they are close enough to the old characters. And I already talked about that if you play the game for specific characters and not for the sake of playing the game itself then dont play it all. Calibur is still way better than everythign else out there even if you dont get your character so stop crying about it. Xiba isnt like Kilik but he fits the fighting style and has a great character design, Xianghua and leixia are pretty much the same thing and look exactly alike, Natsu has the same style/story taki has but compared to taki she actually looks great and has amazing costumes. Pat and pyrrha aren´t replacements so i wont even talk about them. Apat yes setsuka but whatever the style is still there and you can create her via cas.
MK, Sf,DoA,Kof plenty to chose from.
You can play the game for whatever reason you want and excuse some people if they aren't going to take it if in a future release Knightmare gets replaced by a random Stone Golem with the same fighting style. Keep in mind all these Fighting Styles have characters attached they are also in a way part of it you can't just take someone's moveset away, give it to someone else entirely and expect everyone to be ok with that especially if the successor is terrible.
Whether or not Xiba fits the Fighting style can be subjective from person to person same thing with his character design. My biggest question is if Xiba is supposed to succeed Kilik then why the hell is Kilik in the game and not even as his own fighting style with a mimic instead it made zero to negative sense.
Do you ever think that maybe Xianghua and Leixia being too similar was one of Leixia's biggest problems. She was pointless because she didn't much reason to be around because of this you may as well have thrown Xianghua into SC5 instead and not much would have changed except perhaps Natsu wouldn't have been brought into the plot.
What do you mean Natsu and Taki have the same story? Yes their Fighting styles are nearly the same their stories are not. Taki's story essentially boils down to destroy Soul Edge because it's evil and eventually Soul Calibur because it's more or less as dangerous and possibly as Soul Edge. Meanwhile Natsu's story is she travels to Europe in an attempt to find Taki who has gone missing while also helping Leixia, Xiba and Maxi. Those two stories are very different and I don't even think Natsu is even aware Soul Edge exists that alone would change alot.
Pat and Pyrrha are replacements they were replacing the Alexandra sisters even if you don't believe Pat is Replacement for them Pyrrha definitely was at least she was intended to replace Sophitia. She even had Sophitia's shield and sword and a majority of her moves inbetween Pyrrha and Pyrrha Omega.
Your saying that A pat is ok because you can create Setsuka in CAS. Sorry that doesn't work for me A pats existence was questionable already it felt like the devs just gave him Setsuka's style as either a form of story progress or to keep Setsuka's style in the game rather than trying to actually make a good successor didn't help that his 2P also was just a retexture of his 1P.
Also smooth move calling a bunch of other fighting games garbage.
B combos. Plus, JF Umbrella & JFTs are nice. 
