I love the Soul Calibur series. I think it is an awesome fighting game with fluid gameply, pereniallly awesome graphics, and strong single player offerings in the form of unlockables and campaign/dungeon modes. I have enjoyed every single one of the previous games and was excited at the news of the new one. Having never been disappointed by the single player features of the previous 4 games I made the assumption this game would follow suit.

Needless to say, I am horrified by the omission of things I assumed would be a given and the regression of Soul Calibur 6 to what I consider a bare bones game. The game has almost no unlockable content aside from the periodic character customization item and title. And I include titles for the sake of completeness because I do NOT consider those to be unlockables. I am sorry, but unlocking words is by no means exciting or satisfying. What happened to the museum? Character art, concept art, 3D model viewer and character bios? And for that matter, where are the character endings? I cannot stress enough how much the lack of endings bugs me. Even if they are silly, unlocking a characters ending has always been one of the great joys of arcade modes in fighting games hailing back as far as I can remember. Furthermore, Soul Calibur 6 decided to set the game a couple decades in the future, meaning that a bunch of the old characters are replaced by fresh faces with similar fighting styles. This is even more reason to include character bios and endings! Why should I even begin to care about the new characters as opposed to the old ones if I know so little about them? Why even bother changing them at all if they don't have any kind of a story behind them?

The game is a very solid fighter, and the gameplay is as good as it ever has been. However, the lack of extra content is, in my opinion, deplorable especially for a series that has had such a wealth of content in the past. It is beyond me why it was left out. The single player has been reduced to arcade, quick battle, and Legendary Souls which are all basically the same mode with varying difficulty. There is a short story mode which is decent but it only allows you to play as three of the characters. And I found Patrokolos to be all sorts of obnoxious in his cutscenes and storyboards.

I feel this game is basically an online game. There is very little reward to the single player experience. The game is perfect if you don't care at all about any of that and just want a solid fighting game to play online. But I have come to expect much more from the Soul Calibur series so I feel a little cheated. It is as if I went to a great restaurant but did not get bread, a side dish, salad, or anything. Sure the main dish was good but it feels like it is missing its compliments no?

Mortal Kombat delivered great single player modes in the form of a story mode with multiple playable characters, traditional arcade endings, the tower challenge mode and a ton of unlockable stuff. The comparison is night and and day.

Anyway, I think I have ranted for long enough. I know many people will be more than satisifed with what the game offers, but after having enjoyed getting endings and unlocking a plethora of content in the all the previous games, I am quite disappointed.