Thursday
Mar292012
ATP Review of Soul Calibur 5
BY 
Aris ON Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 10:47AM
Aris ON Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 10:47AM 
My thoughts on Soul Calibur 5. Please make sure you rate, subscribe and comment. Thanks for the support.
Reader Comments (6)
Using meter to neutralize guard break is an ingenious idea. I agree with aris, this is a good game, and if they brought back missing stances and charaters, it would truly be great.
Nice indepth analysis Aris, maybe project soul should hire you, as you have great insight.
You were much more spot on than I was expecting, kinda surprised to see you not complain about the guard break system... Mostly because the majority of turtle players are doing that. No knee jerk reactions to patches, no whining because what worked before now needs revisions... I couldn't be happier after listening to this
I also finally had the chance to check out the top 8 at NCR and I liked your commentary. Hopefully we can get in the box together sometime in the future.
Awesome as usual, keep up the good work man.
I recently did an interview with Future Press about the SCV guide, I even mention you in it:
http://www.neoempire.com/?p=10119
Scorpion knows :)
It was on Eventhubs.com/ That The Story Mode is 1/4 of What it was to be
I agree with most of the stuff you have said... you may or may not remember I also played SC2 competitively back in the days.
Anyways... despite the fact that SC5 does have far less moves compared to SC2 I don't necessarily agree SC5 have less options compared to SC2.... in the end people were just using that 5 to 10 moves.... especially when you remember Xianghua... people used to talk about the 5 move X and abuse the crap out of it. The actual system and 'glitches' made many of the moves useless.... making certain characters movelist drastically drop in number of 'usable' moves....
In SC5 like all the other SC there's still a lot of 'useless moves' but in comparison i feel like there's less of this compared to SC2.... One thing about SC5 that makes users have more options is the use of BE and CE.... the meter usage definitely open up doors to preference... to some player they might want to spend an extra bar for a certain combo that yields not that much damage... but maybe better wake up... Others might be willing to spend their meter just to get some frame advantage.... while others are only waiting to save up all their meters for CE.... I think there are difference in styles and choices just by meter management alone.
I don't really feel the movement is restricted as much... the example you gave of how you get hit by a vertical when you guessed right isn't a good example... simply because this really comes down to match up knowledge... essentially you can say you guessed wrong... maybe you should've known that particular vertical will hit you if you step on one side but will miss if you step in the other... this type of tracking vertical existed since probably in SC1.... some characters have better movement might be able to step it easier.. while others can only step one side... the more experience players will know... I wouldn't say this rewards the person who unintended but more like punishes the person who didn't have the proper experience and knowledge....
The same can be said with horizontals... there's many horizontals that can track one side... and doesn't track the other despite the animation.... but you wouldn't go and say that move is broken or doesn't do what it's supposed to do or the system is bugged..... that's purely just match up knowledge.
There were many unintended fundamental problems that exist in SC2 that made it 'boring' because people turtle too much... in SC5 the fundamental system made it so that once you're committed to something you have to face the consequence.... you can't do something relatively simple that beats out most options... in SC2 it certainly have that aspect sometimes.. with step guard.
I think right now ranged characters are winning partially because those characters have been improved but ontop of that like you said.. people aren't using JG as well as you would imagine they would be doing maybe 3 years down the road... I do think when people start to get used to JG.... some of the keep out strategies we see now will not be as effective.
anyways great review regardless keep the SC news coming
-LAU
Very nice review I'm impressed should be tweeted to relevant people in project soul.