I didn't follow the development of Soul Calibur 5 at all. I got the game and played it one evening so far, so I'm coming at this fresh. I thought I'd give my first impressions.

Overall, I like the game. It's fun, and it's simplified in a good way. So when I give you this long list of complaints, keep in mind I would generally recommend the game.

Button Config

Yeah, button config. Yes it matters. And it's the "wrong way." It's the bad way where you have to scroll through a list to change anything, and know the names of which buttons are which on your controller, instead of the good way where you press the button you want. This is a very real concern for running events, as it slows down events for no good reason. It's absolutely *embarrassing* that any company would release a fighting game in 2012 with the bad kind of button config. Seriously Namco, never ever do this again.

By the way, even though there are several default configs, none of them match what you'd want on the MadCatz TE stick, which is the standard. Have fun setting your kick button before every match (as you scroll through a list to do it). Letter grade on this feature: F.

Online

For some reason, it seems to default to searching for users with a good ping who in the "other" region, meaning they are NOT in North or South America, or Europe, Asia, or Japan? Wtf? I don't know, every time I start up the online I set this to North America. Another case of weirdo defaults, I guess.

After playing someone online, I think it's like only 2 clicks to get another opponent. This is great! I got an endless stream of a opponents who couldn't beat my Mitsurugi, without any clicking around in between matches.

As for the netcode, you know the thing you care tons about, it seemed great? I forgot that I wasn't playing locally, really, it all just worked. There was no