9 / 10
11 Oct 2006 at 12:56
Review by: pogothemonkey
Anyone who knows anything about fighting games should of heard about this game. Soul Calibur is legendary. Originally a Dreamcast title, where it captured my heart and resulted in many many blisters bashing controllers and shouting at the TV. The game looked and played so fast and so perfect. The Stages were huge and so well detailed. It killed many many hours in the golden age of the Dreamcast.
When Soul Calibur 2 came out, I was a bit unsure. The original had given me so much joy that the thought of the second one being totally different and ruining the series haunted my dreams. But when it was released, all those old feelings came back. The balance was great that they have seemed to of kept all the stronger characters from the first game, but also added some new characters to the mix to keep things fresh. I was loving it. My personal favourite character, Ivy, has had a total overhaul. The moves that I spent many endless nights learning were all still there, along with a whole new dimension of changing fighting styles, stances and positions. It was all a bit too much excitement to take in initially but, I kept plugging away. Those moved are still etched into my mind this very day. And I have the extremely sad ability to be able to pull off ivy moves in my mind. Looking back maybe I did play it a bit too much.
Soul Calibur 2 was right in every way. They had kept the essence of the game but enhanced its strong points. The levels were grander, the characters more detailed and with a multi format release, was put a lot more in the public eye then the Dreamcast could of ever done. A great touch was also the fact that each platform was given its own exclusive character for the game. The Gamecube release ( and debatably the best) saw Soul Calibur come with a playable Link character from the Zelda series. The Xbox version gave us a playable Spawn character, and The PS2 gave us a playable Hihatchi from rival beat em up Tekken. This was a great little touch, to see developers putting in extra effort for each platform was great news, But did cause some hard deciders when punters came to buy a copy of the game with more than one console. I saw many people standing around game shops asking staff (me) which version should they buy. And which extra character was the best. At the end of the day, they were getting a most excellent beat em up, so everyone won either way.
Commercially Soul Calibur has never seemed to reach the popularity of the likes of Tekken, especially with Tekken having a big presence in the arcade scene. In my personal opinion I do think it’s a superior game to Tekken. Not only does Soul Calibur include weapons but also has a nice balance of parrying abilities, blocking, and special moves. The parry ability especially, found on Dead or Alive games is a great edition to the depth of the game. Proving that a player with a balance of a decent attack but a decent parry/blocking skill will be victorious.
The series has advanced further now, with Soul Calibur 3 being old news. I’ve not got around to playing this title yet but its always there staring at me on the shelves of the store. Part of me thinks that the dream is over and I should leave it be now. The golden days of shouting and screaming whilst battling friends seem to be long gone. Im just hoping that a next generation release of the game will take us into the realm of online play. So we can show the world how cool this game is.
9/10
Overview
User Reviews
Prices
Reviews
Change Country
RSS
