I should buy Soul Caliber 5 NOW!

My first experience with this series, fortunately, was with Soul Edge for the Playstation 1 over by my friend's house back in the mid 1990s. Tekken II never grab me with its visuals or its combat but Soul Edge did with its impressive visuals and cool weapon based system that has underlying gaming mechanic that gives the character individual weapons some attributes. For instance, once completed the mission mode and unlocking the various weapon abilities for said character one can take those abilities in versus mode. A character can have a phantom ability to their sword which renders it invisible or an ability to regenerate health over time. I don't remember if there were in adverse affects to these abilities and yeah by today standards it may seem cheap but it was fun. I had fun playing Soul Edge and it was just impressive to look it with its effects.

I couple years later and there was Soul Caliber, the sequel to Soul Edge but many still think Soul Caliber was the first in the series. Soul Caliber was just the most impressive game of that time - it was even more graphically impressive than its arcade brother which was unprecedented. In that era of gaming, arcade ports to consoles rarely or hard likely achieve perfect arcade ports, and even the thought a console surpassing arcade graphics was crazy talk. Fortunately, Dreamcast was the first console to do it and it was indication that the end of the arcade era was imminent. You guys have to remember, if one wanted the true arcade experience in terms of graphical presentation the arcades were the way to go but having a "home" console port of an arcade game that made the arcade port look dated in comparison was the selling point for many and also constituted to the many positive reviews.

Soul Caliber was an impressive game - and it is still is today - and it was a great fighting game, a game that managed to distract me from Street Fighter and influenced me to buy a dreamcast console just to play that game and many other great fighting games. If you were a fighter enthusiast or love fighting games then the Dreamcast was the console to have since it was blessed with an impressive library of fighters that were arcade perfect due to the console's unprecedented graphical power.    

Unfortunately, though Soul Caliber II was good game it didn't have the same effect as Soul Caliber was. The PS2 ran it well but it was not a perfect port due slow down when things get chaotic on the screen and the introduction of guest characters didn't do it for me - Tekken's Hihachi for the PS2 version and Spawn for the comics on the Xbox.  It was a port but not to the level like Soul Caliber was for the Dreamcast but it was fun nonetheless.

The game just got less appealing for me with each iteration but that fire rekindled with Soul Caliber IV for the PS3 due it being one of the first legitimate fighting game that has online functionality. I played it to death and I loved it but once SFIV was announced I knew I would stop playing it once the game comes out.

Sadly, I don't feel compel to buy Soul Caliber 5 and I probably won't ever buy it because it is not that game anymore. Once again it has guest characters and presentation, though good, doesn't have that vibrant pop out feel like Street Fighter or King of Fighters, or Naruto.

I hope the game does well because so far the reviews haven't been stellar and to most idiots that buy these games do care about that. I don't understand why story is a factor in reviewing fighting games; a fighting game's game play, presentation, control, and online functionality should be considered for critiquing not story. Anyway, sorry SCV but you are not my type of fighter, and the next big fighting game I am going to buy is King of Fighter's XIII once I through with Dark Souls.