July 26, 2008

  • so.  i just pre-ordered Soul Calibur IV off Amazon.

    i first experienced the Soul * series way back when on the PS1, when i spent many hours as Rock trying as hard as i could to beat my friend's Mitsurugi on some rare import called SoulEdge.  little did i know the game had an American release by the name of Soul Blade.  about a year later i picked up my PS1, and shortly thereafter acquired my copy of Soul Blade.  in the same vein as Guilty Gear, i spent many sleepless junior high nights playing that game until i had mastered every square inch the game had to offer.  i could beat the boss with any character on any difficulty, i had all the secret weapons, and i had pretty much filled the Time Trial high scores.  after this grandiose achievement, i ignored the game completely until many years later when my PS1 finally bit the dust and i decided to liquidate my old PS1 collection in favor of buying my PS2.

    being one of those poor kids who had to buy his consoles and games with his own money, i never had the pleasure of owning a Dreamcast until about a year ago, and what little money i squirreled away for the arcades went right into a DDR machine.  as such i never experienced Soul Calibur first-hand until my sophomore year in college when i stared at one horrendously run-down Soul Calibur machine every morning before going to my ice skating class.

    fast-forward a few months and you have me staring at a wall full of games at Game Crazy.  Soul Calibur II stares me down like a lion in midair getting ready to claw my face off.  i pick it up, bring it home, and almost like a copy-paste of junior high, i spend many alcohol-fueled nights playing that game.  i enjoyed it immensely, and still do to this day.

    besides being a huge graphical overhaul from Soul Edge, the new characters and stages kept me interested in playing.  the soundtrack is fantastic, and the controls are very tight, as is usually the case with Namco fighting games.  the difficulty was rather unusual, however.  the settings ranged from "Very Easy" to "Extremely Hard," with many intermediate points.  changing from "Very Easy" to "Easy" added no noticable difference in difficulty, as was the case with most of the other intermediate points.  however changing from "Hard" to "Very Hard" allowed the computer to completely decimate me if i stopped moving for an instant, and "Extremely Hard" allowed for even less time before disaster struck.  however, whether this was intentional or not, the CPU players still made glaring mistakes in their actions.  sometimes these were very hard to notice in the higher difficulty levels, but it still meant you had a chance so long as you could exploit them.

    the Adventure mode was a huge exercise in frustration.  after reading some completely optional text, you were presented with a dungeon map.  you pick a room and a fight begins.  sometimes certain restrictions were placed on you before entering a dungeon, such as "Struck with poison!" which meant your life would constantly decrease, or possibly "Unknown!" which meant anything at all could happen, ranging from fights in the dark to "hit the enemy with a specific move and it's a one-hit kill but we won't tell you which move."  however this was offset with the ability to change both characters and weapons from the map screen, which meant you could make the dungeons easier or harder, depending on which weapons you have and which character you decide to use.  the real ball-buster is that many of the dungeons are large and non-linear, meaning you could slog your way through many very difficult fights only to fight an equally difficult boss character for absolutely no reward other than a dead-end.  sometimes you would unlock weapons for your trouble.  there was no penalty for dying other than gaining a small amount of gold, which you could then use to purchase weapons, costumes, and other unlockables at various stores.

    but that isn't all.  the adventure mode also contains an experience system.  the ranks include various and sometimes humiliating descriptions of your prowess at fighting.  at first i thought it was all for show, but after making my way through adventure mode, i traveled to all the shops and bought everything with my excessive amount of gold.  i soon discovered i was missing several key items for every character, and only after a consultation with gamefaqs did i realize i had to level my character up to "Edgemaster" before i could continue the fight and get the real ending.  and not only that, but i had to grind even more before i had enough gold to buy everyone's weapons, including the overpriced joke weapons.  all in all, it seemed artificially lengthened and in need of some refinement.

    fast forward again about a year or so.  i'm waiting at a game stop to pick up my prebooked copy of Soul Calibur III.  given how much i had been playing SCII up to that point, i was really excited about this one.  however, in the long run, SCIII did not live up.

    i found the core gameplay to be more or less the same as SCII, which is a good thing.  a few elements were tightened, some were loosened, and essentially all of the moves of many characters were changed, making old combos useless. but this is forgivable, because the game looked outstanding.  the graphics were improved over SCIII, the framerate went up a bit, and the character animation got a well-deserved facelift.  however the game tended to fall short there.

    the story mode played out well, but many times it seemed the game was making arbitrary decisions as to where i was allowed to go next, and it seemed almost painfully clear that going in the direction i was not allowed to go would yield better rewards...most notably because the game tended to send me in the same direction each time.  the Character Creation mode had promise, but the only truly original character class was Dancer, whose idle animation made me laugh so hard i was unable to continue holding my controller and subsequently lost the match.  other than that you could create a gruff swordsman, a pretty swordswoman, a pretty swordsman, a gruff swordswoman, a monk, or KOS-MOS.  as well the difficulty curve on this game ranges from "kick you in the balls" to "kick you in the balls right before burning them with a torch and cutting them off with a dull butterknife."  many of the fight sequences will leave you smashing your controller in anger, only because the computer loves to abuse parry moves even when they are 2 character lengths away from you facing the opposite direction.  as well, the game just loves to dick with you.  every once in a while, they will ratchet up the difficulty of one fight so high that you can't help but lose, and once you have lost it tones it back down to where it was before you started, like it just wants to make you break your PS2 so you'll buy the game again.

    and it has quicktime events.

    but, for me, by and large the worst choice was Chronicles of the Sword mode.  it's a blend of RTS and something else, which is all i need to know since i can't stand RTS games.  that would not be such a big deal if completing this mode weren't a requirement for unlocking certain unlockables, like say for example, most of them.  jamming most of the unlockable content into a single mode is silly, and namco has been doing it for a long time now.  there is no guarantee everyone will like every mode, so there should be an equal opportunity to unlock everything by playing through arcade mode ten million billion times as there would be by playing through "arbitrary random game mode" mode.

    as well, while SCII seemed to vomit gold at every encounter and prices were so low it didn't take long before you were able to buy out every shop in the world, SCIII is far more stingy with its money, and inflation has guaranteed you won't be buying your KOS-MOS parts until you have played through arcade mode at least ten million billion times.

    all in all, SC is at a tie with me.  while SCII, despite its faults, is a game i still play to this day, SCIII has by and large done very little for me.  SCIV has, so far, been keeping far out of my view.  since this installment will be played on my 360, it has some real opportunities for growth.  my only concern is the online play, since in recent years game devs have taken to requiring some level of online play to unlock content, assuming online play is available.  as i will be several days late in acquiring this game, i can be certain the 14-year olds who populate Xbox Live servers will become consummate masters and will no doubt be able to pummel me to death with my own controller.

    but then again i am putting the cart before the horse at this point.  it's due to arrive on the 4th, so we'll see how it goes then.

    also yes i am home.  wahoo.