Mostly I am dissapointed in the controls. No matter how hard a tried, I couldn't seem to consistently land the sword stroke I wanted. This is the first Wii game I've owned where I couldn't eventually learn the moves by practicing. I can get it right about 60% of the time... which isn't very good. Especially since the game seems to want you to chain together combos.
There are some nice gameplay ideas. I like the concept of getting abilities from Dragons and how those are implemented, but I just can't get over how spotty the sword controls are. Better have them by like Twilight Princess, where it doesn't really matter how you swing the remote, than this, where you find yourself really wanting to make it work, but cannot.
The graphics are also very, very rough. I am not so dissapointed by this because I expected it, but still a little disconcerting. Only Alien Syndrome looks worse on Wii.
Perhaps one of you folks who might try renting this might have a better experience- as for me, I'm putting this on eBay now. It's nice to experiment sometimes, you find some real gems that way. But in this case, a few decent ideas and Wii exclusivity just isn't enough.
It is really hard to see what IGN's Mark Bozon saw in this game. Perhaps it is more fun when you gain more abilities, but I can't see the bad sword controls improving. Looks like it is time to wait for Soulcaliber Legends in order to see if this kind of game can work on Wii.
-Rob