Balls is it. I didn't play III enough and haven't touched IV yet, but I knew exactly one person who could even match me at Soul Caliber I or II. Button mashing was incredibly easy for me to deal with.

And yeah try button mashing with Voldo, then watch me use Voldo, and see which of the two gets smashed in by Astaroth and which gets a win.

Certainly VF is more complex than SC. And in some ways Tekken arguably is as well. But a well-played SC character will be infinitely superior to a button-mashing one.

Excluding Maxi, but even then, I don't think it really counts as button mashing seeing as a single button press tends to be a 13-hit combo.