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neoyaku2's Soul Calibur Legends (Wii)

[January 5, 2008 03:08:05 AM]

Soul Calibur Legends. The Soul Calibur Beat-em-Up/Linear Adventure Game.

I've been playing this game in small bursts, for 3 days now...
It's only managed to maintain some of my attention, because of the controls.

The controls are not very responsive, or accurate-- you swing the wii-mote horizontal or vertical, thrust forward, or pull-up (as if scooping with a spoon) to do different moves-- but MOST of the moves from MOST of the characters match the motion that you perform.

Despite the issues, That's not to say that this control method is not interesting. The problems arise only when you want to do specific attacks.

Since I've played every Soul Calibur up until this point, I like to try and do the moves from the previous games that I liked the most. For example, I love Ivy's move where she pulls an airborne character out of the air with her chain-whip. This move IS in Soul Calibur Legends, but is SOOOO difficult to do because the game doesn't read motions that well. The motion to perform the move itself is not hard at all--thrust forward, then LIFT UP-- it's just that the game can't pick it up as accurately (or INaccurately (?!)) as I would like.

I was impressed to see, that the game DOES read left-to-right horizontal slashes differently than right-to-left horizontal slashes. It was a small touch that won BIG points with me. I also appreciate the number of attacks possible with each character-- nearly every distinct/easily-recognizable move that each character has (from previous Soul Cal games) is in this game.

You can also move the Nunchuck to perform defensive/evasive manuvers (Guard Imapact, Side Stepping), as well as to cancel/charge offensive attacks into other attacks to perform near limitless combo strings. I was surprised to see so much attention given to the Nunchuk, as left, right, forward, and backwards motions (and in combintation with the Z (block) button and C (Soul Charge) button) yeild different results. There is truly alot going on here, it's just not as intuitive or as responsive as it should be.

The Nunchuk and Wii-mote can be used in combination to access even MORE moves.

These kinds of touches let me know where the developer's focus was; translating the 6 Soul Calibur characters into a competent motion-controlled adventure-game fighting system. (By no means, does this system work as a full-fledged one-on-one fighting game... as experienced from playing the last-min-addition 2-player Vs. Mode)

The rest of the game is abysmal-- Repetitive levels, weak story, bad dialogue, forced character interaction, easy enemies, and the half-baked 2-player Co-op, Competitive, and VS play. But the combat options per character is really intriguing, to me at least... Especially since each character is adjusted appropriately to fit the motion controls in harmony with their native fighting style. (Taki comes to mind, as she utilizes the Nunchuk's evasive manuevers more than any other character, being the "ninja-fighter"... Ivy has some cool two-part whip-pulling manuevers that only she can do; i.e. Thrust forward to extentd the whip, then PULL-to-the-LEFT/RIGHT to have her pull the whip in that direction as it retracts...)

I can only think of this game as a window into the possibilities of wii-controls and fighting-based games. There's a lot that CAN be done here, I don't know if it's the Wii Hardware's fault, or lack-of-time for the developers, but there is some really new and fresh ideas for combat with the Wii-mote and Nunchuk.....

Another game that utilizes the motion-controls very well for combat is DragonBall Z Budokai: Tenkaichi 2 or 3. Those games made me believe that fighting IS possible on the Wii...but that's for some other time.