Do you think the story mode in SC5 is good? (spoilers)

Story mode. Good or bad?

  • Good.

    Votes: 29 31.5%
  • Bad.

    Votes: 63 68.5%

  • Total voters
    92

FluffyQuack

[14] Master
I'm curious, how many people here think the story mode is good or bad? And I'm asking about everything to do with the story mode: story, presentation, gameplay, voice acting, everything. It goes without saying there will be spoilers in this thread.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it's awful. I had low expectations for the story mode to begin with, but it was actually worse than I expected.

Some reasons which I think makes it bad:
-One sided characters, and when characters show another side to them they change to that permanently. (for instance, Patroklos acting like a egoistical arrogant jerk for start of the game, and then suddenly turns into goody goody polite hero man later in the story).

-Siegfried is stupid. Patroklos reveals himself to be arrogant and shows no interest in helping anyone which doesn't help him find his sister... and Siegfried gives him the soul calibur which is one of the most valuable artifacts in the entire world?

-Cameos which serve no role. "Hi, I'm Viola! Something mysterious about wine mysterious mysterious! Bye now!"

-Patroklos entire "quest" to find the artifacts for soul calibur. He gets to know they are with characters who are in Asia... he decides to travel to western Europe, super randomly happens to bump into the people with the items and then take it from them after one fight. Why is this in the story at all?

-"Gomenasai! Gomenasai! Gomenasai! Gomenasai! Gomenasai!" In other words, Pyrrha is annoying. Her part of the storyline makes little sense anyway. What the heck happened all those 17 years? Did it take that long for her to realize Tira wasn't really doing anything in her best interest (well, except for dressing her up nicely and letting her practice Sophitia's fighting style), and that killing people isn't really nice?

-"You look filthy and pale... *evil face* you must be malfested!" This is close to being one of the most ridiculous and stupid scenes of all time. I personally rank this close to scenes like "I was to be the one to fill your soul with LIIIUIUIUIUIIIGHT!" and "Master of unlocking."

-Having major story points which aren't actually explained: Patroklos learning Setsuka's style. Raphael becoming Nightmare. Whatever Lexia and her team is up to.

-Time travel.

-And gameplay-wise, this is nothing but a series of 1-vs-1 fights where you're forced to play as specific characters without training as them. Even the story mode in SC4 did some interesting things like adding tag mechanics and encouraging you to play as more characters. Heck, I think I might even say that that the cog QTEs from SC3 were more exciting.
 
It's no quest for the Peach of Immortality..... but it's not... great?

The most disturbing thing is Pat's imagery for his own Mom. Oy.

Yo dawg, I heard you like swords so we stabbed your sword with a sword......
 
I would say it's ok, but it should at least give more info of the characters that actually do appear in the story.
 
I liked it as a story mode for Pat, Pyrrha, Tira and Elysium. As a story mode for the entire game? Not at all.

It started off fairly well, and despite being a little ticked off at the lack of exposition when it came to Seigfried and Viola I could go along with it. Pat was searching for his sister with Z.W.E.I and Viola, and despite not really knowing who the last two were everything was fine. The encounters with Tira followed by Viola's cryptic messages were probably where the story looked the most promising.

But from there everything went downhill. Pat and Pyrrha are strolling through the woods when Astaroth appears from nowhere. Pat's bleeding but its alright because... British-born Ivy is having a casual stroll through the Italian forests? Then we hear some weird talk about divine artefacts that are obviously important to the story because its the first time they've bothered actually trying to explain something that hasn't appeared directly on-screen.

So then they go back, the town is burning and Pyrrha turns evil, fair enough. Pat goes back to Seigfried and Z.W.E.I. (Wait, wasn't Hilde supposed to be part of this group?) And Viola has apparently disappeared as randomly and with as little explanation as she appeared in the first place. Pat fights like Setsuka, but we're not told why...

Now Pat finds Ivy again and were looking for "A woman with a Chinese sword and a man with nunchucks" in... eastern europe? And by some weird miraculous coincidence they're actually here!

Now we see what could be interesting and deep characters given even less screen time and development than Viola. Leixia is randomly there for a bit longer than everyone else while Xiba (I think) decides to wait outside.

blah,blah,blah stuff happens, Pat kills Pyrrha, encounters Edge master in hell(?) Elysium's evil so he time travels to the past to save his sister(wait, what?); Z.W.E.I is randomly playable again and we get closure to his unexplained grudge against Dumas. Oh, and he gets stabbed and thrown off a building. Then Tira randomly vanishes for no reason (she and viola should form a club) and Pat Saves Pyrrha. A decent ending for those two characters stories but...

What? What about all those interesting characters that were never given a part in the story? What about all the characters that were but then randomly disappeared? Is Viola Amy? What does Kilik have to do with Leixia and Xiba? Why did Xianghua get all worried when Leixia found Kilik's pendant? Why is Nightmare Raphael? What about that demon inside Natsu? Where the hell is Hilde? (Or Raphael, Mitsurgi, Yoshi, Cervantes or Aeon for that matter?)

Most importantly, what's the point of doing all of those Bio's and starting all of those interesting story points if they never go anywhere? How are we supposed to like these new replacements (like Natsu) if we don't even get to know anything about them?
 
Call me crazy, but I actually really liked Story Mode. Although I do admire it, I agree that there is room for improvement. For real, the plot holes are bothering me. o_O I hoped for paths for the characters, so that we can know more about them, but I'm sure this will be improved in the future installments. :3
 
The Story Mode was disaster. This is what happens when Namco basically forces PS to reach a deadline despite the fact that during development the Earthquake hit and forced PS to work on low-power mode for MONTHS, effectively limiting how much work they could get done in those days.
 
I'll outright say I found the story mode very lacking - I completely agree with those who say there was a huge missed opportunity into delving into the other characters aside from the children of Sophitia. A lot of backstory is also all in the manual (i.e. official site character pages), so theoretically filled plotholes are still lost on those who haven't read up on them. For example, how could anyone have been sure that Patroklos was actually once mentored by Setsuka herself - effectively making him her canon legacy character - without visiting the site (or the Soulcalibur wiki)? I certainly didn't.

In the end, I've decided to accept story mode as pretty much the story of the Alexandria siblings and them alone. And on that front, I can honestly appreciate the story. Yes it's bizarre and arguably generic, but I somehow found the development and interactions of the two characters engaging, and I acknowledge the awkwardly expressed message of taking control of one's own life and thinking for oneself. But what an insane journey those two have to go through to get to that point, eh? In all it's anime-esque ridiculousness, I honestly liked the story of Patroklos and Pyrrha, as considering the mode as more than that is expecting too much of the [un]finished product as it stands. That's my opinion, anyway. Let's just hope that DLC comes around for decent character based episodes to fill in those gaping holes in the plot. =P
 
It was at a good start, but there many parts left unexplained, and some that were......confusing to say the least.

Once Pyrrha changed into Pyrrha Omega, I began to LOVE her character.
 
It was absolutely the worst story ever... I would even prefer a non existent story with some silly endings... Very dissapointed
 
Most importantly, what's the point of doing all of those Bio's and starting all of those interesting story points if they never go anywhere? How are we supposed to like these new replacements (like Natsu) if we don't even get to know anything about them?

I think there's one possible reason for that: Namco put them on the websites to avoid including them in the game. By having the bios set up on the website, there'd be no need to include them in the game, because fans already know the info and see it as common knowledge. If you think about it, we already know a huge amount of plot even before the game was released.

A lot of the cutscenes in the Story Mode were static, non-colored, hand-drawn pictures. For what reason did they do that? For a game made in 2010-2011 and after seeing titles like Uncharted and even Mortal Kombat use full 3D cutscenes, there should be no reason for them to even consider doing those scenes (especially when the story was supposed to be the driving force of the game). Even SSF4, an older fighter game than SCV, had a better story presentation. The fact they had another company do it for them and it still turned out subpar tells me they are literally incapable of making a good Story Mode. Get it to together Namco. This isn't fucking 2005.
 
as for me i realy cant accept sc5 story
i will never accept their disrespect toward Sophitia and her family
i can only hope they will rewrite the story ...
but i will follow how the character will evolve(gameplay and personality)
for me the story ended at sc4 and i will continu to play sc game but for me they will have no story

but i realy want to know why Amy lost her memory and became Viola and why she run away from Raphael lol??
or maybe Viola is Amy's twin sister lol?then if yes maybe Amy and Rapael are playing Hide and Seek xD?but i dont realy think its the true reason
 
I think there's one possible reason for that: Namco put them on the websites to avoid including them in the game. By having the bios set up on the website, there'd be no need to include them in the game, because fans already know the info and see it as common knowledge. If you think about it, we already know a huge amount of plot even before the game was released. A lot of the cutscenes in the Story Mode were static, non-colored, hand-drawn pictures. For what reason did they do that? For a game made in 2010-2011 and after seeing titles like Uncharted and even Mortal Kombat use full 3D cutscenes, there should be no reason for them to even consider doing those scenes (especially when the story was supposed to be the driving force of the game). Even SSF4, an older fighter game than SCV, had a better story presentation. The fact they had another company do it for them and it still turned out subpar tells me they are literally incapable of making a good Story Mode. Get it to together Namco. This isn't fucking 2005.

Project Soul is more than capable of making a good single-player mode (as shown in SE, SC1-3), but Namco didn't seem to give a damn about quality and put PS to an unreasonable deadline to get it out in early 2012. Which was doubly stupid when the earthquake hit. Y'know, the one so bad that Namco's headquarters was on low-power mode for MONTHS. I applaud PS for being able to make a game that was funner than ever to play, but Namco choosing not to delay the game to, say, the summer was an idiotic move that crippled any chance of a good story mode or just a good campaign like Weapon Master or Chronicles of the Sword. PS probably had a lot more stuff they wanted put in but Namco just doesn't understand that stuff takes TIME.
 
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