Almost a full three years after the Soul series's third installment, Soulcalibur IV debuted in North America in 2008, once again predating foreign releases. It was released to the PS3 and XBox 360, which made it the first game to feature online play, as well as HD graphics.
The story is that after the clash between Siegfried and Nightmare in the Lost Cathedral, each with their soul sword, they released the old Hero King Algol who was sealed inside Soul Calibur. Algol is thought to be one of the first wielders of Soul Edge, but one of the only individuals who had a stronger will than the cursed sword and thusly used it for good. Algol's son however wasn't as strong and claimed Soul Edge for himself, turning on his father in the process. Algol wrestled away the evil blade, but in doing so killed his son. Knowing Soul Edge's nature and with regret in his heart, the Hero King sacrificed himself, his son's body, and a piece of the broken Soul Edge and turned into the crystalline Soul Calibur.
Meanwhile Siegfried and Nightmare each own a fully powered soul sword now and are poised to do savage battle once again at the location of Algol's newly resurrected tower called... um... The Tower of Remembrance... and that's the entire premise of this story. This is also one of the first failings of this game. The story is weak. Soulcalibur III offers the entire premise of it's story via an adventure mode for each character. Even it's intro FMV gives you a good sense of the world as it stands in the eternal battle of souls and swords.
That brings me to the second failing. Soulcalibur IV has no FMV sequences at all. All sequences are done with in game graphics, and while they look good, they aren't that good. Soulcalibur II and Soulcalibur III had awesome FMV sequences that really set the mood and pace. Even Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny had a FMV opening, and that was a PSP game.
I think I've beat around the bush long enough. Let's talk about something that really annoyed me about this game. More or less, Soulcalibur IV was just a big advertisement for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed which was coming out later that year for pretty much any kind of device that would play a game. For the PS3 version Darth Vader his Apprentice (Starkiller) were playable out of the box while the XBox 360 replaced Vader with Yoda, though your version's missing character could be purchased as downloadable content.
Now I don't necessarily mind guest characters. Link was awesome in Soulcalibur II, and Kratos is a neat addition for Broken Destiny. That's because they look like they fit. Now look at that picture above. Yoda does not belong here. Worse yet, there are a few battle areas on the Death Star. Imagine characters from the late 16th century doing battle in space station with laser gates and space docks (even if all of these things are from a long time ago and far, far away).
One important thing about any game is that it's immersive. Let's imagine Super Mario Bros. for example. What if there was a special cross over with Lord of the Rings that had Mario stomping on Ringwraiths, kicking palantirs, and dodging flaming arrows as you struggle with the burden of carrying the One Ring to Mordor. There after you're back in the Mushroom Kingdom and solely concerned with Bowser and his antics again. Absurd, I know. Soulcalibur IV is equally absurd.
The gameplay options are equally weak, featuring a simplified Story Mode which isn't much past Arcade Mode aside from little cutscenes between battles. There is also Tower of Lost Souls which you can either ascend for special battle situations to overcome, or descend for a more classic survival mode.
Character creation returns, but brings along new elements that served to ruin the experience. Armor and weapons now have stats similarly to an RPG that affect attack, defense, and life bar. Generally, you won't be able to make a character look the way you want and have decent stats at the same time. On top of that, in battles your equipment can be broken, which more often than not leaves you with warriors running around in their underwear.
Thankfully Soulcalibur IV is just as easy to pick up and play as it's predecessors, which for me is always a big plus. That's not to say that the gameplay is identical though. There is one new gameplay aspect that completely ruins the battles, especially between skilled opponents: Soul Crush and Critical Finishes. As you defend attacks you lose soul energy until it eventually depletes putting you into Soul Crush. If your opponent hits his horizontal, vertical, kick, and guard buttons at the same time when you are in Soul Crush, he get's to execute a Critical Finish which will instantly kill you. It does not matter how much health you have, you lose the round instantly and move on to the next. It's cheap and unfair and feels like a Mortal Kombat idea more than a Soulcalibur idea.
That said, there are good things about this game that are very much worth mentioning. Graphically it's stunning. Levels are gorgeous to look at and characters are very smooth and natural looking. Metal looks like metal and cloth looks like cloth, water looks very fluid, and backgrounds look naturally out of focus.
Some battle situations allow for you to chose two characters and switch between them on the fly in a tag battle sense which is very fun, but sadly unused in any versus situation. The feature is absent for Broken Destiny which is sad as with a little refining it could make for a unique battle mechanic for both offline and online play.
Lastly the music is still wonderful. Soulcalibur games have always been known for having a robust orchestrated soundtrack, and IV is no different. And fans of the series from the Dreamcast days can download the original Soulcalibur soundtrack for Soulcalibur IV. The only time the music fails to keep you in the theme of the game is on the Star Wars levels, and we don't need to get into that again.
Between weak story, bad tie-ins, empty gameplay, crappy character creation, and striptease combat, Soulcalibur IV left a lot to be desired, especially after the experience that Soulcalibur III provided. The bar was set high and IV feel way short. It's not even at II's level though I would put it on par with the original and above Soul Blade. It speaks volumes when many of these complaints were fixed for Broken Destiny.
Recently it's been more or less confirmed that Namco-Bandai's Project Soul team is working on what will likely be Soulcalibur V. It's my hope that they're learning from the mistakes they've made, and remembering what made the series great to begin with. It's about the gameplay and the experience. It's about being able to immerse yourself into a world where the Spirit Sword and the Cursed Sword are locked in a struggle that calls forth fighters from all over the world. Hopefully the next Soulcalibur will remind us why the tale of souls and swords will be eternally retold.
Originally I was going to conclude my Soulcalibur reviews by talking about Soulcalibur III alone. Of all the games in the series it's by far my favorite, and that's a huge accomplishment after how much time I put into Soulcalibur II. However as I began to work out what I would say about the game I found myself frequently comparing it to it's successor Soulcalibur IV. The two games are very similar in gameplay, but the differences between the two are really the case study for what future Soulcalibur games need to focus on. So lets get started with the best of the series, Soulcalibur III!
This installment of the Soul series debuted in North America in October of 2005, and did so strangely before it's Japanese release. The arcade version wouldn't appear until the following year, and the game would only appear for the PS2, unlike Soulcalibur II which saw a version on all major home consoles. Also unlike II, III would not have any special guest characters from other franchises. No Link of Zelda fame, nor Todd McFarlane's Spawn or Necrid. Not even Namco's own Heihachi Mishima would make an appearance. At the time I thought this was disappointing, now I think it's definitely a plus.
This game would reintroduce the character of Siegfried as a default playable with a unique move set, which hasn't been the case since Soul Blade where he clamed Soul Edge for himself and thus became Nightmare for Soulcalibur and Soulcalibur II. III also had Nightmare as a default playable, but a new Nightmare that series fans were unfamiliar with.
Also new to the series was Tira, Setsuka, and Zasalamel. Each of these characters were solid additions that improved upon the depth of the battle system as well as the roster of characters.
The storyline to this game was actually really good, especially for a Namco fighting game. Players were finally treated to a serious throw-down between Soul Edge and Soul Calibur in a battle between Siegfried and Nightmare. The story could be experienced by playing the Tales of Souls mode that took the chosen character on a journey across Europe and Asia in pursuit of their own ambitions. It played out in a level by level manor with the occasional option to choose a path or stop and face special bonus opponents who may be unlocked if you defeat them.
The biggest and most welcome addition to this game is the character creation mode Create A Soul. For the first time players could actually build their own custom character out of parts purchased with gold won from other modes or earned via achievements. The level of customization was fairly extensive with hundreds of parts available at the start and hundreds more unlocked through play.
Finally there was an additional mode called Chronicles of the Sword which told an alternate story about Soul Edge based in a fictional land thrust into war. A special custom character of your own making was the main character and the game involves moving characters around a map and attacking strongholds and other characters in either a rock-paper-scissors battle or you could choose to face the opponent in a standard Soulcalibur battle.
However you play this game it's a huge undertaking that will keep you involved for weeks. Between leveling up your custom characters to learn new disciplines or job classes or earning enough gold for new weapons and equipment, Soulcalibur III had a lot to offer for play value and enjoyable experiences.
There really were only two flaws with this game. The first was that getting new disciplines for your character could take entirely too long, and there was no way of knowing if the job class you picked would level up to have the Soul discipline of the character you desired. As a Siegfried fan, I'd have to struggle along and play 600+ battles with other characters just to unlock the Knight job class, then likely 50+ more to level up to Soul of Siegfried style. This is easy enough for people who have friends to play with in versus mode, but for single player it's way too time consuming.
The other problem was that the save file could corrupt on you if you deleted or moved other files on the memory card your SC III file was on. Usually this resulted in losing your Chronicle of the Sword data while leaving the rest of the save data alone, but for a few players it ruined the entire save, and even their memory cards. A major flaw to be sure, but unintended and with proper precautions avoidable all together.
That said, Soulcalibur III proved itself to be a great game and any fan of fighting games can have a great time with this installment. Fighting games don't normally have a great deal of depth, which makes it stand out all the more. I still recommend this game, even with it being five years old. Unfortunately, it's only playable on the PS2 or early PS3 models if you have the game disk.
That's it for part 1 of this versus match up. Next time we'll take a look at Soulcalibur IV and see how the PS3/XBox 360 chapter in the Soul series managed to turn to the dark side.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a huge fan of the Soulcalibur series of games from Namco. Just have a look at my Tekken review and you'll see I talk about it all the time! In fact, it's my favorite fighting game series, with Super Smash Bros. coming in a close second (if that counts as a fighting game and not a party game).
That said, you'd also know that while I loved Soulcalibur III, IV made me want to hurt people and do bad things to my PlayStation. III was a massive experience marred only by the really glitchy nature of the save data that might have you starting all over (which I almost experienced...). IV was marred by about everything that was included in the game. Weak story, weak content, unacceptable guest characters, boring game modes, annoying character creation rules, and instant kill attacks made this the worst entry in the series, period.
That was exactly what I had in mind when I downloaded Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny for my PSP Go. I was expecting to have wasted $40 bucks on another crappy game that wouldn't hold my interest longer than a day or two. I was wrong, and grateful I was.
Now this is a portable game, so I don't expect high end graphics or massive amounts of content. There still is no fun Edge Master mode wanna-be in this game, just a lame mode called "The Gauntlet" that has you doing exactly what your told to do in battle. Think of it as an enhanced training mode where you have a situation you need to work your way out of, like should you guard, or go for a quick hit? You have hardly any time to decide, but you have the option to try over and over, and you are given hints after each defeat so with patience you can pull through.
There is no story mode, just a quick battle game where you pick opponents to fight, then fight them, and rinse and repeat. There is also a mode called "Trials" where you battle in an arcade like setting going for a high score based on either attacking or defending well, or a classic survival mode for a test of your total skill.
Character creation returns in the same fashion as in Soulcalibur IV, but without any bonus elements to your equipment. This means you can actually make a character that looks the way you want without being handicapped by poor equipment stats. This is a huge plus, making it even better than the Create-a-Soul mode from III. The extra styles present in III are still no where to be found, which is still a loss in my opinion. Being forced to only pick from the default character stable as your move set limits creativity. It's still awkward for a dark, evil looking knight to be provocative like Ivy.
Equipment breaking still occurs, but this time it doesn't happen so quickly. This is also a big improvement as it was laughable to have your awesome warrior busted down to his boxers in seconds flat (Did this turn into Ghosts 'n Goblins...?). Soul Crush is also still in the game, but can only be invoked after an opponent has guarded a number of attacks. It's easier to perform now as well, but there never seems to be a need to use it. By the time your opponent is that beat down, they're usually out of life or out of the ring. It's a part of the game that needs to go.
Fortunately controlling the characters is exactly as it has been for several games now. Only small rebalances have been introduced to allow for the new character Dampierre and guest character Kratos of God of War fame to fit in. Graphically it's on par with Soulcalibur III and looks great on a small screen. It's very comfortable to get into, and you'll be pulling off all your old tricks with your favorite character in no time.
All in all, Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny is a solid portable fighter, but I don't feel it was worth $40. Still it is fun, and for die hard fans it's a great way to experience the eternal tale of souls and swords away from home.
