A tale of souls and swords eternally retold... We're rebooting!

6 is the reboot of the SoulCalibur series... it ditches the Dreamcast sequel to PlayStation 1's Soul Edge... it erases the nifty GameCube sequel with Link (or the XBOX game woth Medieval Spawn), the Sequel with Create a XenoSaga KOS-MOS, Then ditches the one with Darth Vader or Yoda depending on the console... it also ditches V,  which I vaguely remember because I made MOTU characters...
Well, 6 is here and wants me to pay for Freaking Tira... who is on disc...

This is a tough nut to crack...
Like my previous RDR2 review (and filler as I ponder if I make an Advent calendar with my backlog of toys) I have a Love/Hate relationship with the game.

Graphics:
They are beautiful in a Japanese animation/videogame sense. Japanese sensibilities are not the same as those of Western Audiences. Some might say they look "too pretty" and fake, due to the Stylized look. Since all the characters seem to be made through the same Creation engine as the custom characters, everyone looks as if they belong... (unless you make a purposely bad looking character.)
9.0

Sounds and music:
The music feels familiar. (So do half the stages, but that's not a topic for this section) most voice actors have been replaced. So far Haruhi Suzumiya is still voicing Xianghua... Ivy kept her VA... Tira is now voiced by the biggest forehead in the Village hidden in the leaves (who formerly voiced Talim) and Talim is now a Twilight Sparkle sound-alike... to name a few. The voicework is pretty good, but it's weird having the cast switched around...
9.0

Gameplay:
If you've played the last 2 games, you mostly have an idea how this plays out... the whole tale of souls and swords eternally retold part seems to be engraved into each Soul game. It feels improved, yet watered down...
The Soul Reversal is a nice gimmick that has given me an edge against the AI whenever it attempts to use it. 87% of the time, it benefits me... other than that, there is no much to write about... like SFV, it lacks an arcade mode. Arcade mode is hidden within Vs mode. No wonder I couldn't find it. There is a Story Mode, but so far, there's no real reason to play it... aside getting the story, which is a "soft" reboot to the SoulCalibur Series.
Then we have the slightly better Libra of Soul, which has you playing a sort of side story that is parallel to the Story Mode. You play with a created character... (it was weird having Prince Adam, my created character for the Libra of Soul showing up in a battle against Kilik in the normal story mode)

Now that I mentioned Create a Soul, well, I've had 26 attempts at making MOTU characters. Some are good, others, well... they suck ass... The creator tool seems good, but is very limited in the amount of parts available AND it has some odd limitations...
Some "races" are limited to male only. Some Equipment that acts as body parts, ie wings can be broken off...
I tried to make a Draego-Man out of a Lizardman... No armor, wings can be broken off in battle and I end up with a red Lizardman. Can't "modify the Lizardman head to make him different, because I already used my accessory slots to make him armor...
We have skeletons, but I need to give them shirts and pants  I want Something that looks kinda like Skeletor.

Then we have the limitation of Weapon usage:
All the created souls are LITERAL clones of existing characters. If you make a Spear wielding Randor, he'll behave all girly like Seong  Mi-Na...
Simon Belmont will be all Dominatrix like Ivy.
We need to have additional movesets... like slightly generic versions of the moves without some character specific animations... Like say:
We have Siegfried,  Nightmare on the Broadsword disciplines, but in addition to that 3 more disciplines:
Female Swordswoman (which would be a Siegfried inspired discipline but with some animations being more feminine) Female Nightmare (which like Siegfried, would have a more feminine counterpart) and a more Neutral "generic" discipline that it's not a clone of Siegfried or Nightmare.
This would be great for the Claw discipline and not have them be Voldo Clones, etc.
Also, all costume parts should be gender/species neutral.
If I want a Lizard Talim; I should be allowed to make one, seeing all characters are made using the Create a Soul.
It kinda feels like 1 step forward and 2 steps back...
Wowee! This has been a rather long-winded rant on this section...
It gets an 8.0

Controls:
They are pretty tight and responsive. I cannot blame the controls if I mess up... except in menu related stuff. Create mode, I'm looking at you...
10.0

Fun Factor:
If we ignore the fact that the game feels like a beta version, but  more advanced than the SFV beta... I mean vanilla version, the game IS FUN! Despite the roster limitations, the game is greatly enjoyable, but I prefer the Libra of Soul over the story mode. The character creation is fun despite the ridiculous amount of limitations it has.
9.5

Story:
Not going to go to in-depth here since I already talked about it being a retelling of the same tale of souls and swords eternally retold...
7.0

Overall:
This tale of souls and swords eternally retold gets a final score of 8.75 which is decent, but it could've been a bit better.