Yoshimitsu ( both of them) is very much the same Fighting Clown as his Tekken counterpart, right down to the infamous (and highly entertaining) Death-or-Glory Attack that is weaponized Seppuku.note Do not be surprised if you see multiple comments online along the lines of "Step on me, Ivy!" And speaking of "crowd-pleasing," Ivy's Critical Edge in VI is well-regarded among certain circles for the suggestive imagery it gives off. Needless to say, an Ivy player managing to nail it usually makes for an extremely crowd-pleasing moment.
She's also noted to possess a very spectacular, very damaging command grab which is, unsurprisingly, exceptionally difficult to pull off. That's not even getting into how often her moveset and inputs change with each new installment. Between an interesting manner of dress clearly meant to be eye-catching and a very technical fighting style involving a difficult-to-control Whip Sword with two modes and multiple stances, Ivy is a standout example of this.
Lost Swords was known for being mediocre, having barely-there costumes full of shameless fanservice, and for being mediocre while having barely-there costumes full of shameless fanservice.
While V did dial this down out of Daishi Odashima's desire for the series to be taken more seriously, this didn't last after he left the team, and the series went straight back into being a sexualized fighting game for the "next" installment (see directly below). There's two different camps on whether or not the series' status as a highly sexualized fighter is a good thing. Each installment starting with Soulcalibur II has given the established female fighters bustier, curvier, and shapelier bodies, with skimpier outfits to match. While Soul Edge and Soulcalibur were rather light on fanservice compared to DOA, it seemed that the series spent the subsequent games trying to catch up.
Either he's a well-rounded, tragic character with understandable motivations who also happens to be an undeniable badass, an OP warrior who is a complete pain in the ass to fight against and seemingly materializes out of thin air with little depth to his name, or is simply a guy who lacks the wow factor of bosses such as Abyss and Night Terror from III. The fact that many fans had been hoping for Kratos, who only afterwards got to be in the less popular Broken Destiny, did not help matters. Yoda deserves special mention for his height making him rather unorthodox to play as, and because many Xbox 360 users were stuck with him rather than the much, much cooler Vader (until the DLC came out). Although they helped introduce new fans to the series similar to Link in SCII (especially Vader), the fact that they come from a futuristic sci-fi setting note which is still technically "a long time ago" was not taken lightly. Everyone likes Darth Vader, but not necessarily as a Soulcalibur fighter.