I agree with this review. What Soul Calibur manages to do is be both accessible for the novice and yet challenging for the player who knows the game well. The characters are nicely varied, the fighting styles nicely varied, and it's all visually very cool indeed.
A brighter future for a darker age.
Part of the reason I like the Soul Series so much is they really do give you a sense that these characters are part of some great, epic, myth-like storyline. It really makes you care more beyond the typical "quick! Beat the computer to get to the next part of the arcade!" fighter.
That being said, though, I think Soul Calibur IV fell flat in that department by pulling back on the story too much. Soul Calibur III was the best in terms of the story mode.
Current project: Cleaning up the Chrono Crusade examples one at a time. God help me.
I love this game for the gameplay, yes, but what really keeps me coming back is the narm-ridden, but still enjoyable story.
You didn't mention that each iteration takes one step forward, two steps back with features sometimes (What happened to my group versus?), but that was probably out of place in a concise review.
Great summary and a well thought-out review overall.
"The only way to truly waste an idea is to shove it where it doesn't belong."
I was going to add a review myself, but this review pretty much sums it up. My only complaint with the series as a whole is that it is just... daunting. So many moves, so little spare time D:
Was, is, and always will be in a passionate love affair with the semicolon.Leave a Comment:
A great, complicated fighting game.
The Soul Calibur series is a franchise of 3D weapon-based fighting games. At their hearts, the games use a very simple control system. Each character has three attacks- Horizontal, Vertical, and Kick. From these three moves, along with the ability to freely move around the opponent and guard, each character can execute almost 100 moves.
The Soul Series has the absolute most complicated storyline of almost any fighting game, but it pretty much all boils down to "get sentient Artifact Of Doom Soul Edge", "get sentient Empathic Weapon Soul Calibur", or "destroy Soul Edge". While it's helpful to know the storyline (and Soul Calibur 4 includes a handy relationship chart), you don't really need to know anything specific to follow the game.
The series is also famous for its characters. Generally, the male characters are LargeHams, and the females are either Stripperiffic Lolicon or Stripperiffic with Most Common Super Power. Highlights include soul-draining zombie pirate Cervantes, his daughter Ivy, the genuinely creepy blind and insane contortionist Voldo, the Soul Calibur-wielding Siegfried, and his former Superpowered Evil Side, the Soul Edge-wielding Nightmare.
The third and fourth games have a Character Customization mode. You can even recostume the default characters.
The games usually include bonus characters from other series. The second game included Link, Spawn, and Heihachi; the fourth included Darth Vader, Yoda, and the Apprentice.
The games are surprisingly newbie-friendly; a Button Masher can do decently. All the games include longer modes that require very large amounts of skill; in the earlier games The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard. However, with training, a player can string together long combos and pull off very flashy attacks.
The series is very addictive, since all twenty-something characters fight very differently (for the most part), and it takes a good amount of time to perfect any of them.
In general: The Soul Series is a great, intense fighting game franchise with a convoluted storyline. Highly recommended.