
-Lastly if you just want a fun beat'em up game to share with friends at your home or online then you will not be disappointed.

That much being said for only those advantages this should have been a $20 Xbox live arcade release at best.

For $60 to $80 dollars I expect far more than that. I expect solid individual story lines. I expect tons of beautiful animations. I expect plenty of single player options to keep me entertained for hours, you know, like when my friends are off at work. I guess I expect a good video game. And I don't think that's too much to ask for.

It pains me to do this as I am a long time fan of the Soul Calibur series, but Soul Calibur V has no soul, and just barely squeaks by with a 2 star rating. My advice. Pick up Soul Calibur IV, its got more to do, but the online experience will be lacking. And if you still have a PS2 find a good used copy of Soul Calibur III and see what a good video game looks and feels like. As for Soul Calibur V, wait for it to hit rock bottom prices (like between $9.99 and $19.99) and then pick it up for your collection or better yet, just rent it and return it as needed.