Soulcalibur V

I played Soulcalibur and its first sequel, Soulcalibur II, to death back in the day. I still consider them both to be masterpieces. For whatever reason (life happens), I lost touch with the series after playing the living hell out of II. I would never end up buying or playing III or IV. When this game was announced, I decided I'd make my return and try out online fighting for the first time ever. The fact that they were adding a character creation mode also interested me.

Well, I ended up getting a little too hyped and even bought the collector's edition. Honestly, I wish I had just rented this game for a weekend. That's what this game feels like -- a good weekend rental. The combat is fun but it just doesn't compare to I and II, something about it just feels... off.

The stage music and stages themselves are perfectly fine, but nothing groundbreakingly unique or innovative. The character models are OK, but don't come close to the old ones. The character creation mode, in my opinion, was a dud. The online was oftentimes laggy which left the controls feeling unresponsive. This was greatly disappointing because all the friends I'd played couch co-op style with back in the days of I and II had moved on, so online was my only option and half the time it was an absolute miserable experience.

Still, I have kept this game on my shelf after all these years because it's not an AWFUL game... I guess there's something to be said about games ripe for series material that peak too early on. Both Tekken and Soulcalibur have that problem -- none of the sequels are ever going to compare to those early peaks. Lightning in a bottle is hard to replicate.