The “much-anticipated” fourth entry in this series…is it any freaking good? I certainly hope so, after coming from 3 games. Does the online play suck terribly, and are the Star Wars characters cheap as hell (why wouldn’t they be?)? Read on to find out!
Introduction:
I first got into the Soul Edge/Calibur series during the Dreamcast era. My first character was Lizardman and the reason why I picked him is because I thought he was cool with his sword and shield (stupid/nerdy i know). Soul Calibur II came out a few years later for the PS2, Xbox, and GCN, and while I was already in love with other fighting games like Marvel Vs. Capcom and the Tekken series, I wasn’t really interested in picking up another fighting game that didnt interest me. Well, a few weeks before Soul Calibur II came out, scamco…er, I mean Namco announced that each console version would have a special “guest” character – Heihachi from Tekken for the PS2, Spawn on the Xbox, and Link on the Gamecube…wait a second, WTF? Link from the Legend of Zelda….in a NON zelda/fighting game??? Are you serious???I immediately got hooked. I wanted this game so badly…but there was one reason stopping me from getting it – i didn’t have a gamecube. Luckily, earlier in the year, my brother had bought one when Zelda: The Wind Waker had come out, so that problem was taken care of. When the game came out, we both spent HOURS playing it, as it probably became one of the best fighting games ever made. Then Soul Calibur III was released a bit later…none of my friends bought it or played it. I figured it wasnt even worth looking at so I didnt bother picking it up. Nothing “exciting” or interesting was in the fighting game genre for a long time…until now (man that sounds so cheesy!).
Graphics:
This game has OUTSTANDING visuals. It’s definitely the best looking out of all the fighting games I have played (well, Virtua Fighter 5 and DoA4 come pretty close too). From each lightsaber hilt, to Siegfrieds’ armor, to even clothing on each characters clothes, everything is well drawn and animated. However, there are quite a few jaggies everywhere, and i’m not a fan of the “artwork portraits” of the characters when you pick them on the character selection screen. And 720p only scamco? What the hell is up with that? You could have easily made this game 1080p, as konami did with mgs4, and they had even BETTER graphics.
Sound:
Thankfully, it redeems itself with full Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Every single effect, footstep, background noise, stage noise (the star wars stages especially) and whatever else can be heard from all directions and speakers. Excellent job there. The music is pretty good too, but definitely not as good as soul calibur II, but on par with soul calibur III. Thankfully, Scamco is allowing DLC and just a few days ago, it released all the music from soul calibur I to be used as alternate music for the stages. (now hurry the fuck up and release the soul calibur II music!) As for the voice acting…i know Scamco has a history for cheesy dialog, but seriously, this is supposed to be a “next-gen” game, so why not go all out and do a much better job with the voices? Some of the lip-syncing needs work too and boo/hiss on the fact that you cover up some of the characters mouths when they speak to lower the amount of lip-syncing work.
Gameplay:
To me, soul calibur has always been about button mashing and once in a while, you’ll find a move or two that will be unblockable, do lots of damage, or just will plain look cool. of course, if you ever want to be good at it, you should probably learn all the moves of whatever character you want (or create your own!). once in a while, someone (aka podar) will find a cheap move that you can do over and over again for a TON of damage and might even be tough to get out of/unblockable. all the usual tactics are there, guard impact, block, run in all directions, crouching, etc. in this game, you can now break certain pieces of your opponents armor, making them a lot more vulnerable each time. also, they have added something called a “soul gauge” that changes color each time you block a certain amount of times. when that gauge turns red, you lose a piece of your armor and become temporarily stunned. this is a good thing that namco did, because this will definitely stop the “turtling” that noob/cheap players do. i HATE when people just sit there, block, and dont attack. luckily, nameco has added something called a “critical finish”, which is similar to a final smash in smash bros brawl, but WAY harder to pull off, as it requires the opponent to have lost all his armor and have his gauge become red and be stunned. most of the time, you’ll never have a chance to do a critical finish, which blows. also for the star wars characters, they have another gauge called the force gauge, which is there to limit how often/much you can use their special force attacks (which is a good thing!). this is definitely not the most advanced fighting game out there, compared to DoA, virtua fighter, tekken, street fighter, but it is a simple pick up and play for hours without learning the controls and moves game. thats what i love about soul calibur and why i love this type of gameplay.
Presentation:
Now usually, namco would be pretty good with menus, openings, and the like. unfortunately, i have to admit that they really havent done a good job here. the opening isnt as…exciting/thrilling/awesome as they have been in soul edge/soul calibur I/II. the menus are just bland, and they have a bit of lag when going from a menu screen to the next. the announcer could have put a LOT more effort/depth into his lines, but the bottom line is, he isnt that good. even worse, when you load a match up, the announces comes and says a line of dialog pertaining to soul calibur, but sometimes, his line will extend all the way past the stage intro and into the characters dialog! its a minor quirk i know, but again, scamco could have done a better job of cleaning all this up. soul calibur II completely owns soul calibur IV in terms of presentation. sc4 is like…60-70% of what sc2’s presentation is.
Multiplayer:
Again, scamco has dropped the ball here. only standard and special versus are here. there is no team battle, time attack, survival mode, etc. only just 1vs1 battles. W.T.F???? this was present in soul calibur 2 (cant comment on 3, never played it) so why is this NOT here? thank GOD there is online, and you can play your own created characters online too, complete with their abilities/weapons/clothing/everything.
Singleplayer:
Story mode is a joke, with only 5 stages, but some stages have up to 4 opponents to face, one after another. the last boss is ALWAYS the same character, algol. he has double health of what you have, and he is cheap. there are only two difficulty settings, normal and hard. arcade mode is here, but when you play it for the first time, you will want to throw your controller out the window. the AI is incredibly cheap, and if you play as darth vader against the apprentice, vader will get destroyed so easily by him. either the cpu gets tuned up when you fight against the apprentice, or its a extreme difficulty change compared to the other battles you face in arcade. another example of this is when you are playing against astaroth (you are still vader though). astaroth is like…level 9999999999 when you face him. i dont know what the balls namco did, but he is mega cheap, buffed like crazy, and fucking fast as hell. luckily they have added training mode too, otherwise i would have been really mad. as usual, there is a “tower of the lost souls” mode, which places you as whatever character(s) you want (they can be all customized and equipped however you wish though luckily) against opponents who must be defeated in a certain way across a tower of 60 floors, ascending and descending. some of these battles are easy to win, but some are just godawful hard. its as if they want to baby you for a few levels/floors, but then ramp up the difficulty to extreme cheapness in where you cant do anything against the cpu because they are GAY as hell. whatever, this mode could have been much better, but it isnt.
Extras:
if you got the premium edition of either console version of soul calibur IV, you get an unlock code with it, and if you use it, you will unlock every single characters best and joke weapon. the apprentice and darth vader (or yoda if you have the 360 version) are awesome guest characters, although they are cheap. the 5 “hidden” anime characters are just clones of certain soul calibur people, so its kind of pointless for them to be in here. the museum mode, artwork, illustrations, and all that is in here. it also sucks that you have to get TONS of gold to unlock every extra, but then thats how the replay value is there. Again, its definitely not up to par with soul calibur II, as that game had character demonstrations, weapon profiles, etc. the premium version also includes an XL t-shirt, a cool poster with a tournament bracket on the back, a nice artwork and comic book combo, as well as a sharpie!!! to write down the scores/names on the bracket, the case is also a nice tin case with a see-through plastic cover that goes right on top of it. also, wtf is up with the “honors” in this game? thats just a blatant rip-off of achievements from the 360 version. there was no need to put them in the ps3 version. thats why sony added trophies support, but of course, you didnt take advantage of it.
Edit: Since this review is quite a ways old, scamco has released yet more DLC, allowing for Yoda to be purchased on the PS3 and Vader on the 360…for $5 each. wow, i have no words for that.
Conclusion:
If you want a good looking, good sounding, and awesome gameplay in a fighting game, soul calibur 4 is a pretty darn good choice. if you are going to be playing this game by yourself, or if you want a deep technical fighter, you’re better off just renting it (unless you’re like me and love soul calibur in general and cant get enough of it). the fact that the singleplayer in general is sucky/nerfed, the multiplayer modes from sc2 are gone, the presentation is just plain stupid, the extras could have been better, the online disconnects half the time, adding “extra features” that are already on the disc and making you pay for them, makes this game feel rushed and you feeling cheated out of your money. all scamco really did, in my opinion, is take the gameplay, graphics and sound and make them next-gen, and they really did a great job with it, but left everything else to the dogs, and it shows; because when it all comes down to it, all these extras feel like an afterthought. it was added because they needed something to make it compete with the other fighting games out there. namco could have easily done a lot better job with everything else else if they just took their time and polished it up like soul calibur II…but they didnt.
7.5/10.
PS: this game still rocks for multiplayer battles, and dont get me wrong – i dont hate the game, i like it a ton. i just wish they could have made it so much better and made it stand out from the competition, like they did with soul calibur II.
