Time for another review! I know it’s a little dated but it’s time for Soul Calibur 3!

Soul Calibur III
PS2

Presentation: (Like Soul Calibur II, only bigger and better)

Everybody’s favorite weapon based fighter is back, yea buddy you know what I’m talking about; Soul Calibur. For those that don’t know, Soul Calibur is a weapons based fighting game. Now what this means is that the players don’t just punch and kick their way to victory but they also use knives swords shields and whips to beat the living tar out of each other . Each character has a weapon type that is unique to that person, and since there are a lot of selectable fighters this makes for tons of cool fights. Speaking of lots of fighters, there are over 18 characters to pick from. This includes all the fighters from the Soul Calibur II, well except the 1 special guy that each platform had (Sorry no Spawn or Link) plus 3 brand new ones. BUT WAIT! There’s more, on top of the 18 fighters included in the game there is a character creation mode *audible gasp*. In the character creation mode you have access to well over 300 different items to trick out your l337 fighter, this includes new weapons and fighting styles.

Graphics (Not to shabby)

Graphics are pretty good in most respects but compared to Soul Calibur II on Xbox they aren’t great, but on the plus side Soul Calibur III is for PS2 exclusively so I really have no right to complain but I will anyway. Some of the moving backgrounds look kind of shitty with a lot of jaggies and poorly textured landscapes, even some of the flooring in a few of the stages look like they could have been done a little better. I guess those are the only real complaints that I have.

Characters all look great, although a bit unrealistic… you know… like Dead or Alive unrealistic, in the chest area. Alright, I’ll spell it out for you; the boobs in the game are so large on a few of the female fighters that it’s almost comical. Ivy, in particular, has monster giant gonzo boobs. These things are so large that they bounce around with such force that it looks like they would rip off of her chest and crack the cement when they hit the ground, if this was real life that is. Other then that the players all look awesome, flowing hair and clothes, good facial expressions, awesome looking armor and fighting garb.

Arenas look good enough other then the aforementioned texture problems. Most of the levels are smallish arenas that always have some kind of fall off point that allows for ring outs. Most levels are static locations like churches or dungeons, but other are moving locations such as a raft floating down a river or giant rock trapped in a magma flow. Levels are all pretty varied with a bunch of cool places to go to, but there are a few repetitive levels that seem like other levels only with modest changes.

Sound (Capcomish)

The sound… alright see the thing about the sound is that it can only be explained by saying that it fits so well with the way Capcom does things. See, Capcom always makes these awesome games that all have great graphics, game play, and even a modicum of originality. The other thing Capcom always does is that they always put great music and great sound effects into these awesome games. Notice how I left out voice acting, Capcom ALWAYS fucks up the voice acting, it’s the one thing that is never on par with anything else in the game. It’s not even like the voice acting is bad, it’s just not as good as every other aspect of the game. Does this hold true for Soul Calibur III? You bet you bippie it does.

Soul Calibur III has great music, very combat friendly medieval music. Soul Calibur III also has great sound effects; the weapons all clang together very nicely and the thuds all sound great. Soul Calibur III does not, however, have great voice acting… and that’s sad to me. The voice acting in Soul Calibur III seems like they had the voice actors read the words one at a time, and then later spliced the words together to make the script. The only good thing is that you can change over to the Japanese voice track and avoid any of problems that the American voices suffer from.

Gameplay (CLANG! SWIPE! BLOCK! FUN!)

Alright as for game modes, you got your standard arcade mode which is just like it sounds. Pick a player and play to the end, each time you beat it you earn some kind of unlockable such as a new fighter or new items for the characters creation mode. Also each time you beat the game you earn an arbitrary amount of gold that can be used to buy new weapons for either the character creation mode or for the arcade mode. Each new weapon you unlock can be used to play in versus mode or in the arcade mode, now see the cool thing about the new weapons is that not only do they just look cool but they also add some kind of combat bonus. Combat bonuses can be anything from adding extra damage or defense to adding cool effects to your player. Effects can be good or bad; adding health slowly or slowing draining health are decent examples of the goodness or badness.

Then you have a new mode that kind of play like a real time strategy game but with the fights done in the Soul Calibur III fight engine. Each quest is about a half hour and at the end of each quest you earn some money, maybe a few items to improve your growing army. Your army starts out with your custom player and some other guy training, but will later grow up to be a large force of 10 or 20 people. Each person in the army gains experience for each battle and can then level up to make them stronger and faster and such. There is also a pretty entertaining story in this mode but it’s nothing worth getting into here. At the end of the quest you have a chance to go shopping and buy new stuff for your units, you also have a chance to change the appearance of the unit using the same customization screen that you used to create your player.

Combat in Soul Calibur III is not done in a street fighter style, with the strong medium and weak attacks, but instead in its own fighting style. Fighting in Soul Calibur III is done in a 3d realm in which you can move backwards forwards and side to side. To compensate for the 3d fighting Soul Calibur III had to have different types off attacks to keep people from simply side stepping each time you attack. Ok so in Soul Calibur III you got your vertical attack which is good when the person is dead in front of you, then you have your vertical attacks with is good when the person is to the side, then you also have kicks which can be either vertical or horizontal. You also have high, middle and low attacks for attacking people in the face, the chest and the legs respectively. You also have block, known a guard in Soul Calibur III, blocking is done by pushing block and up down or nothing to block your face legs and body. Oh and throws, there’s throws too.

Now the combat system may seem a little bit hard, and it is, but it’s also a whole lot of fun. Fights often end up looking like a carefully choreographed movie, especially the throws. Since a lot of the fighting is based on realistic fighting styles you almost feel like your some kind of crazy black belt ready to beat down a rival. God how I love the fights in this game.

Now on to something that most fighting games keep to a minimum, the story. Wait wait wait wait, a fighting game with a story? Yea that’s right; Soul Calibur III has a story. Not just one story mind you, but each fighter has their own story that intermingles with the other fighters stories to make one large story. I’m not going to get into the story for each player because I don’t want to be writing this for the next 23 hours, but let me just say that the stories are all pretty good, nothing super RPGish, but still good.

Lasting Appeal (Must unlock more stuff!)

Soul Calibur III is probably one of the longest fighting games ever, there are so many things that you just have to unlock. First you got to unlock all the players, and then you got to try and beat the arcade mode with everyone so you know if there are any special players. Then I’m sure you’ll want to unlock all the items so you can make your own badass fighter right? But then why stop at one custom fighter when you can make 3 or 4? Then there’s multiplayer! OH then you have to beat that new mode, and that’s a whole game in and of its self. Long story short, you’ll be playing this for a long time coming.

Overall (I tell you what; I enjoy it.)

This is one of those games, you know, those games that you can always pick up and play, and every time you do you have fun. Over all this is a very long game with tons of stuff to unlock and tons of good modes to keep you occupied until the next great game takes over.

Posted in PS2 |