The Tale of Souls and Swords continues...

Yes, all Soul Calibur freaks and fans will know what I talk about by reading the above line - I got my copy yesterday (since europe was the last ones to get this great games) and I simply love it - it's like playing SCII or III on the PS3, with better graphics and a new CaC-system. A great thing about the Soul series is that the moves of all our favorite characters (Taki, Mitsurugi and Raphael for my part) stay in the game and only gets minor tweaks from game to game. This enable us to pick up the game like we had already played it - with a few exceptions - for days or weeks and is a great thing in my world.

The characters from a "Galaxy far, far away..." have been through a rough time ever since they were announced. I love Star Wars myself, and the thought of weird crossovers like those in SCII (come on... Link, Spawn and Heihachi... they were weird too) is actually a thing that amuse me. More the better, PS3's "Guest Vader" is a great character. He reflects the Sith Lord greatly; evil one-liners followed by his metallic breath, bold - but sadly not very impressive - Force Powers and a slow speed that resemble his movie- and Star Wars Episode III: The Game-aliases. All in all a powerful, but slow, character in his own self. And he doesn't resemble characters like Nightmare or Rock in the regard...

Sadly, I'm yet to discover the Apprentice and his abilites (other than the good spanking he gave Darth Vader around five times in a row before I managed to kill him with a lucky strike to the head... "You don't know the power of the Dark Side!")
BUT from those rounds I could clearly see that he was at least one thing: Overpowered. This might prove positive on the coming release of The Force Unleashed, eh? Enough said!

CaC presented me with a wealth of options (many of which I'm yet to unlock in the new modes of SCIV), but it certainly looked promising - oh, and on a side-note, I've already seen a great picture of an Auron-created CaC... I can't wait to make him!

EDIT: I now realize I was too harsh, regarding the voices of SCIV. After a while of futher playing the game's different modes, I've come to the same conclusion as with SCIII: They're good, but not as great as the ones in SCII. (where the voices were pretty good, and caught the mood of the battles). The narrator is still a pain, though, and I cannot stop thinking of an old man reading up from a very uninteresting history-book. Too, the timing of the narrator's voice and the characters battle-intro could've been handled better, as the narrator's voice usually gets choked by either of the two combatant declaring that their opponent is going down big time.

Other than that, I totally agree with the positive reviews out there (which are quite many already) and this might be one of the best games of the series since Soul Calibur II - A final verdict from me is yet to come, but it'll be in the higher end of the scale.

So, what do you guys say? Thoughts and opinions, etc.