Soul Caliber 5 > Soul Caliber 4 (Lots of Reading)

[DoubleU12]

If you don't like reading go away.

Now I'm not particularly epic amazing at Soul Caliber 4. I have a win rate of about 75% which is pretty good but I learned everything from actually playing against people rather than spending time in training mode learning fancy new combos so obviously you can already tell my fighting style has lack luster combing ability but I'm quite good at out prioritizing my opponent or finding when they're vulnerable.

I'm by no means the best and because this is a competitive game I'm sure most of you would say I was worthless trash at the game. Which is probably true since at this point I really should have amazing unfair combos like all those crazy lv 500+ people with 89% win rates I beat all the time, but I'm at least good enough at the game to know what I'm talking about. So if we can at least agree on that my overly competitive peers then please read on. If you can't, then please assume I'm trash that's not worth the air I breath and have a wonderful day embarking on the further adventures you have this fine day.

I don't keep my opinion on Soul Caliber 4 a secret. It suxed, it was terrible. It was such a poor experience that it makes me want to cry and Soul Caliber 3 was better is every possible way.

It had better costume design
It had more characters
It actually had quality offline content!!! : O Remember that stuff. If you play Call of Duty then obviously not.
It probably was more balanced. I dun remember or care.

However 4 had 2 remarkable saving graces to the point that it made 3 forgettable. Namely Online play and adjusted balancing...(The only game in the series that was worse that 4 was Broken Destiny...cuz it was Soul Caliber 4 but without online XD haha.) I guess if you had to nit pick you could argue it also had more jedis as well.

Soul Caliber IV, now with 300% more Jedi!!! ^_~

Despite being the worst game in the series next to Broken Destiny. (I never actually played 1 but I assume it was better.) It was the most played because you could play online keeping it fresh. Hell... it's been like what 2 weeks since 5 came out and I play 4 at least twice a week still.

I've heard a lot of negative opinions on 5 and I can understand most of them...although they're crybaby reasons...cuz you all are crybabies.

They nurfed the characters. All of them, except Mitsurugi. But that's obvious, Mitsurugi is like their template. Start with him and make all their other characters from there.

This game also includes 8 new characters...well...ok actually it only has 3. Guy who summons a ghost of a wolf, Piss face and Viola. The rest are just new female characters they added to replace an older 1 Namco thinks a female over the age of 26 are no longer sexually attractive.

To hide their own pedophilic perverse minds with these 6 new preteen girls they added, they removed half the female characters entirely from the game so there isn't an OVERWHELMING majority of female characters. Talim, Sung Mina, Setsuka, Sung Mina and Cassandra...oh and Sung Mina Y_Y But don't worry, they kept Hilde...cuz she's useful...<.< Yeah...useful.

(Even lv 1000+ online players can't actually play Hilde worth a damn. Her white swooshy moves aren't as great as you think they are, stop pretending!!!)

So what is my point? Well basically my point is there are a lot of reasons people have an immediate hate for Soul Caliber 5. I've heard all the negative complains and other then the crybabies complaining about nurfing Raphael so he's even less useful then he was before or now you can't figure out Taki's combos anymore cuz they changed the buttons boo hoo! I agree with them.

Here's my crybaby moment, feel free to mock me as I have mocked you.

I hate how unskilled it is. They took away guard impacts which I will hence forth be calling parrying which most people couldn't care less is gone but honestly this is a big deal.

I understand. parry + super moves = unbalanced but COME ON.

Get rid of the Super moves. They're dumb anyway and every single time I use them (I use them as an extremely generous parry) I can hear my opponent's brain thinking.

She super moved me as I did Kilik's worthless double low sweep-standing up move!!! If this was Soul Caliber 4 it would've hit cuz Kilik TOTALLY isn't the most predictable character next to Cervantes!!! >: (

I don't like super moves in fighting games. EXPECIALLY in already balanced fighting. Adding super moves to an ALREADY stand alone fighting game is NEVER...ever...been a good idea but no one seems to notice this.

Street Fighter gets away with it because they've been doing it their entire life. Ever since the first game in the series, Street Fighter Alpha 2.

So now that super moves exist, parrying is unbalanced so they got rid of it but this turns down the game's skill level from 11 to 3. >.< Now I play and I go. "Oh look. Aeon is doing his triple yellow button combo. Boy I sure would like to parry that 3rd hit, but I can't cuz I didn't pick Pyyrha or Tira....so I guess I'll just keep blocking. OH WELL."

There's a lot of sitting and watching the opp hit your shield without you being able to do anything about it, and it's really dumb and yes I know that was a bad example. A better example is Mitsurugi's double sweep because it looks like you can have a moment to hit him between the 2 sweeps but you actually don't.

Not unless you're playing as a character who was born with REDICIULOUSLY fast priority hits, like Setsuka or Talim or NOT ASTEROTH which most of you were thinking when I said that. I promise Asteroth's knee is easy to out prioritize.

For me personally this has made select characters that were a joke before really hard to deal with. Namely Voldo, every good Voldo player plays the same way. Lot of lows, lunging red move that's easy to duck, lunging grabs that are annoying and high priority mid pokes that lead into a 30 thousand hit combo that you have to sit and watch like a movie shown on an airplane cuz there's nothing else to do. Without parrying this is quite hard to deal with. I still haven't found a solve for this yet and until I have I am currently placing Voldo up in the Ivy, Asteroth, Darth Vader top in my brain's tier list. XD

Now with all these complaints I have with this game I actually have to say. Playing is quite refreshing compared to Soul Caliber 4 and that's odd for me to say because well...Soul Caliber 4 has better gameplay in general.

It's online is quite interesting. I love the Global Coliseum. If you haven't gone, try it, it's quite good... which thank god since trying to get a ranked match random pairing in Soul Caliber 5 is like trying to pull teeth.

That was something Soul Caliber 4 did WAY RIGHT. If Super Smash Bros brawl's online was even half as good as Soul Caliber 4's I would still be playing that game as well. ^_^ why don't most game take a hint from Namco... and why did Namco drop the ball in 5?! What was wrong with Soul Caliber 4's online. Compared to any other online pairing system it was genius and then they say screw it, we're going with what Tatsunoko vs Capcom did!!!

But despite that they still have a lot going for it.

Better Custom Character
Better Offline Content (If the Call of Duty Players need help finding out what this is, please google the word "Skyrim")
Better Online Content. Despite Soul Caliber 4 being genius with this compared to 5, Global Coliseum makes up for it by a lot.

Inferior Game play
Super Moves
No Jedis
Poor Parrying and defensive options in general. (Why does getting out of grabs deal you damage?! WHY?! WHY?! Are they TRYING to reward grab whores?! XD)

If I'm missing where balance comes into play please let me know but keep in mind that I say this knowing Critical Finishes were also stupid but they were also negligible. ALL the dumb balance issues I'm mentioning are changes they made to the gameplay ENTIRELY to balance the dumb super moves.

As I did with my other long winded topic, for those of you who actually read to this point. I ask that you add "Well now..." to the beginning of your comment, so that we can tell the difference between those who read what I have to say and have a note worthy opinion and those who just skimmed and who's opinion don't matter. Don't worry, I have no problem having egg on my face in the event this thread gets buried and never unread.

How can a video game with better gameplay be superior? That's the point of video games. I dunno how Namco has done it but they've done it twice in a row and for that I say well done.

If someone told me Final Fantasy 13 was better than any other game I would slap them in the face because it isn't. Final Fantasy 13 had no gameplay to it. It wasn't fun to play.

Don't get me wrong. I love storyline in video games but story will never be the clincher. Which if anyone says Final Fantasy 13 had good storyline I'd slap them again cuz they're again wrong.

So as you already gathered from the name of this book you just read. I feel just like Soul Caliber 4 is better than Soul Caliber 3 even though 3 was in fact a better GAME. Soul Caliber 5 is a better game than 4 even though...Soul Caliber 4 is....a better game to play. o_o???

For any other game ever made this is like the road to your house and you're giving a person directions. Then suddenly they turn left when they were supposed to turn right. They try to argue all day how the left road has better storyline and better graphics, and the radio has a catchier beat while they drive down the left road but at the end of the day they're still going the wrong way.

but again, magically. I dunno how they did this but Soul Caliber 5 took the left turn and still managed to end up at your house and in a timely manner. So good for them I guess... gotta teach me that magic trick someday.

 

[Griphphin]

After reading MOST of your post (if you want people to discuss your post, then you shouldn't make your post extremely, extremely long and ranty, and preface that long ranty post with "read it all or gtfo.")

I am still on the fence about the critical edges. They change the game completely, through both meter management, and the fact that there are some very fast, high damage punishers in a game that works on a 20-30 frame system.

The lack of an easily accessible guard impact is the thing I miss most from IV BY FAR. It was a gigantic part of my gameplay. One you got the timing down, you could GI your way through 60-70% of the move strings in IV if they had GI-able gaps. It made me far more deadly than I was before and I'm like a wounded animal in V at the moment without it. But GI was not extremely skillful, it was just getting used to seeing certain moves. Without it, SCV is more of a pressure one way, pressure back kind of game, not unlike Street Fighter in that respect, where if you make a mistake in your pressure you're getting super'd. So while I will miss it, it will make SCV different, not necessarily worse.
As for not being able to counter spam like Aeon's BBB, there's a big gap between the second and third B, leaving you time to use either the stock character GI that costs a little meter but opens them up to a combo, or a character-specific GI move that won't cost you meter (there's a small gap between the first and second as well, for people that like to mix up doing and not doing the third). In that respect, knowing your options and matchups makes it more skillful in my opinion.

Grabbing causing chip damage is unforgivable, I would never in a million years try to defend that decision. The guy going for the grab and failing should be punished by the chip, not the guy that escaped it.

For all of the ranting you did on there not being jedis, you forgot to mention the character creator, where you could probably make a decent jedi character with all of the fantastic options you now have. SCV has an AMAZING character creation system now, and your failing to even address it tells me you might want more of a place to rant than actual discussion.

...well now...

 

[Griphphin]

I forgot to mention about a specific part of your post

Not unless you're playing as a character who was born with REDICIULOUSLY fast priority hits, like Setsuka or Talim or NOT ASTEROTH which most of you were thinking when I said that. I promise Asteroth's knee is easy to out prioritize.

You're basically saying here that you want GI back because otherwise characters that aren't good at CQC won't be able to go toe-to-toe with the fast, short-ranged characters. As much as I loved the GI system for personal bias because I was good enough to make long-ranged characters function in close-range as well, that didn't make it well-balanced. Close-ranged characters in close range should have the advantage, and being able to reliably GI the "take-your-turn" counterattack style of gameplay that SCIV fostered did not make that so.
Not in Namco's eyes anyway, and I don't disagree.

EDITlease do respond to these posts, I'd like to get some intelligent discussion going. I read that really long post and responded, do the same for me

 

[DoubleU12]

EDITlease do respond to these posts, I'd like to get some intelligent discussion going. I read that really long post and responded, do the same for me

Yes, Guard Impacting was a personal peev for me mostly because I never went into training mode and formally learned fancy 89 hit combos like all the other 200+ players with high win rates. Basically I learned what the opponent does, and how to react to it.

So when the opponent does something that's very easy to parry like Cervante's teleport, or Cervante's teleport or Cervante's combos that swing more than once, or Cervante's 2nd stun he uses after I block the first...(Did I mention Cervantes was a predictable character and not a threat to anyone who pays attention and knows that if he side steps he's about to use a low.) these are good times to parry and use a character's parry attacks to punish him for picking a bad character.

When Siegfried goes into this stance DON'T run at him as he's going to roll backwards with a low sweepy move. After Kilik does that mid-he's going to follow it up with 2 lows.

The best way to beat me personally is to use crazy combos that are hard to deal with on the fly or use moves that I haven't learned before and punish my ignorance before I can learn how to deal with my opponent's style. XD

But I can't by right call Soul Caliber 5 a bad game or unbalanced. It certain is stand alone, and it's different enough for me to still play Soul Caliber 4 if the mood strikes me and I understand if you make a game too similar to the previous game you're going to have the Melee - Brawl syndrom and not play it for long because it's became stagnant so I guess 5's solution was the best possible choice.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

What exactly IS your point? I've read through your OP a couple times now and I still can't find it through all the animu smileys and whining. I now you've probably got one in there but your OP is so disjointed I need a map and a compass to find it. You're mad that Guard Impacts are different? You're mad that they put in a guard braking system? You're mad they took out shameful Star Wars cameos? You're mad they took out your Waifu? Tell me what your point is and this can be a discussion. And who are these hypothetical "level 1000+ online players" you keep arguing with, and how is that helping your side of the argument? You keep going back and forth between criticizing SC5 and calling it garbage, and saying it's the best in the series.

 

[DoubleU12]

I was actually joking about the jedis. ^_^ just a running gag I have. I'm not mad I'm just giving my opinion. It's different, like everything anywhere that is different people are going to complain about it.

My personal complain is I relied on guard impacting. Other people usually complain about tweekign their character's styles.

but over all it's a balanced game that is better than 4. I'm just confused as to why that's my opinion because in my head I'm saying Soul Calibur 5 has less gameplay because the defensive options are so limited and gameplay is all that matters, the rest of the stuff (music, graphics, ect) just makes it cool.

 

[DoPo]

I am just starting to read the OP, but I feel I should point out - it's Soul Calibur, like Excalibur the sword, not like a .22 caliber gun.

I'll try to offer more useful feedback after reading it.

 

[DoPo]

Well now...I can't offer a lot to this thread. It took me around quarter of an hour to read it and...I cannot pin down what exactly is it about. I'm really sorry but there was too much non-useful text in there. About a third in you said "So what is my point?" and the mere fact that there is around twice as much text after it means that, no, I did not get your point. There was too much jumping around and reiterating (I think so, at least) of things. Then I came to this:

How can a video game with better gameplay be superior?

I couldn't figure out were you actually asking a question or was that an accusation that means "better gameplay doesn't make a superior game"[footnote]Which, frankly, didn't make any sense to me.[/footnote], or maybe it was a typo, maybe you meant inferior or worse gameplay. I did not want to backtrack and see what I (most probably) missed. I couldn't.

Please, please revise the OP and edit it for the benefits of everyone else. People can and will be put off if they don't understand the OP. Make a shorter, more concise version. Use bullet points and separate each idea in a paragraph. That would help. You can still leave the original up there but offer a tl;dr version - it may be 3-4 paragraphs but it would still be tl;dr. The shorter version will just convey the essence of what you're saying nothing more - let people read the longer version if they wish.

 

[yunabomb]

I hate how unskilled it is. They took away guard impacts which I will hence forth be calling parrying which most people couldn't care less is gone but honestly this is a big deal.

I understand. parry + super moves = unbalanced but COME ON.

Get rid of the Super moves. They're dumb anyway and every single time I use them (I use them as an extremely generous parry) I can hear my opponent's brain thinking.

She super moved me as I did Kilik's worthless double low sweep-standing up move!!! If this was Soul Caliber 4 it would've hit cuz Kilik TOTALLY isn't the most predictable character next to Cervantes!!! >: (

...

So now that super moves exist, parrying is unbalanced so they got rid of it but this turns down the game's skill level from 11 to 3. >.< Now I play and I go. "Oh look. Aeon is doing his triple yellow button combo. Boy I sure would like to parry that 3rd hit, but I can't cuz I didn't pick Pyyrha or Tira....so I guess I'll just keep blocking. OH WELL."

There's a lot of sitting and watching the opp hit your shield without you being able to do anything about it, and it's really dumb and yes I know that was a bad example. A better example is Mitsurugi's double sweep because it looks like you can have a moment to hit him between the 2 sweeps but you actually don't.

Heaven forbid you actually learn to just guard, quick step, occasionally spend your meter on a guard impact (yes, they're still in the game), or counter (maybe with a move that has auto-GI). You wouldn't be complaining so much if you actually knew how to use the many defensive options available to you. Soul Calibur V has the best defensive options of any game in the franchise.

This last paragraph in particular shows that you don't know proper defense.

Some one did a Critical edge as a counter to your (presumably slow, but I can't tell since I don't know much about Xiba yet) move? Some one beat you out with a better move? How terrible.

 

[beefprophet]

At least soul caliber 4 had a story mode for each character, sure it's just a gauntlet of battles but 2 is considered the best in the series and that had the same format. SC 3 is easly the best as both story modes are for a fighting game fantastic.

5 had a horrendous story mode with that focused on Patroklos who was an unlikable cuntbag and pyrrah who makes me want to slap her everytime I see her (the only characters that actually sucked) I wanted to learn about the other characters.

Also Namco blatantly lied about SC5 having a story for other characters. How does cervantes have a new body, never told, raphael looking for amy, never addressed. and it pisses me off.

Uh, dude, I hate to burst your bubble but if you're playing Soul Calibur for the story - you're doing it wrong.

And honestly after the Nightmare y-button spam and the stupid guard impacts I was done with this series, so honestly I think that anything would be better than Soul Calibur 4.

 

[Griphphin]

At least soul caliber 4 had a story mode for each character, sure it's just a gauntlet of battles but 2 is considered the best in the series and that had the same format. SC 3 is easly the best as both story modes are for a fighting game fantastic.

5 had a horrendous story mode with that focused on Patroklos who was an unlikable cuntbag and pyrrah who makes me want to slap her everytime I see her (the only characters that actually sucked) I wanted to learn about the other characters.

Also Namco blatantly lied about SC5 having a story for other characters. How does cervantes have a new body, never told, raphael looking for amy, never addressed. and it pisses me off.

I loved SC3's story mode. It actually told a story between battles and you got an idea for the motivations of the characters. At least SCIV had cutscenes at the end, I suppose. In V, the only reason I played through story was to unlock setsuka's style. Patroklos is indeed an insufferable **** and Pyrrha was the typical JRPG doormat of a female character. I was as disappointed with SCV's story mode as I was delighted with what they did for character creation. And I really like what they did for character creation.

 

[yunabomb]

Haven't played 5, but... if this is true, Namco Bandai dropped the ball.

It's not true. Movesets are refined now and fighting styles are different for characters (e.g. playing Natsu is not like playing SCIV Taki). It seems like Alpha Patroklos is the strongest character in the game (I'm excluding the Devil Jin style in this). I can't verify this for myself since I haven't played against him much and can't play as him since I can't do just frame attacks consistently yet.

Don't take anything from the original post as even mildy accurate.