A great fighter, though annoying balance issues are included with purchase. Damn.
I haven't had too many problems with lag, but when I did, the game would be next to unplayable. The match would either crawl along at an annoyingly slow rate, or it would take 80 days for the game to register my combos and moves. For the most part though, online play has been an enjoyable experience.
However, there's always the annoying part. As I started playing, about 90% of the time my opponent would choose Kilik. I haven't played the game in forever, so I figured "Oh, Kilik? This won't be so bad." Unfortunately, no one learns how to actually play. All of the people who picked Kilik used the same annoying two moves, the "POKE YOU WITH MY STICK ATTACK!" and "HA, SIDESTEP THIS ATTACK, WHORE!" rendering anything I did useless. This was remedied when I actually learned how to play the game, and actually started winning a match. I felt so proud of myself.
This brings me to the fun part; balance. Say what you will about being cheap, the fact of the matter is that having characters who only need to do one or two moves to win is bull. There's a select few characters where you can simply just hit "Y" a bunch and still win. Yes, i do very much suck at this game so far, but there's no excuse for giving a character that much power just by spamming one button. To make matters worse, some characters are just too damn slow to do anything. Whatever, perhaps it's a lack of ability on my part. Oh, and Yoda sucks. Don't play Yoda. Maybe it's a skill thing on my part, but I haven't had a fun time with Yoda yet.
The big plus with this game is that characters are easy to unlock. You start with 20000 gold, that's 5 characters you can buy right there. You play through the disappointing story mode(Really Namco, 5 missions? Come on now.) in about 10 minutes, and earn at least 10000 gold, which bring in 2 more characters. You can unlock the main characters in about 20 minutes tops. Oh yea, back to Yoda. He's pretty bad. The Apprentice is gimmicky, and adding Star Wars characters to this game was incredibly retarded. Annnnd ending nerd rage now...
The character creation is soooo much better in this game than the last. But that's not really saying much. You can't make a character with the Jedi move set , yea it sucks, but come on. I wanted to make an afro-jedi! My dreams are ruined! Though the SC3 'unique' move sets sucked, I will miss them. Instead you choose from the main characters move sets. Basically, you're recreating the main characters to suit your tastes. You have the ability to set voice pitch, (I won't go into too much detail, but they all sound funny either way) and the body structure of your character. But you still can't make a really fat guy. You can make a really big, beefy guy, however, which is close enough I suppose. Regardless, the Character Creation is good, and I've plenty of humorous, and incredibly awesome characters online thus far.
I haven't had a chance to try Tower of Souls yet, but the damage caused by the RTS special mode of SC3 makes me extremely hesitant. Perhaps one day the countless mental therapy sessions will cure me of this damage, but that's a very small ray of hope.
In short, Soul Calibur 4 is a great fighter. Some competitive players will be put off by the imbalance between some characters, but their only solace is getting better with the characters they favor. Online multiplayer needs some work, but is still very solid. Anyone who enjoys fighting games will experience countless hours of fun with their friends, or other random people.