Review of Soul Calibur IV
Soul Calibur IV
By: Namco Average Rating: 4.0 Total Reviews: 159
More Information
Great game!
On: 2010-08-10I bought this for my husbands birthday. Hes enjoyed playing it and convincing other people to battle him in versus battles. He loves the customization options for building his own characters. This is a game that can easily be picked up for a few minutes of play or played for an hour or so to unlock new characters and option and to get the storyline.
As Much a Pseudo-RPG as a Fighter, and a Massive Downgrade from III.
On: 2010-08-06While this game doesnt represent the very worst experience Ive had this gen, it almost assuredly is at least the second biggest letdown... Its so shameful however, as in development this game seemed to offer trademark Soul Calibur gameplay that was simply a bit modernized and of course included some guest characters to attract casual fans... The game almost exclusively appeals to the casual and/or RPG market though, which is my primary gripe with it...
While my greatest worry with reference to the games reported development was the "critical finish" system, this gameplay mechanic is actually very peripheral and difficult to achieve, and so that was one thing I was relieved about upon playing this game... Whats not made very explicit within any official review I read (most notably IGNs own review) is how much effect character customization has on general gameplay. Representing one of the bad turns (if not the very worst) of creative direction of III to IV, rather than just affecting the aesthetic, a characters equipment now grants them "skill points" or whats generally equivalent to attribute points within most RPGs... There are four categories which these points can count towards, and depending how many points you have within each one you are able to select specific skills which will grant different exotic effects to whatever character the points correspond with.... Conceptually this might seem cool - especially to the markets I referenced earlier - but anyone expecting a pure/competitive worthy/balanced fighter will immediately be turned off. Referencing things objectively, there are a few modes that dont have equipment have any weight over gameplay, though exclusively referencing singleplayer, the only mode that such an idea can be said about is by far the most barebones.
With reference to the games singleplayer, theres very little special about this game... As just mentioned, there is a very basic "arcade mode" present; although its extremely basic this will probably be the favored mode of anyone who considers themself specifically a fighting fan rather than just a general gaming fan. While I dont dislike the arcade mode, in many ways it seems like players are discouraged from playing that mode rather than all others, with very few achievements derived from playing it, and generally speaking the least money gained by playing it once through...
To reference the other modes, of course theres a story mode, but unlike its predecessor, its incredibly barebones... Rather than be granted plot lines in the form of visual exposition, the player is granted a wall of text which is pretty much the entirety of a "storys" involvement with story mode... As you face characters within said mode, some will make oblique references to key character traits and/or plot elements, but thats all that can be said aside from the characters endings, most of which are also very oblique and really lacking in emotionality and/or anything generally compelling. All of said statements are intensified contrasted with the greatness that was Soul Calibur IIIs "Tales of Souls" mode, offering some RPG-like single-player progressive options, text which would further the story in a very logical and successive manner, and could be read completely optionally between each stage, (rather than the single wall encountered within SC IVs mode) and of course the event battles each with specialized dialogue corresponding with each character uniquely... Said mode was truly iconoclastic by the standards of the fighting genres story involvement, and its a travesty that Namco couldnt have developed a "story" mode more closely following within this ones footsteps...
Of all the singleplayer modes, the one that was obviously focused on the most while the game was being developed was the "Tower of Lost Souls" mode... Here the equipment effects prove the most prominent, and the player is mandated to customize their character if they actually want to stand a chance of doing well within this mode... Frankly I think Ive stated enough of my opinions on the equipment, which overall correlate with my opinions towards this mode, though some people may derive some enjoyment from it if they actually enjoy customization and/or want a genuine challenge (albeit a challenge that isnt so because of well coded AI or any other reason more befitting of a fighting game...).
By most gamers standards, a fighting games singleplayer modes are mitigated by its multiplayer, though for the most part, the criticisms still stand... Theres a versus standard mode, which is the game at its core... While this is still prefereable to the "special" mode, the animation looks choppy contrasted with III, the game seems even more imbalanced than before, and overall its generally a let down. Of course the special mode is the game with weapon effects incorporated, and once again is most heavily catered towards the RPG crowd... As if the general low quality of said multiplayer modes werent bad enough, the games netcode seems to be the worst Ive experienced aside from pretty much any SNK game... Even on the highest quality connections, (those with ratings of "5" or "blue) I experienced a very large amount of input delay... When I hosted matches, this effect seemed even more prominent (how this is the case I have no idea, but Im pretty sure I wasnt imagining that). Many hardcore fighting fans will state the fact that a player shouldnt judge a games quality by the standards of its online modes, but considering how many achievements are tied with online play, my experiences were so bad even while hosting or on very optimal connections, and that this game is developed by major developer Namco, I think said point is definitely worthy of mentioning.
Theres a bit more to games than gameplay, that much is true, but generally speaking Soul Calibur IV doesnt deliver there either... A lot of the stages that recurred from III feature themes similar in nature to said game, but overall of lesser quality. Overall the voice acting is lower quality as well, with most returning actors voicing their characters flatter than before... I reluctantly state this, as said person is also my generally favorite voice actress, but Jennifer Hales new style of manic voice for Tira is beyond awful... Im assuming this was a directors decision, so I dont blame her specifically, but I found the character very compelling within III and I cant say that with reference to her incarnation within IV (within that vein the new style of character design is also way too drastically different, but said point is kind of pedantic Ill admit). The only characters voices I think are improved from III to IV are Nightmares and Setsukas, (due to the heavy distortion of the voice, I dont know if Nightmares voice actor is the same within both games) and the only character who has a voice on par with their incarnation within III is Siegried (the pitch is notably different, but for whatever reason I think both voices fit the character).
To reference a few arbitrary things, the Star Wars characters are blatant gimmicks, but I think most people whove played pretty much any SC game before this one can realize that for themselves. To give the game its deserved credit, I cant complain at all about the game graphically... The facial models look incredibly lifelike, (frankly I do find myself attracted to a few of the girls in the game, despite the fact I know they are not real) the backgrounds are incredibly lush and vibrant, and its quite possibly the very best looking game Ive played on the 360 overall... Graphics are least important when it comes to game design though, and so even this credit Ill give it will not be enough for me to grant this game a greater than mediocre score... With the quality of this iteration considered, I really hope Namco can salvage the franchise and deliver a truly worthy successor to III, but it seems like Namco is deliberately making Soul Calibur casually appealing, and if thats their choice as to where to take the franchise, I doubt my hopes will ever become realized....
Soul Calibur IV Review
On: 2010-08-03Soul Calibur IV is a solid fighting game and if you havent picked it up, I suggest doing so. The price for it has been cheap, and its well worth your money. There are plenty of things you can unlock, there is great character customization, great graphics, and overall its a great game to add to any collection. Also, this is a weapon fighter, one of the few, and with that it makes Soul Calibur a very unique game. Though the Online is somewhat unbalanced, there is still a community so if you wish to play with a human opponent, youre sure to get one. My few cons are that the online can be brutal and the load times can be somewhat long, but I solved that by installing it on my hard drive... I suggest you do the same to cut these down...
Overall, A great game by any means and worth of playing, especially if you are a fighter fan. =D
Soul Calibur IV the fun continues.
On: 2010-06-25This game is everything I thought it would be. A very challenging, fast paced game, with a few new twists and lots of character choices.
Good game, nice franchise
On: 2010-06-23This game, like other games from Namco, has amazing graphics. Trust me. If you want to see awesome landscapes and fighting environments, this is your game.
About the game, it kind of disappoints me that the single mode has only 4 fights. So you can finish the game in 5 minutes, even in a hard difficulty.
You can create your own fighters and use them online. Thats an amazing feature.
Amazon provided the game in excellent shape, very fast shipping and awesome quality of the product. I recommend the game and definitely buy it here at Amazon !
As Much a Pseudo-RPG as a Fighter, and a Massive Downgrade from III.
On: 2010-06-11While this game doesnt represent the very worst experience Ive had this gen, it almost assuredly is at least the second biggest letdown... Its so shameful however, as in development this game seemed to offer trademark Soul Calibur gameplay that was simply a bit modernized and of course included some guest characters to attract casual fans... The game almost exclusively appeals to the casual and/or RPG market though, which is my primary gripe with it...
While my greatest worry with reference to the games reported development was the "critical finish" system, this gameplay mechanic is actually very peripheral and difficult to achieve, and so that was one thing I was relieved about upon playing this game... Whats not made very explicit within any official review I read (most notably IGNs own review) is how much effect character customization has on general gameplay. Representing one of the bad turns (if not the very worst) of creative direction of III to IV, rather than just affecting the aesthetic, a characters equipment now grants them "skill points" or whats generally equivalent to attribute points within most RPGs... There are four categories which these points can count towards, and depending how many points you have within each one you are able to select specific skills which will grant different exotic effects to whatever character the points correspond with.... Conceptually this might seem cool - especially to the markets I referenced earlier - but anyone expecting a pure/competitive worthy/balanced fighter will immediately be turned off. Referencing things objectively, there are a few modes that dont have equipment have any weight over gameplay, though exclusively referencing singleplayer, the only mode that such an idea can be said about is by far the most barebones.
With reference to the games singleplayer, theres very little special about this game... As just mentioned, there is a very basic "arcade mode" present; although its extremely basic this will probably be the favored mode of anyone who considers themself specifically a fighting fan rather than just a general gaming fan. While I dont dislike the arcade mode, in many ways it seems like players are discouraged from playing that mode rather than all others, with very few achievements derived from playing it, and generally speaking the least money gained by playing it once through...
To reference the other modes, of course theres a story mode, but unlike its predecessor, its incredibly barebones... Rather than be granted plot lines in the form of visual exposition, the player is granted a wall of text which is pretty much the entirety of a "storys" involvement with story mode... As you face characters within said mode, some will make oblique references to key character traits and/or plot elements, but thats all that can be said aside from the characters endings, most of which are also very oblique and really lacking in emotionality and/or anything generally compelling. All of said statements are intensified contrasted with the greatness that was Soul Calibur IIIs "Tales of Souls" mode, offering some RPG-like single-player progressive options, text which would further the story in a very logical and successive manner, and could be read completely optionally between each stage, (rather than the single wall encountered within SC IVs mode) and of course the event battles each with specialized dialogue corresponding with each character uniquely... Said mode was truly iconoclastic by the standards of the fighting genres story involvement, and its a travesty that Namco couldnt have developed a "story" mode more closely following within this ones footsteps...
Of all the singleplayer modes, the one that was obviously focused on the most while the game was being developed was the "Tower of Lost Souls" mode... Here the equipment effects prove the most prominent, and the player is mandated to customize their character if they actually want to stand a chance of doing well within this mode... Frankly I think Ive stated enough of my opinions on the equipment, which overall correlate with my opinions towards this mode, though some people may derive some enjoyment from it if they actually enjoy customization and/or want a genuine challenge (albeit a challenge that isnt so because of well coded AI or any other reason more befitting of a fighting game...).
By most gamers standards, a fighting games singleplayer modes are mitigated by its multiplayer, though for the most part, the criticisms still stand... Theres a versus standard mode, which is the game at its core... While this is still prefereable to the "special" mode, the animation looks choppy contrasted with III, the game seems even more imbalanced than before, and overall its generally a let down. Of course the special mode is the game with weapon effects incorporated, and once again is most heavily catered towards the RPG crowd... As if the general low quality of said multiplayer modes werent bad enough, the games netcode seems to be the worst Ive experienced aside from pretty much any SNK game... Even on the highest quality connections, (those with ratings of "5" or "blue) I experienced a very large amount of input delay... When I hosted matches, this effect seemed even more prominent (how this is the case I have no idea, but Im pretty sure I wasnt imagining that). Many hardcore fighting fans will state the fact that a player shouldnt judge a games quality by the standards of its online modes, but considering how many achievements are tied with online play, my experiences were so bad even while hosting or on very optimal connections, and that this game is developed by major developer Namco, I think said point is definitely worthy of mentioning.
Theres a bit more to games than gameplay, that much is true, but generally speaking Soul Calibur IV doesnt deliver there either... A lot of the stages that recurred from III feature themes similar in nature to said game, but overall of lesser quality. Overall the voice acting is lower quality as well, with most returning actors voicing their characters flatter than before... I reluctantly state this, as said person is also my generally favorite voice actress, but Jennifer Hales new style of manic voice for Tira is beyond awful... Im assuming this was a directors decision, so I dont blame her specifically, but I found the character very compelling within III and I cant say that with reference to her incarnation within IV (within that vein the new style of character design is also way too drastically different, but said point is kind of pedantic Ill admit). The only characters voices I think are improved from III to IV are Nightmares and Setsukas, (due to the heavy distortion of the voice, I dont know if Nightmares voice actor is the same within both games) and the only character who has a voice on par with their incarnation within III is Siegried (the pitch is notably different, but for whatever reason I think both voices fit the character).
To reference a few arbitrary things, the Star Wars characters are blatant gimmicks, but I think most people whove played pretty much any SC game before this one can realize that for themselves. To give the game its deserved credit, I cant complain at all about the game graphically... The facial models look incredibly lifelike, (frankly I do find myself attracted to a few of the girls in the game, despite the fact I know they are not real) the backgrounds are incredibly lush and vibrant, and its quite possibly the very best looking game Ive played on the 360 overall... Graphics are least important when it comes to game design though, and so even this credit Ill give it will not be enough for me to grant this game a greater than mediocre score... With the quality of this iteration considered, I really hope Namco can salvage the franchise and deliver a truly worthy successor to III, but it seems like Namco is deliberately making Soul Calibur casually appealing, and if thats their choice as to where to take the franchise, I doubt my hopes will ever become realized....
Excellent! A+
On: 2010-05-31Eu sempre acompanhei o crescimento deste jogo desde seu lancamento no PS1.Agora ele ficou maravilhoso e ainda bem que há para xbox 360. Parabéns a Namco e amazon por disponibilizar a venda de jogos para outros paÃses.
Great game at a great price
On: 2010-05-06Pros: Plenty of character choices, fun strategic fights, customizable characters, solid multiplayer, and pretty graphics.
Cons: Collecting all the items requires a lot of patience and a cool head, difficulty often varies from a walk in the park to impossible, and some of the characters are very questionable or annoying (Voldo particularly).
First things first, I am not a fighting game enthusiast. In fact, I tend to avoid them. This is mostly because I dont like losing, so I get stuck in a perpetual lose-lose scenario. I dont play them because I lose, and I lose because I dont play them... Soul Calibur II was probably the first fighting series I didnt mind losing at. So when it came time to expand my gaming library, I decided to go with something other than a FPS and got Soul Calibur IV... I wasnt able to stop playing for two weeks.
Characters
The characters are fun, detailed, and seem very balanced - besides yoda who cant be grabbed and is too short for high attacks. Each of them retained the same moves as the first game, which isnt a bad thing. Well, except when I invited my friends over for a couple matches and was surprised to find that they were at home enough to beat me even though I had two weeks of practice.
Sound
The music in this game is nice. Im very fond of the character customization music. The rest sets a good mood and it doesnt really get annoying, but seems forgettable. Voices on the other hand can get terribly annoying, the high pitched phrase "JUST KIDDING" sends shivers down my spine. Irritating may come from only a select few characters, but a lot of it doesnt make any since.
Gameplay
You get all your standard combos with additional parrying, grappling, and countering as well as a soul gauge that allows special abilities if full or special finishers against you if you block too often and empty it. Customizable armor is also available for almost all characters, adding quite a bit of interest in the form of character creation. Everything put together makes for some surprisingly strategic and enjoyable battles.
Design
The majority of my play time resided in a mode called Tower of souls. It is by this mode that you gain all the equipment to customize your characters. You ascend the tower battling groups of enemies one at a time, often followed by a boss character at the final stage. Clearing the challenges can be hard when your characters have a health bar that remains damaged from each progressive stage, but this does add a layer of strategy when you can equip your characters with abilities and armor to fit each situation. It starts getting frustrating when you consider items that are only obtained only when you perform a specific task like not taking damage and the probability of ring out\\death over 9 fights and youll find yourself replaying some stages 20 times or more. There is also a lengthy screen that comes up when you fail, making me wish there was a way to open the menu and retry mid-battle.
Overall
Despite some of its less enjoyable moments, there isnt many fighting games that Ive enjoyed as much or spent as long playing as this one. If you like fighters and have a little money to spare for what is now a very cheap game, I say go for it. Just be warned you might go a little crazy if you try to get all the items. I give it a 8.8/10
Take the Fight Online!
On: 2010-03-29Soul Calibur 4 - Circa 2008
GOOD:
- Good/Tight controls.
- Overall balanced gameplay.
- Tons of different and unique fighters.
- Minutes to learn years to master type gameplay.
- Lots content to unlock such as new Fighters, costume pieces, stages, and extra modes of play - this might keep you busy for some time.
- All returning characters from Soul Calibur 1, 2 and 3 have their move sets/styles upgraded and slightly changed sometimes.
- Two new Soul Calibur fighters Hilde a woman Knight who uses a lance and a new playable boss called Algol. Also note there is a few bonus characters designed by Japanese manga artists and the inclusion of two Star Wars characters.
- Build your own unique characters from tons of costume items (and you can change the colors on any one of these items as well). You can pretty much make any character you want. Also you can edit the clothing of any of the regular fighters as well.
- Finally be able to play Soul Calibur online over Xbox Live (note this is only for Gold users).
BAD:
- A lot of the cheesy/easy win moves discovered in Soul Calibur 3 are back and there are some new ones are well. This is really a pain online and worse with laggy.
- The story is total nonsense and thankfully be just ignored.
- Laggy online, while this is more of an issue with your internet connection if you dont have a strong connection your gonna see lots of lag online.
IF IT FITS YOUR TASTE:
- Has medieval theme, both European and Chinese/Japanese.
- Not traditional fighting game in the sense that there is no real combos and or supers, and there is limited projectile moves.
- Fight with weapons, like a 3D Samurai Showdown type of game or a Tekken/Dead or Alive with weapons.
- A 3D fighting game that really uses the 3D space (with eight way run).
- Build your own unique characters (pretty much costume only, you pick a pre-set fighting style) and fight with them in Versus, Tower, as well as online modes, (Lots of the new items and costume parts should be unlock to really get a better selection of costume accessories, not much to pick at default).
- Have to unlock most of the game content like fighters, stages and items through many different modes of play, which takes time and skill (some people do not have either and will be upset with this).
- Tower modes help you earn in-game money to unlock stuff. This tower mode is broken down into two different areas. The first Ascending the tower has you playing matches against the CPU in harder and harder matches and you can save and rest at the end of every level. Descending now has you doing a similar trial but you can not save after each level, since it more like endurance encounters.
- Earn in-game money (like in Tower mode and playing ranked online matches) to unlock tons and tons of stuff from new fighters to new costume items for your custom character, or art work and videos.
- A new finished system makes it so if you get enough powerful hits on your opponent with our being interrupted you can now do a splashy finisher type move to them, wining the match.
GAME ITS MOST ASSOCATED TOO:
- Soul Calibur 3
- Tekken 6
- Samurai Showdown
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- The Premium edition comes with the game, a download code for more exclusive costume items, a real world t-shirt (with Yoda on it), a mini comic, art book and it all comes in a metal case for save keeping.
- There are a few download packs for this game in terms of new costume pieces and weapons, but be careful some downloads for this game are nothing more then unlocks for content already found within the game. There is also a download the add music from the first Soul Calibur game from Dreamcast.
- There are two Star Wars characters in Soul Calibur 4, Yoda the little green Jedi master from the movies and The Apprentice from the game Star Wars: Force Unleashed. These new Star Wars characters can use Force abilities (limited use energy use but they can recharge). There is no real good reason (story wise) for these characters to be in this game.
- Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies and who was once only exclusive on the PS3 version is now a Download for the Xbox 360 version.
It's a great fighting game.
On: 2010-01-18I am a fan of sparring games like this one and the Mortal Kombat series. This one does a pretty good job graphics and gameplay-wise, but as others have mentioned, the story itself is negligible and it is really only good if you have someone to play against.
I think the most frustrating for me was that it does not save the custom characters. Maybe Im doing something wrong, but I am pretty sure Im not. I first spent almost an hour piddling around with all the customizations and coloring of my character, then I played the character a few rounds and like it. I left the game only to return to find that the character was no long there...where did it go?? So every time I want to play a custom character, I have to try and recreate the original. Thats pretty annoying.
Also, I am known to be a button masher sometimes. This game wont let you do that. I get frustrated easily when my character is just standing there, not doing anything except blocking. I try to do combinations on the fly, by basically making them up and hoping for the best because each character has so many special moves and combinations that I dont have the patience to sit there at stare at the list, which you can only access in the middle of a fight.
For a fighting game, its good if you want to work out some frustration from the real world, like a bad work day. But as a game that has story progression or any kind of logical flow, it falls flat.
I gave it a mediocre rating because it doesnt quite rate four stars, but doesnt suck bad enough to be less than three. The game doesnt really suck, but for the amount of money you pay for it, you kind of get gyped. Its just a sparring game. There isnt much to it.
Our Favorite Xbox 360 Game! Highly Recommended!
On: 2010-01-02Soul Calibur IV is the most played game on our Xbox! The four of us range from 13 to 48 and all regularly play the game, either against each other, against the computer, or on-line against remote opponents. Here are my observations:
+ Great Graphics - Outstanding graphics, the settings are simply amazing and the characters interact realistically with the environment (at least more so than in earlier versions)
+ Intuitive Controls - Character controls are fairly easy to learn and are well thought out, making this less of a "button masher" then other games of its type
+ Many Modes - Single Player (Story, Tower "Quest", Arcade, Training), Versus (local 2 player), and Xbox Live (fight against on-line opponents, really works well and is a lot of fun)
+ Character Editor - Allows customization of "basic" characters and allows creation of new characters, a lot of fun once the stock characters become well known.
+ Expandable - Able to add weapons, armor, and abilities with "gold" earned in the game. Additional characters can be purchased on-line
* Special Character - Yoda doesnt really fit into this game but is sort of fun to play, especially after we bought Darth Vader on-line (fighting in the Star Wars settings makes this a lot of fun, indeed)
Notes:
* Since this is the most played game we have, we downloaded this to our hard drive and found the game does run quicker.
* Some of the female characters are fairly scantily clad, and armor can be knocked off in combat, so while it never gets to full "exposure" it does come frightfully close (especially "Ivy")
* No real gore, which is a big plus for us
This is a very fun fighting game that we all enjoy playing, Highly Recommended!
CFH
Awesome
On: 2009-12-30this game is really cool.
The graphics are excellent, but it is pretty hard.
Yoda is great!
Almost a year a half since it's release...Very underrated.
On: 2009-12-30Ive had this game since I bought my Xbox in August of 2008, and its never really grabbed my attention. Ive always been more of a Street Fighter/2-D Fighter guy, and I had only given Soul Calibur 4 one shot way back when. While trying to start selling the majority of my xbox games, I found this, and figured I would try to get as much achievements as I could before I send it off into someone elses hands.
2nd time around I got hooked. Now, this is my first ever Soul Calibur game, so I cant compare it to any of its predecessors... There are many characters to choose from, and you can customize their appearance with armor, and colors which is a very nice and appreciated touch. The character creation is a lot better than expected, and is definitly one of the biggest pros of the game. Going online with it is even better. Huge Brownie points.
So lets start with what I feel are the pros and cons of this game.
PROS:
Achievements - This game is definitly an obtainable 1000Gs. Its not too easy but not too hard, and should be taking you a minimum for 30+ hours. Its definitly a game you should be proud of for maxing it out. The most annoying thing youll have to do is beat the game with each character (30+ characters) so that you unlock everyones weapons which is needed for a certain 50G achievement.
Create/Customization - As I said before, one of the biggest pros to this game. Stealing a line from "WWE Raw vs. Smackdown 2010", Soul Calibur 4 "Its your world now". Quite a bit of options for clothes, armor and colors.
Easy to pick up - This could be considered a pro or a con. This game is newbie-friendly, Controls are easy, maybe too easy for those who want a game that cant be won by button mashing.
CONS:
Story Mode - Trash. There is little to no story. Think of somewhere in the midst of Left 4 Dead, and Street Fighter IV. Each character has their own ending cutscene and cutscenes in between fights, that show hints of where the next battle will take place, but thats it. Theres your story. There are 5 fights to each characters story and takes about 10 minutes to complete each. I love having the Star Wars characters in the game, but I still have no idea why they are in the game, and why the Lightsabers arent destroying everythiing in their path.
Ring Out - I despise the dang Ringing out in this game. So many times have I been smacking the CPU around like a rag doll, to have them counter, and then ring me out so that I lose. Online, a lot of people will abuse it, and try to force the ring out. In my personal opinion, the game would be much better without the Ring outs.
Online Leveling system - I personally dont like it. You get points per match, and itll tell you how much points you have now, and how much to level up. If you have 200/400, you need to max out your points (400/400), and then win a game. If you have 399/400, and win a match, get 200 points, you dont level up. You have to max your points first, and then win. I personally dont like it, it would be much more fair to level up automatically once you obtain the points.
I feel the pros outweight the cons, and its a fun game if you give it a chance. An obtainable 1000 Gs, and I would at least rent the game, or pick it up to keep if you can find for $20 or less.
Outstanding fighting game and You can be Yoda to boot!
On: 2009-09-28Honestly, only reason I put this in my console was to play as yoda. Now that I have, im diggin it. Will absolutely be playing this again.
Fighting system is balanced and well thought out.
Good, but lacking compared to SC2
On: 2009-09-13I thought this game was marvelous at first. The fighting is fun, and if you memorize just a few simple button combos you can play well with any character! The character customization is also top-notch and really does a good job of allowing players to create the character of their dreams... or nightmares. However, I do wish the customization had more face and voice options, that would have made it much better. Darth Vader is also an awesome character and I highly recommend downloading him, though Yoda is a completely useless character as any battle with him ends with either cheapness from Yoda or cheapness from the opponent.
The big problem I had is that, compared to Soul Calibur 2, this game was severely lacking in the game modes department. It has the normal VS battles, an average survival mode, and a bare-bones arcade mode. But in SC2 there were many, many modes for versus, survival, and not to mention an amazingly fun story mode where you actually picked your fights off a map screen. The inclusion of many of the vs and surv modes went unused by myself or perhaps used very rarely, but I really enjoyed the fact that the developers added as much as they could fight onto a little dvd.
As a final note, I would like to say that the online VS mode does add hours of fun competing against random opponents, but the inclusion of those extra VS modes would have made online battling much more fun as well. So if this game had a better story mode(right now you go through an arcade mode-style run), more VS battle modes, and more survival modes, it would have definitely gotten a 5/5 from me... too bad...
Soul calibur 3 was better
On: 2009-08-31first let it be said that my tv sucks. if you have a good tv than this game would be much more fun.
in this game they sacrificed quality for graphics. there is no chronicles of the sword or anything remotely close to it. instead they have umm... i dont remember but basically its just an arcade. a long arcade. Also the interface isnt as intuitive as in previous versions.
in al its a decent game if you have a good tv. otherwise not worth it.
A high calibur game that lacks soul
On: 2009-08-25Soul Calibur has been a favorite, since Soul Edge on PS1. Its one of the only, if only fighting games that lets you use weapons. The fighter creation is fun and youll spend hours creating the perfect looking character. At one point I had green hulk and hulk lady versions, that were ripped to the core with green skin, hair and eyes. Still, they feel like identical versions of the classic character available to you - which of course they are since you give them the style of an already existing model. However, I wish the game had more of a soul and was more than just another fighting game where you beat someone silly until they fall out the ring or at your feet. The experience because of that fact gets sooooo old, sooooo quick. Man, next gen developers need to understand that people need more than beautiful character models, background environments and amazing wisps of hair, oh and cleavage lol. I mean there was so much background to the characters stories that it wouldve been nice to see it, rather than read 5 paragraphs before you started your climb to the top. I used to look forward to the end CG sequences on the PS2 versions so much, that it made the journey worth it. But now, all I get is the character walking off the screen with the evil sword. I dont know how I feel about that, when the only prize is another character - never unique enough to warrant yet ANOTHER nearly identical match set on my way to where, the top. But what a nice looking journey it is, no?
Awesome and fun, but there are many nits to pick...
On: 2009-08-02First I have to give SC props. Its definitely one of the best video games Ive ever played. The graphics are amazing, the play is fast and furious, and its just so much fun to whomp your opponent like a redheaded stepchild. I loved SC2 and SC3, and I was so excited when I heard about 4.
First, I love how they included Darth Vader and The Apprentice in SC4. I knew I was getting Vader, but ... I think his name is Starkiller actually, well, he was a lovely surprise. I could only be happier if they gave me Jane Eyre and Elvis Cole. I love how you can edit the fighters clothing now. I love Ivy, but Im not crazy about seeing her butt cheeks hanging out. I created a version of her in coulotts, flip flops, and a neat updo. And of course you can create your own characters. And there are some really funny and awesome weapons available now, such as hula hoops, giant squids, a ladle and pot lid, a surf board, shish kebabs, a huge chicken leg, and a giant corn cob! You can create Colonel Sanders if you so please. How fun is that? Heck, maybe Ill try to create Jane and Elvis on my own...
Heres what I hate about SC4: 1) Your characters defense depends on his/her wardrobe. That is, if you send Ivy running around in just a tee shirt and coulotts and flip flops, shes not going to defend herself as well as if shes wearing a breastplate and gauntlets. Okay, its logical, but its new and it bugs me. 2) They changed all the combos! I had to relearn what buttons to press to get the character to do what I wanted. What a pain in the neck! It seems like there are half the throws available, too. 3) The Moves list has been shortened dramatically. You can still do a lot of combos and such, but they only provide a partial list. 4) What happened to the camera controls? I used to love to control the camera in SC3. You cant do it here. 5) The load times are so long now. Its a PS3! Come ON! 6) You cant go on missions anymore, or build teams.
Quite a few nits, huh? But I still love playing it, and Im looking forward to SC5.
SC4 quick review
On: 2009-07-29pros
+many custom items to unlock
+same arcade gameplay
+easy to play
+has yoda and you can download vader via DLC
cons
-yodas cheap
-online players are cheaper
-chronicles of the sword was removed
Eh, Gets Boring Quick
On: 2009-07-24Ive played Soul Calibur for the PS2 before, so I was excited to get Soul Calibur IV for the PS3...
But the excitement was short-lived...while the graphics are considerably better, there isnt that much new in the game to justify the $[...] I paid for it!
Same as other Soul Caliburs for the most part, so if you have an earlier version, I wouldnt bother buying this one.
If youve never played Soul Calibur, its fun so you might wanna try it, but Soul Calibur IV had nothing special about it that made it appeal more to me than say, Soul Calibur III.
Amazingly fun game.
On: 2009-06-30I really enjoyed this game and still do, it came in perfect condition a few days after purchasing.
Im 18 years old and this game is more then worth it, especially if youre into fighting games. I highly recommend this game.
When I bought the game, I actually searched for sellers who were selling it because some sellers were selling it for $19.48 brand new! Whereas Amazon sold it around $30 something brand new.
So yeah, thats my review. Its a game worth purchasing.
5/5
Great Service
On: 2009-06-28I order two games from diffret companys they both said i could not have them shipped to a P.O box well guess what they both shipped to my p.o box they shipped back cause of course they had no po box number on them. Tunes was nice enough to ship it back to my p.o box after i gave my p.o box number the other comany beach audio did not and 4 weeks later no refund or game buy from tunes stay away from beach audio thanks tunes
soul calibur IV
On: 2009-06-03love this game. the role playing is awesome. the weapons, the clothes and gear you get to pick and wear is so cool. it has a mideval feel.
Lost its Soul
On: 2009-05-06I got this game almost a year ago. Ive played the game a lot, unlocked all the characters and have played about 100 matches online. Ive been a fan of Soul Calibur since Soul Calibur 2, which I purchased on my Gamecube. Soul Calibur 4 is the updated version of the series on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. The roster includes about 30 fighters, a dozen stages and a character creator mode.
In the singleplayer department, you get 3 modes. The first mode is Story Mode. What happens here is that you are shown a written history of the character before you even play. Then you are shown a screen with some odd collections of words such as "A Dark Warrior" and proceed to fight a match. New to the series, is the addition of tag teaming. With a press of a button, you can switch your characters in a match. After you beat the normal enemies you face the boss and are treated to a short cutscene.
Then there is arcade mode. In this mode, you fight enemy after enemy until you get to the end with the same boss. One thing that I think improves on SC2 is that the boss does not always predict your moves and counter it so effectively. Nor does he have some move that takes out half of you life. Hes simply a normal fighter, except with twice the amount of health.
Finally, you have a Tower of Souls mode. This mode has two variations. You either "ascend" and fight tough enemies or you can "descend" and fighter hordes of weaker enemies, sort of like survival mode in the old games.
Thats about it for the singleplayer modes, other than practice and character creation. Now for character creation, you can change things such as the sex, the weapon, clothes, hair/eye/skin color, name and a few other things. The clothes and items that you use also affect the attributes of your character. You can also take a custom character online.
As for multiplayer mode, you are given two options, normal and special versus. Normal is simply a normal mode, where status effects are not played. So items dont mean anything. Special versus is where the clothes you have chosen have status effects that work. Interestingly, there is no tag-team mode. You can also play online, either casual or ranked. Latency will affect gameplay, making moves much more difficult to time.
So what is my opinion on the game? As the title implies, Im not completely satisfied. Yes, the graphics are great, the gameplay is still there and you do get more characters, but I think a lot of additions are unnecessary.
The critical finishes that theyve worked in the game rarely happen and contribute nothing to the gameplay. Its just extra fluff. The character creation mode is confusing because its not clearly explained. Choosing gear will take certain slots which is shared with abilities. Also, the equipment looks goofy and silly most of the time. Most players simply make revealing female fighters online.
Speaking of which, the female characters in the game do not need to have implants and revealing outfits. The singleplayer modes dont add new modes such as the conquest mode of SC3. They added tag-teaming in singleplayer, yet fail to include it for multiplayer, which is yet another question. Yoda just doesnt fit in the game. Having a character that can not be grabbed or horizontally attacked is cumbersome.
Online play is painful, especially if you have a slow character. Fast characters can spam their moves and interrupt fighters that operate slowly. Now you are supposed to counter these pokes with guard impacts, but that technique requires timing, which the online latency makes impossible.
The best way to play this game, as with all fighting games is with a competent buddy in your living room. The core game itself is very strategic, where pattern recognition and applying counters is a key part. Soul Calibur sets itself apart form other fighters because its not execution that wins the game, but strategic decisions that determine the outcome.
Overall, it doesnt reinvent the series and if you have older games, the game only feels like a patch. The online mode is the only significant addition that sets SC4 apart from the older titles. If you can bear some issues with online play, then its worth a purchase. Otherwise, I would purchase an older copy, save myself $50 or so and still experience 90% of what Soul Calibur 4 is.
SoulCalibur done right and it is going down in price!
On: 2009-05-05Of all the 3D fighters Soul Calibur is pretty high up there. It has only occasionally been outclassed by certain iterations of Tekken by a small margin. Soul Calibur 4 is a "brave attempt" at doing some things better and changing up the formula. I suppose how well it succeeds and how abysmally it fails depends on the tastes of each gamer. Personally shameless "Star Wars marketing" aside I have not been happier with the franchise since Soul calibur 2.
With Soul Calibur 4 you definitely get bang for your buck. There are many characters to unlock and now certain participants are not quite as "cheap" and "broken" this time around. For example I hated Tira in SC 3 but she is oddly endearing in SC 4 both because of her new voice and more balanced less unfair tweaked attack moves. Whereas she is still quick with her lethal metal ring of doom at least she cannot dish out damage on a ludicrous scale.
It would take me a long time to go into each character individually. Rest assured the veterans from the other games return accept perhaps the oddities such as Charade and Necrid. There is a new boss (Isnt there always?) and overall though he is not amazing from a design perspective at least he is not completely unfair and grudgingly unlikable.
Questions you may have
"Does character creation make a return?" Yes it does. As before you can unlock accessories, garments, and gear which will effect the stats of your custom hero. You can even purchase new moves! From what Ive seen the "make a character" feature is just as good here as it was in SC 3. You can even re-dress the main heroes, villains, and heroines!
"Is there a quest for souls mode?" No, but there is the tower of souls in which you beat conditions and meet requirements to unlock more stuff. It is a more simplistic mode like the one in SC 2 which I like. Those that liked the complexities in SC3s somewhat strategic conquest mode may feel left out however. Once again it is a matter of taste.
"Are the controls easy to learn?" Yes which is Soul Caliburs biggest draw. Even beginners can jump right in! It should be noted things have been changed a bit. Characters now all have "finishers" though none of these are gory. As before Soul Calibur 4 gets the bad reputation of a button masher but in frank honesty is takes skill and finesse to truly be good at mastering each character. In any fighting game someone can get lucky by exploiting ring outs and button tapping but I find skilled players can more often than not defeat inexperienced players.
"Are there still cheap characters?" In any fighter there are characters that are harder to use or the power houses who seem to have the 1-up. While SC 4 is more balanced than SC 3 Yoda and Raphaels sister Amy are complete Hellions. You also have Rock (returning from Soul Edge, the very first game) who is very slow thus it is hard to be good with him. Lets just say even Asteroth is quicker. But before you lament keep it in perspective every fighter devised under the sun and moon has this problem. Even it Street fighter well rounded characters such as Akuma, Chun Li, and M Bison have an advantage over less conventional more difficult to figure out characters such as Zagnief, Dhalism, and E Honda.
"Is there a story?" Sad to say the branching endings in SC 3 that would unfold in different ways depending on whether or not you would hit the right buttons in time have been cut out. Every character has only 1 signature ending and the quality of each plot progression ranges between mildly decent to plain mediocre. If you have played SC 2 and SC 3 everything makes coherent sense but the game is very unforgiving to newcomers who know nothing about the series including the intricate odd relationship of Knightmare and Siegfried. Still when all is said in done at least a story exists. Ive played fighters that completely gutted any semblance of a plot and the end results were usually crappy. (Such as the USA version of Samurai Shodown 5, the first release of Guilty Gear accent core, or Mortal Kombat Armageddon)
"Are the new characters worth while?" Undoubtedly yes! Hildegard is my favorite newcomer because she is a female knight fully decked out in armor who uses a dagger for short range and a halberd for long range. A bundle of neat mythological and anime influenced characters was also done by the artist that worked on the anime series Gantz. Believe it or not their stories were actually well thought out and they did not feel "odd" amongst the regular veterans. Sultry Shura is a guilty pleasure and I also thought the oni ogre girl wearing beads was simply adorable!
"Why do fighting games degrade teh wimmens??" For those of a feminist bent its true there are bouncy boob physics and scantily clad female protagonists in SC 4. But whereas you can cut up their clothes or armor to reveal more you can do the same to the guy characters. Tell me that a shirtless Raphael or shirtless Mitsurugi do not objectify men as fantasies of desire? Let us also not forget the most kinky hip thrusting cod piece wearing scantily clad super freak is none other than Voldo himself! (a "male" character)
Pros
+ Many characters to purchase and unlock.
+Controls are easy to learn.
+ While not deep at least a story line does exist
+Create a character mode returns
+Each character now has a signature finish move
+Graphics are truly amazing
+Voice acting and music are not great but definitely good enough.
Cons
- A few cheap characters exist despite SC 4s attempt to be better balanced.
-Newcomers entering the arena for the first time are going to be confused unless they wiki the back story.
-The Star Wars gimmick feels like a shallow marketing ploy. Admittedly however playing as Yoda or Darth Vader is rewarding in a guilty sort of way. If you have the 360 version like me you will have to buy vader with X-box points because he is the PS-3 exclusive character. You can however unlock Vaders apprentice.
-Females that detest scantily clad bouncy protagonist girls are likely going to crucify SC 4 without taking into account the men in SC 4 are not portrayed realistically either. All I can say is that it is a game. Have fun with the fantasies provided and do not take it seriously! Besides Hildegard is very respectful as a heroine. Its personal choice to focus on the positive or negative aspects in anything. Always opt for being an optimist!
Another Great Soul Calibur Game
On: 2009-03-31Another great game in a solid series. More of the same outstanding fighting, but with better graphics. New features like being able to create and dress-up your own characters are kind of neat and will make your lady friends more likely to play with you.
Amazing Fighting Game
On: 2009-03-18Ive played Soul Caliber IV since January. I played Soul Caliber II on the dreamcast. This game can be very technical and the timing involved is amazing. The graphics are great and the ability to customize your characters can make you laugh out loud when you seem some of your opponents costumes.
For online play I started as a button basher became a competent player who had problem with spammers and now I think Im getting to a comfort zone. My only problem with the game is they could have prevented spamming by having a move do exponentially less damage if it is used repeatedly in a certain time span (i.e. 15-20 seconds). Other than that the game is a blast and while the single player mode isnt very deep, the trainer is excellent and the ability to customize your characters will keep you playing.
pretty good sequel
On: 2009-02-12This is game is a following up to the soul calibur 3 sc 4 is prett good as as well the new features and stages and how they are 3 dimensional .on a raft going under a bridge fighting in a battle or on a ship in a battle with a stars wars character. the great yoda. the same great characters are still there from there cool,agressive style of raphel to the smart sexy style of taki its pure fun for all ages so pick up this game you wont regret it.
I Buy it for the Character Creation
On: 2009-02-07I love it! You get to make characters and dress them up, and then clobber each other with them. In SCIV you now have some basic sliders to change the body type of your characters (although for females its pretty much just changing the breast size). Instead of using separate fighting styles for these characters like in SCIII, you can only choose from fighting styles of the existing characters, but you can switch whenever you want instead of having to start over. You can also change equipment on the existing characters in addition to changing their colors. The only place this falls short of SCIII is more restricted layering of clothes. You cant wear a coat and a shirt together, for example. You just have underwear, upper body clothes, and lower body clothes for you main outfit (you also have other slots for gloves, hats, socks, shoes, face equipment, and shoulder pads).
You have to play a lot of single-player mode to get money to buy equipment. Story mode is easy but the tower gets hard pretty quickly and the final boss of arcade mode is a real pain.
Yoda comes out of retirement
On: 2009-02-05My son enjoys the game hes played Soul Calibur 2 and 3.
He really likes the added Star War flavor. The XBOX 360 version did not contain Darth Vader but he can be purchased on XBOX 360 Live. This gives you the same package available in the Play Station 3 verson.
SC4 brings improvements, same downsides as before
On: 2009-01-27At this point, people are fairly familiar with what you get when you pick up a Soul Calibur game. A gorgeous game with amazing (and sometimes questionable) character designs, a deep fighting system and horrible dialogue.
Ill tackle the negatives first:
The game could almost be considered too deep. This game is just ok if you rarely play fighting games. Compared to a fighter like Smash Brothers, this is more about actual focus and knowing button combos that will truly punish your opponents. But it seems that the fighting genre really caters to a hardcore demographic who is going to sit and play for hours, rather than the casual gamer.
The "plot" is incredibly cheesy and full of holes and nonsequiters. Of course, youd have to forgive a game that shoehorns Vader and Yoda into a mystical realm where two super-weapons (Soul Edge and Soul Calibur) are being fought over.
And speaking of those extra characters: Vader has been made a "buyable" character in the Xbox marketplace, so technically this game now has both characters. In addition is the Dark Apprentice, who is probably the cheapest character in this game, and one of the cheapest Ive ever played against. He blocks and dodges and then opens up ridiculous combos and is an incredibly frustrating opponent. Ironically, it seems like Vader and Yoda have the most trouble against the Apprentice.
Now for the good: While the Apprentice is a cheap mother, the variety of characters is an overall asset in the game. On top of that you have the character creation in which you can create a character from the ground up, choosing a fighting style, area of emphasis (defense, offense, etc). And you can build and develop your character as they improve by winning fights and completing objectives (like blocking or attacking in certain ways, or breaking an opponents soul gauge). There are many buyable (within the game, and also with MS points) items that can also adjust your character. The only complaint I have is, though you may have a custom character, youll probably wind up having a hodgepodge of armor and clothing in order to get the best fighting configuration, so youll wind up looking like a dork but winning lots of fights.
This game plays great! While the load times are a little annoying (especially in "tower mode" where you fight in a very long sequence of ever more challenging battles), the actual fighting is precise, fast and fun. The fighting animations are as great as theyve ever been, the graphics quality is some of the highest on the system. Only games like Gears of War get better, but GOW is all greys and blacks, not the vibrant and diverse world of Soul Calibur.
Four stars for a great installment, I take away one star because they still havent changed the annoying parts of the gaming franchise. As a game, this is a great one.
Fun but...
On: 2009-01-26I was disappointed that this game rewards people who mash buttons, while the players who actually play with skill get destroyed because their constantly caught in a "frame trap". Some of the characters are blatantly cheap, many times I play online or with my friends locally and were laughing because something so outrageous happened(like a ring out from the middle of the stage). This game is extremely fun and since Ive got it I only play this and Tekken 5(till T6 comes out). The controls are responsive, and that might be a factor in why you can button mash and destroy people LOL. The story mode was pretty weak. Too fun to put down but Im not afraid to admit whats wrong with my one of my favorite fighting games.
Another Great Game in the Series.
On: 2009-01-25Wow! This game really is a blast to play, and great to look at! The nice thing about this game is that in addition to adding new characters, and letting you create your own. They still have the same characters from the original game, and all the moves are done with the same buttons as they have always been. This lets a true fan of the series turn on the game for the first time & not get crushed or spend weeks and months learning new moves, combos, or even a new controller layout. The character customization is just great, you can really create some awesome looking & performing characters. You can customize just about anything you can think of. The only 3 drawbacks I found are that there is only 1-2 player modes, I would love to play this game in a battle royale type mode with up to 4 players. The Second is that depending on which system you have, you have to pay for either Yoda on the PS3, or Darth Vader on the 360. Wish you didnt have 2 pay to get them. And the last drawback is that in the custom charcters, you cant create your own custom Star Wars character, or select the lightsaber as a weapon, you can only slightly modify the exisiting ones. I hope that they add these things to SC 5. But all in all this game was far beyond what I had expected it to be. Its easy enough for my 9-year-old daughter to play and win, but challenging enough to keep me interested in it. In my opinion a must have!!!!
An OK Game But With Many Flaws
On: 2009-01-11Soul Calibur IV
Soul Calibur IV is a pretty good fighter, but once again, the flaws hurt the overall experience.
Graphics: 9/10
The graphics are truly stunning and realistic. I especially love the design of the armor and how it can break off during a battle if it takes too much damage. Its similar to Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, where, as the battle goes on, you start to see wounds on the character. I think its pretty cool.
Sound: 9/10
The music in this game is just beautiful. The orchestra is nice, and its also cool to hear some tracks from the Star Wars films. The voice acting in this game is top-notch. With guest voices like Wendee Lee. Its also cool that you can actually hear the games dialogue in Japanese. Yodas Japanese voice is pretty cool!
Control: 7/10
The controls in this game are okay. But sometimes, the combos dont really respond, and the attacks are delayed. Id pretty much recommend the Hori EX2 Fighting Stick for these controls. They work a lot better. But I like the blocking controls better in Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe because you can just press the L2/R2 Buttons.
Story: 6/10
The story is okay, but I dont like how they removed the Destined Battles from Arcade Mode. I loved the Destined Battles because they contributed to the story and got you pumped. In this game, the Destined Battle is replaced with a frustrating battle with The Apprentice, but Ill get to that in a moment. The Story Mode is good, but its a little short, and there isnt much story except during the battles and at the end. However, some of the characters Story Mode endings are actually pretty good, except that the credit at the end that tells you the aftermath of the battle disappears way too quickly and gives you little time to read it. Its a ridiculous flaw that needs to be fixed.
Gameplay: 7/10
The Arcade Mode is quite disappointing. Most of it is good, but instead of giving you an eventful climax like in Soul Calibur II #I never played Soul Calibur III, and probably never will#, it seems to just place Algol, the final boss, right in front of you without warning. Also, The Apprentice, the second-to-last boss, is almost impossible to defeat. Hes even harder than Algol! This shouldnt happen in video games. Looking back at Kingdom Hearts II, the final boss had four phases. The first three phases were quite easy, but the last phase was just plain hard, but I kept trying because I was pumped. But with the battle with The Apprentice, I just felt like quitting. It took me approximately ten consecutive tries to defeat The Apprentice, and only four consecutive tries to defeat Algol. I hope the two difficulties are switched around in the next game. As for Story Mode, its okay, except for the length and that there arent too many cut scenes. The Tower of Lost Souls can sometimes be fun, but most of the time very frustrating. The Character Creation, though, is very fun and addicting. I love fighting as Michael Jackson!
Overall: 7.75/10
This is an okay game for people who love fighters and Star Wars, but prepare for great frustration beyond your belief. Character Creation will not disappoint, though,
PROS:
+Stunning Graphics
+Great Voice Acting
+Fun Character Creation
+Star Wars!
CONS:
-Disappointing Arcade Mode
-Short Story Mode
-Frustrating Difficulty
-Deven DAddario
Great Game
On: 2008-11-19I really enjoy this game. I have always been a fan of the "Soul" series, so I can say that this game was totally worth it for me. It has the same basic game play that I loved from the old ones, but highly improved graphics and a few extra features that the design team threw in to make game play a bit more fun, like the soul crush, which apparently they tossed in to make constant blocking less advantageous and make the game more aggressive. The Star Wars characters are fun to play, with special force abilities, and for the first time ever you can go online and play people from around the world on x-box live. If you dont like the old ones, you may not like this one either. But if you are a fan of the "Soul" series, then this game will not disappoint.
You never get tired of it
On: 2008-11-01soulcalibur 4 is perfect.
Perfect Grafics
Perfect gameplay
and adding Yoda, Vader, and The Aprentice just makes it better!
excellent game, great for multiplayer.
On: 2008-10-01This game is stunning, visually, and a lot of fun to play. Loads of fun for versus matches, but with a lot of unlockables, and decent replay value for single player.
Blood, Steel, Good, Evil... And The Force
On: 2008-09-29A most anticipated release for the new generation systems, and thankfully not a disappointment, Soul Calibur IV is far from disappointing actually, this game is freakin awesome! Namco definitly utilized that next generation console technology properly, beefing up the graphics and gameplay to match the ever-rising standards of todays gamers.
First, a review for the game in general. Soul Calibur is renowned for its intensive weapon based fighting engine, and for its pretty in depth story line. Ever since Soul Edge (PS1) weve seen these characters grow and progress as the story of the evil sword Soul Edge made its way from owner to owner, leaving devastation and death in its wake. That being said, having a few new characters added to the roster is always a welcomed thing for two reasons: new fighting styles to try out, and new stories to be told. SC4 actually has quite a few new characters added, although unlike SC3 where a new character had his/her own fighting style, a bulk of these new characters are carbon copies of original characters in terms of fighting style. Furthermore disappointing, most of these new characters you cant customize like the primary ones, but Ill come back to that in a second. SC4s storyline, while informative to an extent, is severely lacking. Clearly, a bulk of the production of this game went into the online portion, but unfortunately the story suffers severely. Many endings are left with lots of unanswered questions, plot holes, and are all around disappointing. But hey, at least the graphics are good right?
Where the storyline fails, the online play is fantastic. This, combined with the Character Creation are what makes the replay value of this game so high. The Character Creation is moderately complex system that allows you to build the perfect character for you, or as close as you can get to perfect. You can either create your own new character, or re-dress and re-arm an existing SC character, which is equally fun. It takes some practice, but once you get it, taking your character(s) to any battlefield is a satisfying experience.
To make up for the lack of single player options that SC3 had, SC4 has a mode called Tower of Souls, a survival type mode where you "climb" a tower, pitting your players against waves of characters with various status effects and advantages over you. Obviously as you go higher, the stages are harder, but some of them get downright ridiculously hard around floor 40. If you get bored with "ascending" the tower, you can "decend" it, which is basically the traditional Survival mode. This one is more fun in my opinion, and a quick way to make money in the game.
The difficulty in this game is pretty standard. Easy, medium difficult, although medium can get a bit hard on story and arcade modes, especially towards the end when fighting Angol and The Apprentice. For those who dont know already, Angol is this games final boss, and the Apprentice is "Starkiller" from Force Unleashed. Angol is interesting and at times difficult, but in my opinion, The Apprentice is the true boss of this game in terms of difficulty. He is a monster one on one, even against the cheesiest characters with long range weapons like Kilik or Sigfried. Hes fast, strong, and has the force, so he can easily become your worst nightmare. Hes even hard to learn how to USE!
Finally, the online portion of the game is done pretty well. Thus far, the only complaints I have with it are that there is no distinguishing the skill levels of different players, so you as a beginner can get paired with someone whos a true pro and get the crap kicked out of you in 30 seconds. Secondly, there is a strange lag sometimes when you play online, and your characters dont move when you command them. Ive lost many battles to this little flaw, and it is infuriating. So best of luck to anyone who faces such a challenge.
360 Review:
Thus far, the 360 version of SC4 is just as impressive to me as the PS3 version. To be honest, I havnt played the PS3 one in depth, so the diferences between the two are unknown to me, but heres what i know about the 360. Firstly, you get to play as Yoda, and yes, it is cool. For those of you who are not Star Wars buffs, this is no big thing, but for those of us who know Yoda is the friggin man, hes got a lot to offer if you learn to use him. Like all characters in this game, you have to actually take the time to study moves in order to get the best of your opponent (especially online). Yodas move are a bit tricky to get used to because of his height, but it can also be an advantage. Basically, all high attacks and grapples cant hurt you.
Secondly, as with all 360 games, there are the achievements, so those are always fun to try and get, but other then that, nothing special about those. Thirdly, the controls. Ive never been a big fan of fighting games on the 360, so this has taken some getting used to. I still prefer the PS3 control over these, but whatever, this does just fine when you get used to it.
Overall, this is a very solid game, great fun for years to come. Now if they just made a SC that combined elements from this game and those of SC3, it would be perfect. Until then, this should do pretty nicely.
Surprisingly just okay
On: 2008-09-26Ill admit right off the bat that Im new to the Soul Calibur series. This is the first one Ive played. That being said, I am no stranger to fighting games. When I read about SC4 it sounded like it had so much promise. What I got seemed kind of just okay. There are really four things going for SC4: 1)Terrific graphics, 2)Large number of characters, 3)Customized Equipment, and 4) Customized Characters. Number three is the stand out of the game. Through purchase and acquisition there are a huge number of equipment and weapon pieces availble in the game. They let you give your players a very respectible range of abilities. Couple that with the ability to customize your own character down to their facial features and you get something really great and unexpected in a fighting game. But all this seems like window dressing. Its all very pretty but feels of little substance. The game play is repetitive and the story is really non-existent. Theres nothing that pulls you into the game. It really seems to be an almost XBox Live geared release. Thats where the fun is had. But strangely the single player game takes up most of the space and feels dull. $60? No. If it was a $20 Xbox Live download Id be all over it. My recommendation? Save your dough.
Another 360 hit!
On: 2008-09-18Soul Calibur 4
Namco-Bandai has impressed me once again, they really raised the bar with the release of the newest installment of the Soul Calibur franchise on the Xbox 360. Soul Calibur 4 delivers beautiful graphics, an epic soundtrack, creative new gameplay, and an incredible cast of characters. With all this and more Soul Calibur 4 is not only the best in the series, but one of the best fighters to hit any console. However, there are a few flaws that keep it from being a perfect 10, and in this review I will shed light on those flaws and point out what makes this game so great.
The first topic I will touch upon are the graphics. Soul Calibur 4 is one of the most impressive games to date for the fighter genre. Whether viewing it in standard definition or high definition, the visuals are simply stunning. The game offers a high amount of detail in all areas of the game from character designs, to the backgrounds. I still notice small details even after weeks of owning and playing it. Even the custom characters look just as impressive as the original cast. Soul Calibur games have always been one of the most graphically stunning games in the fighting game genre, and the fourth installment is no exception. Infact I would go as far to say that it even raised the bar graphically.
The games soundtrack is awesome. It is has several note worthy tracks. They all fit with the game, but may not be as good when played alone. However, if you truly are a fan of the soundtrack, it is included with the limited edition strategy guide.
Next is game play. The game modes are less enjoyable in Soul Calibur 4 than in Soul Calibur 3. I was disappointed that the Chronicles of the Sword feature from Soul Calibur 3 was replaced with the Tower of Souls. Although it was fun to play, I feel it was a little tacked on. Only the most hardcore players will really get enjoyment from this mode because it only really offers the player a chance to hone their skills and serve as a challenge. While its very challenging, any items it offers for completion of the secret missions can be unlocked just by playing the game. Which in my opinion feels rather pointless if it doesnt offer any real prizes or unlockables only an achievement. However, if achievements are your thing, the only achievement involving this mode is simply beating the higher levels. Story mode is extremely short, but addicting for completions sake, as each ending for each character is unique and interesting. I found myself enjoying working towards getting every ending. Arcade mode is just what arcade mode is, but its good for earning those secret characters and money. The training mode offers some cool features like programming the other players movements. Overall, the game play modes are really well done in this installment.
The game plays mechanics doesnt seem too different from the past games with the exception of the Critical Finishers. I think they added a cool new element to the game. They are easy to learn, and fun to see. The only real issue some players may have with the newest installment is that the characters returning from the past games have new move lists, so if you are expecting to be familiar with a certain character make sure to be ready start practicing again.
I give Soul Calibur 4 a 9.75 out of 10. I think that any fan of the series or fighting games should add this game to their collection. I look forward to seeing what is in store for the next addition to the series.
HECK YEAH!!!
On: 2008-09-17This game is a solid sequel to the series. I love how they have a new costume and an old school one for each character. The create a character system was a little weak this time around, but they made up for it by adding a tweaking system to the already made characters. Other than that I found this an awesome fighting game just like the rest of the series.
Soul Calibur IV - Fun Game, not worth the price though
On: 2008-09-16After renting this game a few times I must say I had to buy it....however, I did not think it was worth the full asking price so I bought it used and practically new for $30. This is a great game to play especially in multiplayer mode and the graphics were nothing less then amazing! It gives you the option to create your own character and while in story mode or in the tower, switch out and choose several other characters which is a great and fun bonus. When playing the apprentice I did notice that while he can do some pretty sick combos the damage afflicted was some what weak; he did little damage compared to the massive sword wielding characters. Yoda is a great character to play and while I have so far only lost against other opponents about two times it is only due to his height and other players inability to do many ground moves. He has some good aerial attacks however he does not have a good variety of combos. He is limited in what he can do therefore you must use certain attacks over and over again in order to defeat your opponent which can get a bit boring. Otherwise this game is fun and awesome to play against friends (It sounds like were watching a football game thats how much you can get into it). While I was somewhat disappointed in the featured characters all in all this is an all around fun fighting game!
Dissapointment
On: 2008-09-16First off, Id like to state I am a long time fan of the Soul Calibur game line. That is why it hurts me to say that this game really let me down. Let me also say, that while I did hope good things for this game, I did not have my expectations at an insane level. I thought this game would be a good continuation of the series, but I didnt think itd be the best game ever or anything of the sort.
Let me start with the good. If you are just looking for a fighting game to play with friends, this is a good choice. The graphics have certainly made the jump to next gen in a big way. They are smooth and crisp and yet still retain the look of the other games in this series. The roster is once again large, with a diverse line up of fighters. This is a plus as it keeps the casual player from getting burned out, while letting true fans of the game continue to play as their favorites, letting them build up their ability as one or two characters.
Now for the bad, and sadly, there is a lot.
The biggest problem for me is the new story mode. SC has typically included massive story modes. In SC2, Story Mode took hours to fully explore. I say explore, because the mode involved you moving from point to point on a map. Scattered around were secret ways, dungeons with levels of fighting, and more. In SC3, you had more of a "Pick your own adventure" type deal. But, it was still large, and had replay value so you could see all the different ways. In SC4, you play through five fights. The cuts scenes are nothing more than a look at a landscape(literally, they pan across a background, your character not even in the scene) up until you beat the mode, at which time you get a very short, unsatisfactory video of your character doing something. On top of this, the handling is not nearly as good as the last few games. Instead of skill and practice meaning something, it seems this game is a button masher. People who have never played a Soul Calibur game, can pick this up, and manage to beat vets by simply smashing the horizontal and vertical hit buttons. Response time is slow sometimes to the point of it being frustrating as it seems like the game didnt even notice you pressed anything.
In closing
(+)Large Roster
(+)Great Graphics
(-)Shotty Controls
(-)Leaves you feeling like the game was rushed
(-)Pitiful Story Mode
Final Say: If you want a good fighting game to keep around that you can play at a party or with a bunch of people, this one isnt that bad. But if you are a die hard Soul Calibur fan, your hopes will be bashed in harder than it is to kill Night Terror on expert.
A very generous 3 out of 5
an amazing game
On: 2008-09-13its soulcaliber but much better. you can do soo much stuff with the creator, and you can play online, which is a little slow.
A great fighter nonetheless, but otherwise disappointing
On: 2008-09-102008 is definitely the year of the fighters. With Super Smash Bros. Brawl already released, and Street Fighter IV, King of Fighters XII, Tekken 6, Facebreaker, and Mortal Kombat VS. DC Universe on the horizon, anyone itching for a fight are definitely going get their fair share of bloody knuckles this year. But for now, everyone is focusing on the latest instalment of one the biggest fighters around. Soul Calibur, IV!
The tale of souls and swords is retold once again with warriors from all corners of the Earth coming head-to-head to do battle for the legendary soul swords; Soul Edge and the Spirit Sword, in order to...you know what? Who cares about the overall story or each characters individual plot lines. The only reason any plays this series is because its one of the best fighting games ever made!
Besides always having breath taking graphics for a fighting game, Soul Calibur has always been about terrific controls. Number IV is no exception. Soul Calibur is one of the very few fighting games that can be played with skill or with just random button mashing, and the combat will still look fast, furious, and otherwise, awesome. With controls this good, a huge list of fighters to choose from, and in-depth character creation, youre going to need a second controller. Soul Calibur just isnt Soul Calibur if you dont play with a friend. Or you could you log on to Xbox Live or PlayStation Network and fight someone online. A first for the series.
The 8-way movement that the series has built itself upon still works better than ever in IV. Other familiar gameplay mechanics have returned such as guard impacts, attack throws, guard breaks, and the like. Soul Calibur IV also introduces some new mechanics like a Skills Page. This feature will allow you to assign certain perks and abilities to all characters, even your custom ones. These perks will have you take less damage, avoid falling out of the ring, or do more damage to an opponents Soul Gage, another new mechanic. The Soul Gage is your overall defence. Whenever you or your opponent blocks an attack, the gage will go down slightly, while the attackers gage will go up. Once the gage reaches zero, the attacker will be able to perform a Critical Finisher, which is basically a much cleaner version of the [in]famous Mortal Kombat "fatalities".
Right now, it might sound like I really love this. But sadly, its the total opposite. At the end of the day, I found this game disappointing on a lot levels.
For starters, the Star Wars characters are a huge let down. I havent played as Darth Vader, but I can tell you for a fact that Yoda and The Apprentice are two of the most seriously unbalanced characters in a fighting game. When you play as them, its pretty cool. Yodas attacks mostly consist of him jumping around and doing some cool aerial moves. While The Apprentice can use some amazing force powers and pull of wicked lightsaber combos. Its all fun and games...until you fight against one of them. Yoda, as almost any can tell, is tiny. So its almost impossible to hit him with high and mid level attacks. Heck, you cant even execute a throw on him! This is a real problem since these kind of attacks are what mostly take up the moves list of all other characters. So your best bet of beating him is to use what ever few low attacks you know.
Fighting The Apprentice is a whole other story. He is fast, WAAAY too fast. Sometimes before youll land a hit on him, he wouldve already landed three strong combos on you.
Im not saying having too much challenge in a game bad. But when regular fighters are harder to beat than the boss of the game, then you got a problem.
Another thing about IV that disappointed me was the lack of modes. In previous Soul Calibur games, the menus were flooded with almost too many modes to even think about using. Modes like Tournament, Chronicles of Swords, Coin Match, Time Trial, and Timed Survival are nowhere to be found in Soul Calibur IV. Even their multiplayer counter parts are MIA. Some of the modes the game does have leave much to be desired. The Story mode only consists of five stages. Sure there are multiple opponents in some of the levels, but come on. Five stages? In Soul Calibur III, its story mode had branching paths. So you had to decide what the character would do next (e.g. Follow the strange hermit or investigate the area). Basically, it had a huge amount of replay value. And when ever there was a cutscene, you had to be on your toes. For you never knew when a button sequence was going to come up. This is not the case with Soul Calibur IV. Its just straight up, "fight until you beat the boss". The End.
The Tower of Lost Souls is the only worth while mode in the game. In the mode, you have two choices on how to tackle the Tower: Ascend or Descend. if you choose to Ascend, you move up through multiple floors and try to defeat wave after waves of enemies. You can unlock treasures for each floor you complete, only if you accomplish certain requirements of the floor. The treasures are mostly pieces of clothing for your custom characters. The "Descend" choice is basically Survival mode. But the coolest feature that Tower of Souls and Story mode share is the ability to switch out fighters during combat. In a nut shell, when your fighter is taking a beating, at the press of the RB button, you can switch out to another character youve chosen to accompany you and pick where your previous fighter left off. Only this time you have more health. This is a fantastic feature! So...why is it not in multiplayer? If it was in multiplayer, people online would probably have Yoda and/or The Apprentice in their team. So, in a way, its probably for the best.
Aside from having more faces to choose from, practically infinite color options, and tweakable body structure and voice pitch, character creation has been down graded this time. Very little of the items you can put on your creations are original pieces. Instead most of them are clothes and accessories youll find on the regular cast of characters. Also, depending on what you put on your character will effect its heath and defence. So for those of you who prefer the "less is more" approach when making a character are going to have to tweak your creations skills if youre to last a minute in a fight. But my biggest complaint about the creation system is the character development. In SC3, you could select a "Job" for your character; like Gladiator, Ninja, Pirate, Dancer, etc. Depending on what job you select, youll be able wield certain weapons. For example; Gladiators can wield great swords, axes, and hammers. While Ninjas can wield daggers, katanas, and kunai blades. You get the picture. But in SC4, the jobs have been replaced with "Souls". Meaning you have to select the soul of a character (Soul of Siegfried, Soul of Taki, Soul of Nightmare) When you choose a soul, whatever that souls weapon or style is, that is the only one that the soul will allow the character to have. So thats a big let down.
My last complaint is the character Tira. She was cool in SC3, but now she is my least favorite character in SC4. Simply because she has the absolute most annoying voice ever created in a video game. Seriously, its enough to make anyone go insane.
I could go on longer telling you how disappointed I was with this game, but youre probably on a busy schedule, so Ill spare you. I wouldnt say Soul Calibur IV is a bad game, its actually really fun to play, it was just executed poorly. If youve been a fan of the series since the first Soul Calibur, you might love it or share my opinion. If youre a new comer, youre definelty going to love it, but I recomend playing Soul Calibur III (PS2/Xbox) first, then try out IV. The soul of the series is still burning, just not as brightly this time.
Decent Fighting Game with some cool ideas.
On: 2008-09-08Not the first fighting game to use character creation but it was done really well. There were many types of armor choices that for the most part all looked nice. Not to much variety as far as the voices and faces you could choose from go. Still very well done. Now lets get to the meat, the fighting. The story mode is very easy. Even the hard difficulty is a breeze for anyone who has played the game for more then 30 minutes. Arcade mode is hell. In arcade mode, unless you are damn good at this game, you will be destroyed. Many of the characters are unbalanced in either direction. Some are too strong and some way too weak. In upper level play you may not feel the difference in power as much but in lower level play you will notice quite quickly how weak some characters are when someone with a pole arm or huge sword hits you from halfway across the screen and you with ur little stick or fist cant even reach them when they are in your face. Despite the balance issues, the artwork and graphics are very pleasing to the eye, and the game play is still fun. In the end its still a fun game and well worht the buy. Though I probably would have waited til the game was 50$ or lower.
Fun Local Multiplayer
On: 2008-09-07I missed out on Soul Calibur III because I own a Sega Dreamcast, where I played SC2, and an XBOX 360. Some say this isnt enough of an upgrade from SC3, but it definitely is for SC2. I played three online multiplayer matches and found them to be too lagged to be worth it. I enjoy the social aspect of the game... fighting with friends and trying to out-maneuver them in your own home. I believe the characters to be well-balanced and the move list to be incredible. The graphics are great. The storyline is fun, but pathetic. Most characters storyline in story mode start with the character going on an adventure, meeting some enemies, making a friend, leaving the friend, and either the world ends up in flames or in ice crystals. It is strange, yet also fun, to have some Star Wars characters mixed up in the fray. This game is a must buy for previous Soul Calibur fans and a rent situation for others.
Pathetic
On: 2008-08-30Im so shocked.... this is weak. Ive played soul calibur since the 2nd one and the 3rd blew me away with all the great new addons
and from what ive seen in 4 the company just gave up.
theyve switched a nice custom character creation with simply editing main game chars. theres no legit sidequest its just a tower with a bunch of enemies, vs mode, arcade mode, and story mode. thats it... sad sad sad
all theyve done is added yoda, gave it new graphics and removed the things that made it great and stand out in the figthing genre.
i though we had a new standard of big name games since the new systems came out obviously the group behind bandai namcos soul calibur4 has ignored that. they figured pretty graphic playing online and yoda can justify 60$
dont even bother wasting the money renting this, go buy a ps2 if you already dont have one and get soul calibur 3 other than graphics its a massive improvement and you wont feel cheated. yes even after paying for a ps2 youll feel less cheated.
I really feel sorry for anoyone who paid more than 10$ for this...seriously
Another fighting game
On: 2008-08-29SCIV is a pretty good improvement in the series, but I dont feel it did enough. It feels just like any other fighter and for me, I got bored with it in a week or so. For a fighting fan though, I am sure most will love it.
Soul Calibur 4 - The Fighter You've Been Looking 4
On: 2008-08-28Whether youre a returning fan or youve been lured by the guest appearances of the Star Wars characters, youll find an armor-smashing good time with Soul Calibur IV. With a variety of modes to choose from, such as Story, Arcade, Versus, Character Creation and the Tower of Lost Souls, there is plenty to keep you busy and coming back for more. Not to mention this installment features online play so you can take your skills to the online community and see how you measure up. You might be somewhat let down with the crowd in the Ranked Matches (cheap fighting), but theres always the Player Matches if you just want to have some good-natured beat downs.
As for the modes, Story, Arcade and Versus are self-explanatory. If you played Soul Calibur III, then you also know what to expect in Character Creation. They have made some changes as far as weapon and fighting style, but the rest is pretty much up to you. Its easy to spend countless hours customizing original or recognizable fighters. The Tower of Lost Souls replaces the old Survival Mode and lets you do battle to ascend or descend through the Tower picking up unlockable items as you go.
As you can see, my review is almost all positive. Aside from the annoyance of seeing too much of the same characters in Ranked Matches, the Tower of Lost Souls is the only other thing that has give me any hassle. However, I refer to the challenge of the Tower in a good way. Who doesnt want fighter gameplay that will keep you returning for the victory you desire? After all this, I havent even got to the stellar graphics, but Im almost out of room.
Summary: mnoney well spent!
Amazing
On: 2008-08-28This game is the best fighting game I have ever played. The graphics are beautiful, the music is fantastic, and the voicework is great. The addition of Yoda makes this game even better! There is a wide range of characters, and if 32 isnt enough, create your own character with the Create a Soul mode! When youre done customizing your characters armor, hair color, weapons, skills, etc., you can take on other Soulcalibur IV players all over the world! I give this game a 9/10!
Same old same ole
On: 2008-08-22I was hoping for SC IV to at least be as cool as SC III. I was envious of my friends and their PS2 with SC III. Random Creation was fun and a silly way for party gaming... you could get some very odd creations that way. Sadly they change the feature to give you a random woman or man, who basically always look right and have appropriate fighting styles.
how dull... the rest of the game is basically a repetitive grind of the same fights over and over so you can unlock a bunch of junk for your characters to use. Still a pretty good party game, but it just seems to leave much to be desired.
Beautiful, great game
On: 2008-08-22Gotta say, this game has probably the best graphics Ive seen so far on 360. Everything is just so detailed and gorgeous. Gameplay is great, I like how Takis, Kiliks and Tiras characters have developed. The finishing moves are crazy and amazingly rendered. Great game overall.
One of the best weapon based fighting games gets greater
On: 2008-08-19Ive been a fan of the soul blade/calibur series since day one, so this review will be understandably slightly bias. However, that is not to say that Im just a fanboy for anything SC. The graphics on the game are amazing, and everything flows well. The whole speed overall is a touch slower than SC2, but it makes brute stronger characters such as Nightmare and Astaroth seem more powerful as they battle.
The online play is my only gripe with it, but very minimal. Occassionally youll have difficultly getting a good connection, and Ive fought in matches where Ive watch it drop from a perfect 5 down to a 2. Also I would have liked to see tag team matches for online play, but something to look forward to for SC5.
And lastly, Yoda and Darth? How could you not have them fight each other?!?! Heres hoping for a download patch. Overall though, Soul Calibur 4 is quite possibly the best fighting game of the year.
I have been robbed of [...]$......
On: 2008-08-17this game has gotten great reviews from the "EXPERTS" but I say its pretty much crap. nothing about this game is new! the same style same graphics and a couple of new faces. Whoop de dooo. The only thing going for this game is it is almost exactly like the last installment in this series.
Great Fighting game
On: 2008-08-13if youve played the pervious games you should love this installment. SC4 is the best fighting game on the xbox 360 and PS3 so far. Definitely a 5 star game.
Fun, Rewarding, and Addicting
On: 2008-08-11Contradicting what I had predicted in 2007, I honestly had no excitement for Soul Calibur IV. That is, until I played it:
Soul Calibur III had so much to like, so why wasnt I excited for SCIV; I thought it was more of the same. It obviously isnt. Of course achievements are new, but SCIV has more to offer than virtual points. The new customization options were surprisingly detailed, even humurous (why do I have to make a female who automatically has 10 foot boobs?). Creating characters based on other games was a challenge, but atleast accurate. Online play allows other players and I to not only join together and fight, but to rank up towards higher levels (and, yes, more achievements). But can all this make you buy the game? Probably, but of course Soul Calibur wouldnt be as great as it is without something else.
New characters are fun to play as. At first, the thought of Yoda was a negative one. Then I realized that it was promotion and I appreciated the effort. Although I know that Darth Vader is a PS3 exclusive, I would have been excited to see him as the final boss. But atleast the Apprentice was unlockable. I found many characters taunts humorous and thats all they are.
The other game types (TOLS, Arcade) were very frustrating. I found myself angered over Algols unfair hit-me-until-I-get-knocked-down-and-not-let-me-ever-get-up strategy. Characters are definitely harder and smarted in these modes, but the modes are rewarding (achievements, points).
Music in the Soul Calibur series has always been great to listen to, and Soul Calibur IV delivers. Overall, Soul Calibur IV is my favorite in the series and I hope more comes from XBL DLC and maybe even a Soul Calibur V.
Soul Calibur IV: an instant classic
On: 2008-08-10I had made my purchase at a local Best Buy store the day of its new release; and, the game was like a fish hook by involving brief character introductions in the first several minutes of Soul Caliburs movie like introduction. Soul Calibur IV on the X360 has much more to offer than just beauty in its animations; the stages are complete with design and possible destruction. For example, if players are against a metal gated wall, by force the wall will collapse that may lead one of the players to attempt a ringout KO. As a result, fighting strategies among mulitplayers online or against the CPU can be rather competitive! Story mode is enjoyable with each and every player; although it may have only 5 stages, the game has 3 levels of difficulty to accomodate the users preferences.
For another quick challenge, I recommend Yodas character in Arcade MODE to eliminate the apprectices defenses. After I used Yoda, I could defeat him in 9 minutes give or take. However, it is possible to defeat him with Yoshimitsu, too; but, in any case, the apprentice will be your toughest enemy in the entire game! By defeating him, you unlock him which is a worthy prize! The Star Wars theme being featured in the game is delightful! Even for those who have not been fans previously like me, will become friendly with Yodas character. My ultimate and favorite character is KILIK because of his distant attacks and defenses! While fighting against Cervantes in the Tower MODE on level 10 of many, I discovered that KILIK could become temporarily invisible!!!
A matter of fact, all characters have secret special moves that are unique with their weapon of choice. Another example would be Yoshimitsus helicopter flight while pulsing lightining. The female characters are rather beautiful, and their fighting styles are down right tough. The selection of players are about 20 + and many unlockable items can be used for Character CREATION MODE!!! This game is again, an instant classic!
The best fighter in years
On: 2008-08-06Im an avid gamer and have played several fighters since the early 90s, including Soul Blade, Soul Calibur and Soul Calibur II. Even so, I was very pleasantly surprised with this game. Although the story mode is unbeleivably short, and the arcade mode so-so, there is an incredible depth in this game. What I am talking about is the brilliant character creation and unlockables. Basically, with a bit of work, you can create just about any fantasy character you can think of -- within hours, I was creating my favorite Lord of the Rings characters, each with his unique fighting style. It was great fun playing through the various stages of the Tower of Lost Souls mode (unlocking new equipment and gaining gold) using Legolas, Aragorn and even Sauron-like characters. Alot of replayability and great multiplayer. A+
Best Fighter since Tekken!
On: 2008-08-06I bought this game the day it came out and Im still playing it daily! Im not a huge fan of fighters like this but it is extremely fun. There are so many different things you can do on the game. It has Story mode where you fight through 5 different stages and unlock the "Soul Caliber" and "Soul Edge" swords when you beat them. The Arcade is also fun and pretty challenging as you progress to the end. The online play is great with Ranked matches and you earn experience for playing and you gain levels online. Youre also able to customize your character equipping armor and weapons that you unlock while beating "Tower of Lost Souls" part of the game. It has a sense of Tekken Tag to it because some fights require you to use up to 3 players and you can switch through them using the RB button and your injured players slowly regain health while on the "bench". Pick up this game if you enjoy the Soul Caliber games or if you are a fan of fighters in general.
Addicting
On: 2008-08-06After playing this for hours and hours over the past few days,all I gotta say is I love it.Creating your own character is awesome,and unlocking different weapons,costumes and characters is so rewarding you dont mind playing the arcade or story modes a million times over.
But...
My own problem with this game is the AI can be so cheap,and quite often.When youre playing on the harder difficulty,and you get knocked down,either start praying or just walk away because youre more than likely done for good.You dont get a second to get up or guard yourself,youre basically screwed.
Thats really my only hang up with this game.But when I can play as Yoda,I cant really complain that much.
great game-worth 60 bucks
On: 2008-08-05This game rocks! There is so much character customization it is almost like a fighting Final fantasy game. The graphics are top notch and controls are so easy to use. the multiplayer also kicks butt. I would reccomend this game to anybody who likes fighting games with the bonus of adding attributes to your character via armor, weapons, etc..
Another incredibly good installment of a great series
On: 2008-08-05For as much as Namcos Soul Calibur series has stayed the same, the more fun the weapons-based fighter has become. Soul Calibur IV is no different, offering up a plethora of fighters that bear familiar faces to fans of the series, as well as even offering Yoda (yes, Yoda) as a bonus fighter for the XBox 360 version of the game (while PS3 gamers get Darth Vader). Like previous installments in the series, the fighting engine is surprisingly deep yet even more surprisingly accessible for those new to the series, and is rewarding as well. It should also be noted that Soul Calibur IV looks magnificent and fully displays some brilliantly animated graphics that are vibrant and nicely detailed. Even better is the games online play via XBox Live, which is smooth, lag-free, and tons of fun. The only real downside to Soul Calibur IV is that the games single player mode isnt hard to get through at all, and theres no team battle mode either, which is really disappointing. Despite that though, Soul Calibur IV is a wonderful and incredibly good installment of a great fighting series that deserves your attention, whether or not youre a veteran or newcomer to the Soul Calibur universe.
Amazing game!
On: 2008-08-05Ive played every Soul Calibur since it came out in the arcade years ago. I love the series, but felt the last game was somewhat lacking. I rented this one first to see if it would hold my interest for more than a week, and Ive decided Im definitely buying it. Other than the story portion of the game, I would say just about every aspect has been improved. The armor destruction is a nice addition, the online play is smooth, and the character creation is a blast. I was apprehensive about the addition of Star Wars characters, and while they dont quite fit with the style of the other characters in the game, they are fun to play so it doesnt bother me as much as I thought it would. This game is a must have!
What's Within Your Soul?
On: 2008-08-04Whats within your soul? Do you have what it takes to defeat the deadliest warriors in the universe in order to possess the awesome power of the Soul Calibur? Are your mental and physical skills up to the challenge of facing other warrior-wannabes in online play?
If so, then I highly recommend that you purchase this game. One play-through and your soul will be changed forever. Complete the missions, and you will be on your way to becoming a TRUE WARRIOR!
Ok, enough of the corny stuff. Soul Calibur IV is an awesome game. For solitary players, it offers the following adventures. Story, Tower of Lost Souls, and Arcade. The Story mode is similar to what weve known over the years. Each fighter goes through his or her unique story, fight battles, and then reach their own unique story ending. Arcade should also be familiar to most soul calibur veterans. Basically, you pick your fighter and fight through stages until you battle The Apprentice. Upon beating The Apprentice, which is easier said than done, you get to fight this strange guy (strange, even by SC standards!) called Algol. Algol reminds me of Necrid from SC2. Tower of Lost Souls is an advanced stage. Basically, you want to be very comfortable with your chosen characters move sets before you set out for the Tower. I suggest that you play through Story and Arcade modes with your favorite/created characters before going to the Tower. You want to be able to use helpful skills, as well as the best weapons, in order to play through the Tower. The weapons can be expensive to purchase. Hence, the need to play for cash first. Tower of Lost Souls is somewhat similar to Weapon Master from SC2. Basically, you play against the CPU.
Character Creation is back! This time, your model will look like one of the main characters in the game. You can outfit your model with armors, head gear, etc. You can even strip Sophitia and the other ladies down to their bikini, if you want! Bear in mind though that although thats eye candy, leaving your character without armor will lower their stats. In SC4, the armor affects the character stats.
Are the characters "balanced", in terms of fighting effectiveness in versus play? From what I have seen so far, they seem to be. My experience in Versus play is limited though. Does the CPU play fair in single player mode? Ofcourse not, this is Soul Calibur! Fight The Apprentice in Arcade and you will see how this works against you. Even a good Soul fighter will find themselves repeatedly off-axis. A lot of your moves, especially vertical ones, will miss. However, The Apprentice will usually be on-axis. And he can pull together a long string of moves that is very, very hard to interrupt. I found that a character like Amy, with her 4B is much better against this guy than say, Sophitia. But thats just my style of play, perhaps. Using a player with hard to pull combos, like Ivy, required me to use a lot of throws just to beat The Apprentice. But I lost many, many more battles against this guy than I won.
I have always been a fan of Namco-Bandai. They seem to release games that appeal to me. From Xenosaga, Baten Katos, Eternal Sonata, Tekken, and all the way to the Soul Calibur series. They have a way of making even the characters in a fighting game very endearing.
Yoda or Darth Vader? I have the XBox version of the game, so I get Yoda with my edition. Yoda is fun to play, however, I have read other reviews from people who have both PS3 and XB360 versions of the game that say they prefer Darth Vader on the PS3. I do not have the PS3 version, but let me just say that for fighting games, I prefer the playstation controller to the 360 controller. I have SC2 in PS2 and Xbox versions. I much prefer playing the PS2 version due to the design of the PS controller. But thats just a personal preferrence on my part.
To sum up, this is a great game. SC4 is more technical, and the move sets are a lot deeper than in previous versions of the game. I believe you could play this game for a year, and still find ways to improve your game during the second year. And maybe beyond. The replay value is endless. And if you are very technical and enjoy complication, you will just simply love Ivy. If you thought her move list was extensive in SC3, think again. Learning how to pull off Summon Suffering is a major hobby unto itself! Yeah, I love Soul Calibur! I believe you will also.
An Excellent Game
On: 2008-08-04Pros:
+One of the most gorgeous looking games Ive ever seen, and it never slows down
+Addictive fighting
+Tower of Souls is a great challenge
+Lots of fun to be had with multiplayer... even better that it goes online
+Unique characters Yoda (360) and Vader (PS3)
+Can now customize characters and create your own
+A fantastic soundtrack
Cons:
-A fairly forgettable story mode
-Some characters are just clones of another
Since its humble beginnings on the Dreamcast in 1999, the Soul Calibur series has been captivating for many gamers. Mainly because of all the fighting games out there, Soul Calibur utilizes weapons based fighting better than any other game. It still continues to hold that title. Soul Calibur IV is a great game. It doesnt do much to separate itself from previous installments, however, and this can be a hinderance to some gamers who expected it to be far better than any of the other Soul Calibur games before it.
Theres a huge roster of fighters in Soul Calibur IV, including hidden characters depending on which console you buy the game on. The XBOX360 features Yoda while the PS3 features Darth Vader. Both versions also feature the apprentice from the upcoming Star Wars: Force Unleashed. On the other hand, there isnt that much incentive to get one version over the other, unless youre just really itching to play as Vader or Yoda. While there are a ton of fighters, Soul Calibur suffers from the same problem of many fighters today. Certain characters just serve to be clones of another character. It makes unlocking various fighters feel like a chore. After all, isnt one Kilik enough?
At least fighting is addictive. Theres a story mode in Soul Calibur IV, but its hardly worth mentioning. Each characters story is pretty unique, but they all consists of only five levels. Most times itll be over in a flash, and it isnt too terribly difficult. Then again, the story mode in most fighter games isnt that long. But even for Soul Calibur, the story feels disturbingly short. While each character has a unique story, it might not be worth trumping through the story mode over 30 times. Then again, youll want to as you can unlock more characters and bonuses by doing so.
More interesting than the story mode, however is the tower of souls mode which lets you ascend or descend the tower of souls fighting one challenge after another. It can be difficult but it is definitely some of the most fun youll have with the game. Again, its another way to unlock several bonuses throughout the game.
You can now customize characters in Soul Calibur IV. First taking a fighting style and then tweaking it. You cant really customize any of the unique characters (being Yoda and Vader) but you can customize other characters with a few items you might have purchased. Not only that, but you can also take some time to create your own character with any fighting style you see fit. On the surface it isnt much, but youd be surprised just how deep this customization can go.
Finally, theres the obvioius. Playing against friends. Online or offline. In terms of being a fighter, Soul Calibur IV doesnt do anything different from its predecessors. While the experience never feels new, it doesnt feel repetitive. You can pull of new moves, including the critical finish, which is a fantastic looking attack that just about always ends in knocking out your opponent. While the Critical Finish is a nice touch, most players probably wont need it. After all, when stringing together all sorts of different combos and several grab techniques youll probably have more fun doing that than the critical finishes. Not to mention you can still knock players out of the ring. Most battles go by swiftly but youll find that its addictive and fun. Online is even better. It feels almost flawless. Theres a bit of lag, but its just as intense as the standard multiplayer.
Graphically, Soul Calibur IV is a gorgeous looking game. With all the chaos you can wreck on your opponent its amazing that the frame never drops. Also, the grabs, throws and motions of your characters look amazing. Not to mention the critical finishes which are also worthwhile to look at. Musically, Soul Calibur IV has some of the best music to ever be in a video game. The orchestral tunes are charming and set the mood for each level. The voice acting, on the other hand, could stand to use some work. On the other hand, complaining about the voice acting feels somewhat empty when you consider theres hardly any. The battle grunts and weapon clashes sound as fantastic as ever, however. In terms of production... Soul Calibur IV is probably one of the best looking games of this generation. Its certainly one of the best sounding.
If youre a Soul Calibur fan, then Soul Calibur IV is a fantastic game. It stays true to its roots, yet it somehow manages to be better.
Still the best modern fighting series I have played
On: 2008-08-01Soul Calibur IV
If this was the first time I had crossed paths with the Soul Caliber franchise this review would be a hands down 5; being my fifth encounter (including the Arcade debut of Soul Edge), I was slightly let down. Generally speaking fighting games some have a major hurdles to overcome in the single player world. Due to their nature, gameplay is rarely based around a story line, and when they have one it almosts seems to be something slapped on last minute to try and broaden their appeal. Story and in game mechanics are the two places that the SC series has repeatedly shown itself to be the king.
Unfortunately with this outing, it seems they forgot about story line. The single player "story" mode is dreadfully lacking, being nothing more than 5 stage versions of the arcade with one to four fights each in a survival mode (no reset in HP between fights). Cut scenes have been cut dramatically, now consisting of 2 mid "story" scenes and 3 scenes transitioning into the final fight for each story. at least each character has a unique ending in FMV.
Mechanics is phenomenal as ever. SC is by far the smoothest fighter I have ever played barr none. While the option to use some of the longer combos is available, you simply dont need them at all in single player. The AI on all settings can be readily defeated with 2-4 button combos in conjunction with grapples. Against live opponents they can come in useful, but even then it is quite uncommon. This is great, first by speeding up the gameplay itself, and second allowing new players to get into the feel without being overburdened by huge combos. It is also very responsive to the controls, when you hit a button you hit your opponent right then, not 1-3 seconds later like many other fighters that are waiting for you to put in a code for monster 50 hit combination.
I would consider this a must buy for 360, but if you are returning to the series from SC III, you will likely be slightly disapointed.
Graphics 5
Mechanics 5
Story 3
Replay 4
Not Worth the wait.
On: 2008-08-01IF your a fan of the series this was kind of a let down especially for all the hype this game was given. Even with Yoda and the apprentice it just wasnt there. $[...] for this? HELL NO! this is a $[...] game at best.
Graphics 8
Game play 6
Online Fighting 9
Replay 5
The Soul STILL burns!!!!!
On: 2008-07-31I dont have a lot to write on this game. Why? its Soul Caliber!!!! If you have followed this franchise you already know what to expect, who is in it and so forth and you already know to purchase this game.
The cutscenes are a welcome improvement over the always wordy storyboard of years past.
The improvements show as this is one of the most beautifully detailed fighters out there. The game modes are excellent. My only minus is that they tried to incorporate a tag mode a la Dead or Alive but its not as fluid as that game.
But the BIG selling point this time around is the create a character skin mode!
Dont like the skin that you are using? Make a NEW one! Make an original character (mapped over the in game character of course) or make it based on something...and the more you play the more items get unlocked!
Creating skins will suck hrs away just like that and you will find yourself torn between playing and making new skins
I have created characters such as Afro Samurai, Conan and Lara Croft.
I have a few other ideas at work that I wont share suffice to say wait til you see me online.
Speaking of, online handles pretty well and sometimes there is a bit of lag but I am hopeful that this clears up...but nonetheless what Call of Duty did for FPS, this game will do for fighters so, dont read anymore and get the darned game!!!
Let me be the First....This Game is the best in the series!
On: 2008-07-30My thumbs are sore from playing for the last few hours. I played the story mode through for two characters, Fought through the 8 battle arcade with Cassandra twice. Created my own Cassandra I did versus mode a couple of times and earned myself over 300,000 ..enough to buy Soul Calibur for Cassandra to play with
Jedi Knights are tough customers...watch out for them...tricky things
How I would rate this game.....
Fun Factor = 10
Graphics = 10
Fighting Style...9.0
Sounds =8.0
Replay Value =10
I could see someone playing this for days to build up their characters! This is the best in the series. IF you liked the other Soul Caliburs then this is a no brainer. IT is worth the full price of admission!
Great Job Namco Bandai!!!!!
Awesome!!
On: 2008-07-30I have always been a fan of the Soul Calibur games, and I didnt really know what to think about this one because all of them have been redundant. Suprisingly though, this Soul Calibur is different. There are so many new characters (like Yoda, its awesome), you have a lot more options for creating players, and the characters that already exist on the game. The graphics are really good, and online play is awesome. The only problem with the game is the story mode, it is short, it is just 5 battles instead of 8 or 9 like in the other games. The controls are a bit hard to master if you havent played the other games. I would recomend this game to a Soul Calibur fan.
Written by my 13 year old son
Solid release from IMHO, the best fighting game series out there, but not worth $60
On: 2008-07-29If youve played any of the other Soul Calibur games, this game plays pretty much the same way. The reason this series is so much better than the other series out there I feel is the ability to, blow-to-blow, attack your opponent with series of attacks that do not involve memorizing a long string of commands like in the Tekken series. That said, this game is basically Soul Calibur III plus some small enhancements (outside of HD graphics) that I personally dont notice that much.
This is a really simple fighting game to pick up for first-timers, and there is almost always a character and a fighting style to suit your desire. Really, the only two very similar characters in the game are Siegfried and Nightmare, apparently for a good reason if you know a bit about the forgettable story.
Some specific notes:
Gameplay: Single player - A- ; Multiplayer (local + online) - A
First off, I dont believe games like these arent really meant to be bought for single player. Clearly, youd expect to practice your game in your time so that you can lay down the law against your friends on multiplayer modes.
AI is reasonably intelligent in this game, outside of being very simple in the earlier levels on the Normal difficulty setting. Higher up in difficulty, the AI plays defense very well, and this can get really frustrating, sometimes even forcing you to abandon normal attacks and to go for grapples, which for some reason the AI is pretty bad at countering.
Otherwise, when playing your friends, this is not exactly one of those fighting games that you can button-mash and expect to win. Definitely some skill and practice is involved, and the smoothness of the fights and the transitions from blow to blow make this THE fighting game to get.
Online gameplay is smooth and overall as good as the local multiplayer experience. I have not experienced any issues with lag or skippy gameplay. My only complaint here is how selecting "Quick Match" in ranked has the tendency to just match you with someone who has an open game. As a game creator, you can select the level of players you intend to play against. As a level 1 trying out the online game, I got put into too many matches against level 60+ and got slaughtered.
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Story: C
This is the the only reason I am giving this game four stars. For a game that seems to promote its story about the struggle between an evil sword and a cleansing sword (assuming I even understand it right), especially from the moment the trailers hit TV screens nationwide, this game does a terrible job of incorporating the story into the game. This said, most fighting games that even have storylines do terrible jobs at integrating the story into the game as well.
If you are looking for a fighting game with a pretty nicely integrated storyline, the best that I can think of are the WWE Smackdown series. In this game, the story consists of short cutscenes between fights that hint at the location of the next fight, and maybe short snide remarks that the characters say at each other right as the fight is about to begin (that in most cases dont even seem to make any logical sense together).
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Overall, this is a great fighting game to have. Its purely that and nothing more. Expect to play single player mode quite a bit in order to unlock characters and items. The real fun of this game really comes from multiplayer modes. I think that fronting $60 may be a stretch for this game unless youre really into this series.
Solid release from IMHO, te best fighting game series, but not worth $60
On: 2008-07-29If youve played any of the other Soul Calibur games, this game plays pretty much the same way. The reason this series is so much better than the other series out there I feel is the ability to, blow-to-blow, attack your opponent with series of attacks that do not involve memorizing a long string of commands like in the Tekken series. That said, this game is basically Soul Calibur III plus some small enhancements (outside of HD graphics) that I personally dont notice that much.
This is a really simple fighting game to pick up for first-timers, and there is almost always a character and a fighting style to suit your desire. Really, the only two very similar characters in the game are Siegfried and Nightmare, apparently for a good reason if you know a bit about the forgettable story.
Some specific notes:
Gameplay: Single player - A- ; Multiplayer (local) - A
First off, I dont believe games like these arent really meant to be bought for single player. Clearly, youd expect to practice your game in your time so that you can lay down the law against your friends on multiplayer modes.
AI is reasonably intelligent in this game, outside of being very simple in the earlier levels on the Normal difficulty setting. Higher up in difficulty, the AI plays defense very well, and this can get really frustrating, sometimes even forcing you to abandon normal attacks and to go for grapples, which for some reason the AI is pretty bad at countering.
Otherwise, when playing your friends, this is not exactly one of those fighting games that you can button-mash and expect to win. Definitely some skill and practice is involved, and the smoothness of the fights and the transitions from blow to blow make this THE fighting game to get.
*Side note: I am not a fan of online gaming in general so I am not qualified to comment about the online gameplay.
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Story: C
This is the the only reason I am giving this game four stars. For a game that seems to promote its story about the struggle between an evil sword and a cleansing sword (assuming I even understand it right), especially from the moment the trailers hit TV screens nationwide, this game does a terrible job of incorporating the story into the game. This said, most fighting games that even have storylines do terrible jobs at integrating the story into the game as well.
If you are looking for a fighting game with a pretty nicely integrated storyline, the best that I can think of are the WWE Smackdown series. In this game, the story consists of short cutscenes between fights that hint at the location of the next fight, and maybe short snide remarks that the characters say at each other right as the fight is about to begin (that in most cases dont even seem to make any logical sense together).
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Overall, this is a great fighting game to have. Its purely that and nothing more. Expect to play single player mode quite a bit in order to unlock characters and items. The real fun of this game really comes from multiplayer modes. I think that fronting $60 may be a stretch for this game unless youre really into this series.
Probably the best fighting game series out there
On: 2008-07-29If youve played any of the other Soul Calibur games, this game plays pretty much the same way. The reason this series is so much better than the other series out there I feel is the ability to, blow-to-blow, attack your opponent with series of attacks that do not involve memorizing a long string of commands like in the Tekken series. That said, this game is basically Soul Calibur III plus some small enhancements (outside of HD graphics) that I personally dont notice that much.
This is a really simple fighting game to pick up for first-timers, and there is almost always a character and a fighting style to suit your desire. Really, the only two very similar characters in the game are Siegfried and Nightmare, apparently for a good reason if you know a bit about the forgettable story.
Some specific notes:
Gameplay: Single player - A- ; Multiplayer (local) - A
First off, I dont believe games like these arent really meant to be bought for single player. Clearly, youd expect to practice your game in your time so that you can lay down the law against your friends on multiplayer modes.
AI is reasonably intelligent in this game, outside of being very simple in the earlier levels on the Normal difficulty setting. Higher up in difficulty, the AI plays defense very well, and this can get really frustrating, sometimes even forcing you to abandon normal attacks and to go for grapples, which for some reason the AI is pretty bad at countering.
Otherwise, when playing your friends, this is not exactly one of those fighting games that you can button-mash and expect to win. Definitely some skill and practice is involved, and the smoothness of the fights and the transitions from blow to blow make this THE fighting game to get.
*Side note: I am not a fan of online gaming in general so I am not qualified to comment about the online gameplay.
-----
Story: C
This is the the only reason I am giving this game four stars. For a game that seems to promote its story about the struggle between an evil sword and a cleansing sword (assuming I even understand it right), especially from the moment the trailers hit TV screens nationwide, this game does a terrible job of incorporating the story into the game. This said, most fighting games that even have storylines do terrible jobs at integrating the story into the game as well.
If you are looking for a fighting game with a pretty nicely integrated storyline, the best that I can think of are the WWE Smackdown series. In this game, the story consists of short cutscenes between fights that hint at the location of the next fight, and maybe short snide remarks that the characters say at each other right as the fight is about to begin (that in most cases dont even seem to make any logical sense together).
-----
Overall, this is a great fighting game to have. Its purely that and nothing more. Expect to play single player mode quite a bit in order to unlock characters and items. The real fun of this game really comes from multiplayer modes. I think that fronting $60 may be a stretch for this game unless youre really into this series.
best fighter of all time
On: 2008-07-29the game is like delicious cake or anything delicious wise. the game is has a strong amount of characters and a deep combat system. the game is the very best of the series.
