Big news to all you fighting game fans out there. It seems as if Namco Bandai is making yet another title to come out early this year! With the release of this new game, the franchise now holds 5 titles. The game was officially announced by Namco Bandai on May 11, 2011 at their Level Up press conference. This wasn’t the first time fans got a glimpse of the game; the game’s teaser has been around as early as 2010. So far only 24 characters have been confirmed by Daishi Odashima, the games director. He also confirmed that the total number of characters will be 30. So there are still 6 more characters to be excited about.

According to rumors, big changes have been made to SoulCalibur 5. The “critical finishes” and the “soul gauge” that were known from the previous game have been completely eliminated. The armor is still destructible like the previous games, but does not include an indicator to let you know when it’s going to break. In light of this, a new gauge has been added to the game. What is the purpose of this meter you might ask? Supers! Yeah, it seems like SoulCalibur 5 conformed to the rest of the fighting games and added a specials bar. But who knows, this might really be a great addition to the gameplay. The special moves have been labeled, “Brave Edge” and “Critical Edge”. These attacks vary in strength depending on how full your meter is. Personally, my favorite perk of this game is that now you can easily side step from your opponent, simply by double tapping up or down on the D-pad. In SoulCalibur’s previous games, I’ve lost so many matches just because I was trying to figure out how to side step. Now it’s not a problem anymore! Another interesting change they made to the game is the Ring Outs. Previously, when would Ring Out his or her opponent it would result in winning the match. Now, when one character is rung out, both characters fall down to a new arena to continue fighting.

This is what I’m excited about, the character creation has returned in SoulCalibur 5! Many improvements have been made. Now you are allowed to alter the height of your character, alter different body part sizes, give facial features, edit clothing and edit voices. You can also edit weapon colors and styles.

So far, only 7 new characters have been announced including Ezio Auditore da Firenze. The protagonist from the Assassin’s Creed franchise. With all these changes made to the franchise, I’m excited to see where this game goes. It may just inspire other games, like this one, to change a few things up in their own games.

How do you guys feel about this game?

Are you excited to see the new features and characters?

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