It just felt like they got lazy with characters to me, but if they really were as rushed as they say than it makes sense they would put out an incomplete product, but even then maybe cheap dlc. Why would the immortal Zasalamel stop fighting? If they wanted to drop Seung Mina, why not have a guard with a halberd or something like nobushi from for honor take her place. Alpha patroklos could have done the same and we could have gotten Setsuka or another expy. 5 had enough to it that I kept on coming back but even so I felt that characters like Pyrrah and omega Pyrrah were too similar, and yes one was vicious and the other hesitant but at that point it could have been another Tira but with a sword and shield. I enjoyed 3s expiramentation even if it was a little shallow, 4 had some really in depth style development and a large roster so I had plenty to play with. I really loved every soul calibur since I picked up 2, because of this numbers 3,4, and 5 all had about 10 memory card saves where I unlocked everything just so I could make more custom characters. I think I was less upset by the similarities to their parents/predecessors and more upset by the lack of diversity in styles. They should have given the game another year of development and delivered a finished product.
I could go on, but you get the point by now. Just so much potential for everything else that could have been that wasn't.
There's the whole Kilik becoming an Edge Master thing, too, which is very lightly barely touched on. We could've followed Maxi and the kids on their journey like we followed Patroklos on his journey, so we'd have had context for the conversation that they understood each other but we were just kind of left going, eh, wait what? Okay I guess we're fighting now. Like it's pretty clear to anyone who's done research and/or paid attention that Nightmare is using Raphael as a host instead of just being a mass of souls or a fake body or whatever, and after his defeat in the story mode is where the Raphael story would have began, him trying to figure out what the heck's happened and what happened to Amy, would have ran into Viola and Z.W.E.I., and maybe we'd have learned who the heck Z.W.E.I. Instead, we've had to glean story from vague battle quotes, Japanese art books, and other external sources. I agree with the idea that if the story mode was completed and every character was explored, then yes, the new folks would have stood a fighting chance. Personally I'd like to see Pyrrha return as I feel there's a lot of hidden potential to obtain from a character such as her, especially now she's permanently stuck in a Malfested state. I never played Soul Edge but I have to imagine even that was more interesting than Soul 5's story.īut my question is would we have liked these characters if we'd simply gotten more time with them? Would it have been more preferable to just have a Soul 3 storyline again instead of Soul 5's ambitious yet poorly executed storyline? And would we ever want to see these characters return or have they been tainted by Soul 5's poor use of them? Viola might be Amy, Astaroth is a different Astaroth, Yoshimitsu is just a new Yoshimitsu etc.Īll of these characters barely get any screentime at all and have some of the most bland character interactions ever seen in a Soul Calibur game. Xiba likes food, Natsu is a plucky anime ninja girl, Leixia is basically her mother. The main problem then arose when the story would travel and we'd come across other characters who I hesitate to call "new" due to them being basically palette swaps of their parents. She had her own problems but I genuinely enjoyed both her gameplay and story. His only saving grace was that he occasionally stopped being the focus and transferred to Pyrrha. Then I got stuck with Patrokolos, one of the most unlikable protagonists I've ever had the displeasure of playing. I can get on board with that, Edgemaster Mode was fantastic! Okay I thought, they're railroading me into a story similar to Soul Calibur 2's Edgemaster Mode. So I loaded up Story Mode and much to my shock there was no character selection.
Despite its lacking features, I truly enjoyed Soul Calibur 4's gameplay and was excited to see how Soul Calibur 5 was going to build on it. I can remember the hopefulness that I first experienced when I first loaded up Soul Calibur 5.