It seems the latest Soul Calibur doesn't have a two-player mode because it'd be trickier to milk players for money that way.
http://www.siliconera.com/2014/05/19/ba … st-swords/

Yeah good luck with your single-player fighting game, Namco.  I had some great memories with the original Soul Blade/Edge and can see why the early Soul Calibur games were so highly regarded, but as the costumes and breast sizes have grown more ridiculous I've lost interest in the series.  It also seems that from a technical perspective there really hasn't been much advancement these last few installments.

Still love the weapon-based-fighter concept though, I wish another company would step up with something to take the series' place.

On a lighter note I'd like to mention that Angela's thread for Soul Calibur IV has one of my favorite titles of these forums.

Yeah, this one has "bomb" written all over it. Namco is yet another Japanese company that has really fallen off the map, sadly.

Although from what I hear, Soul Calibur V was a complete and utter failure, so maybe that factored in the decision making. I really don't remember it getting much tournament time at any event I've been to (whereas Tekken has gotten plenty of it).

I couldn't agree more. I played the ever living hell out of Soul Blade back in the PS1 days and it still is one of my favorite 3D fighters. Too bad no one seems to remember it... most people always reflect on one of the "Calibur" titles when the series comes up when I'm around. Soul Blade (and its awesome and infuriating Edge Master mode) is probably only game that could actively make me throw my controller these days. I need to replay that sucker sometime soon - I picked up a copy a few years ago for a measly $8.

Yeah, I heard V was a pretty big letdown... and the series (and Namco) have seemed to have lost their way. However, that's kind of a loaded statement. I'm hard pressed to think of a Japanese developer that is cooking with gas right now... Atlus maybe? That's the only one I can think of and I'm not really a fan.

Loaded, maybe, but it's their own fault for sucking and losing gamers' business. Same as Konami, Capcom, Square, et al. Even the once respected Ridge Racer has become a laughingstock.

Man, those used to be my top 3 favorite third parties up until the last generation

I do believe that Square still makes good games though, and I'm not quite ready to renounce the FF series because the 13 trilogy (!) was shit (I ended up quite liking 14 actually), but it's obvious that they do take less risks and they have horrible HORRIBLE writers. And Toriyama needs to be fired STAT.
From a canon.

But yeah, Konami is a joke. The only decent franchise they have left is Metal Gear, which just keeps going on despite Kojima saying he wants to quit.
And Capcom is, to paraphrase one of their own games, "a shadow of its former self."
Although I'm a big Monster Hunter fan, I will never forgive them for the way they're treating Mega Man.

I got a bigger laugh out of that than I should have.

As a fan I'm oddly fine with the lack of Mega Man games for some reason. I think it probably has to do with some of the bombs they dropped back in the PS1 and PS2 eras... and the fact I've never been a fan of Inti games outside their composers.

Truth is they weren't treating the franchise well even before they quit making games. I think it's more of a "do it right or don't do it at all" thing with me.

Also, despite seeing the game in action I'm still not hyped for Mighty No.9 or the other Mega Man Zero inspired game they have in the works.

My thoughts on Square are well documented...They pretty much died when they merged with Enix, when Sakaguchi/Uematsu left (basically the core of Final Fantasy) and when their leader said they had to get all the juice out of whatever they think they might have a hit on their hands with (immediately followed by nearly a half dozen crappy Mana games and a total milking of FFVII's dignity). Nomura's the guy I have the issue with, whether its game design or character design. He should not have as much power within that company as he's gained. But oh well...

Konami and Capcom took effort to screw up though. They have enough franchises out the wazoo to fall back and choose to use virtually none of them.

Pretty much how I feel... but I didn't want to write it out because I know everyone's heard this a million times. I generally do feel a lot better when I boot up a game and see the Squaresoft logo rather than the Square Enix logo. The only product that really escapes that is SO3 because I believe Enix released it in Japan prior to the merger but the states didn't get it for a while (after the merger) because of the Director's Cut.

Speaking of SO3 that is a game that I really need to replay. I'm curious if it still holds up.

Yeah, Square, Capcom, and Konami were the holy trinity of third parties in the 16-bit days. These days, Squenix's non-Japanese games are better than the Japanese developed stuff which is a bit funny. With the exception of Bravely Default, their Japanese side hasn't put out anything really good in ages, at least in my opinion. I'd love to see them return to form, but my expectations are pretty low.

Capcom is more of a mixed bag. Its fighting games (both new ones and HD remasters) continue to be excellent, and some of the Resident Evil games are still quite good (Revelations), and the Ace Attorney series is still delivering, but they put out so much "meh" stuff that it's hard to trust the overall brand.

As for Konami, I'm totally in agreement that all they have left is Metal Gear. Kojima's Metal Gear games continue to be amazing, but everything else is just a big "Huh?" Hopefully whatever team gets Castlevania next can try to salvage that series, but it may be beyond saving at this point.

Personally I think many of the people that dislike the 13 trilogy don't really "hate" it per say... but I think they ended up being fatigued that SE fixated on that particular story and those particular characters for so long.

Outside X-2 one of the great things about FF was that characters/stories were generally relegated to a single title... and to be honest that's all most characters/games needed to pop. We didn't need Cloud Strife in another game... and that was a very good thing if you didn't happen to like Cloud or another character. I mean I probably would have been pretty disgruntled had Squall had headlined another FF title... but back then the likelihood of that happening was nil. The XIII trilogy really broke that unwritten rule and I can see how that could backfire.

That is definitely a big part of it, yeah.
Which is mostly, like I said, because of the horribly brain-dead writing they have nowadays.

I mean, FF has never been Shakespeare, but at least they used to have lovable characters in interesting stories with a quirky sense of humor.
13 is all melodramatic bullshit with cringe-worthy lines by 2-dimensional characters (and that's coming from someone who at least liked the lore in 13-1, which they also completely butchered in all the sequels and spin-offs).

That, and I truly believe that 13-1 was just a really poorly designed game.
13-2 was better though.

'Soul Calibur: Lost Topic'

The noobs are taking over. Even fighting people to their death is not supposed to be competitive anymore. I'm sure in the future they'll have you play against opponents that are labelled as actual players that are bots that suicide themselves to let you win.

Read: "the Japanese don't mind paying through the nose for transactions in crappy F2P games, so they're easier to milk."