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Wednesday 17 January, 2007
I was reading my entry from last night and I realized that I was kind of sleepy when I wrote it haha. Soul Caliber III is in a league of its own in terms of fighting games as compared to a game like Super Smash Brothers Melee. The fact that four players can play at the same time in SSBM as compared to the usual two makes it unique compared to many fighting games. When I thought about best 3D fighting, I was still thinking about Soul Caliber II from last night haha. However this is at the top of 3D fighters as it rivals the Tekken series and the old Dead or Alive Series when it was still on playstation. What makes Soul Caliber so appealing is that in most fighting games, characters just use their fists. Soul Caliber is one of the unique fighters, where you can use weapons. So I think anyone who is into 3D fighters, should at least give this a shot.
The command lists for the each characters are still long meaning there are lots of cools moves and stances for you to learn and master. I like this compared to a lot of fighting games where all you have is a handful of specials moves. Soul Caliber III makes it so you have to practice many move strings to create strategies against other types of players. An example is that two people who play Mitsurugi, can play him two completely different ways. The more moves you pick up, the more you can mix up the fight to always keep an opponent guessing. This is how I play and I think its pretty effective when you want to play against tougher players. Unlike in most fight games as well, you have to use a button to block as compared to holding back usually. This separates casual gamers from more experienced ones. With a casual player, they wont block as much, but if you come across a player who can block both high and low combos very well, then you know they much tougher opponent. Mike was this kind of opponent haha.
In my second session, Mike came back and I got a chance to fight him again to redeem myself and we must of played for hours upon hours. Mike chose Siegfried and I chose Zaslamel after using him a couple times against Marie. I wasn't able to attack fast enough to damage him enough. However as rounds continued I begin to gradually pick up on his moves and even abused a move Mike hated. It's this one where Zaslamel hits for medium height then follows low and sends you up into the air if you don’t block. After this you can grab them in the air with his scythe and slam them down. I loved doing this countless times and I’m seriously considering, practicing with him one day to get better. However as usual haha, Mike eventually found a way around this move and I continued to get stomped by his blue haired Siegfried. It was time to bring out Mitsurugi. At the beginning I started to get beat very bad, and even got so defensive that I feared to attack. After awhile I just sucked things up and began to more adventurous with my moves. Surprisingly enough, half of them begin to work because I was now making him guess what I would do. However sometimes when I got to close Siegfried would use this move where he would kick me to stun me leaving me vulnerable for another attack. He would follow with a slash bringing me up in the air and then slamming me back down. This would take down half of my life alone unfortunately so I had to be very careful.
In later games I began to win a couple matches but still would lose until I began remembering some of my old moves from Soul Caliber II gradually. One is where Mitsurugi put his sword in and if a person does a vertical slash the minute you press B, you will almost always dodge it and slash them back in the process. Its one of my favorites because it slows a lot of my friends down allowing me for a chance to grab the upper hand. Not only this but Mitsurugi has another stance where he will arc his sword close to his face aiming at the opponent. In this style, if you get close to a person you can press the throw buttons and use his throws from the previous game which look very cool. What makes these style so cool is that if you press B+K at the same, you can switch styles on the fly. So if he saw me switch to my regular defensive position, I would sometimes switch to the attack style quickly and grab him for a easy throw. This sometimes was a double edged sword though as he would pick up on it and quickly make mince meat out of me the minute he saw me switch. In this style I have no way of doing that dodge and attack move so I’m left way open. Either way, we would break even for many matches by winning back and forth. Later he switched to Yoshimitsu which posed little challenge at first. In the couple of later matches he would do a drain technique that took my life and added it to his. Then things began to get interesting as he had many unique attacks where he spins around and hops on his sword. He seemed like he looks like one of those characters in fighting games who you think is weak but can be dangerous if played well.
I began to get beat again and finally switched to Maxi the rest of the night. He also switched back to Siegfried and began to pick a couple wins back up. The thing I love about Maxi is his nunchaku combos. If you can practice them a lot, you can remember what attacks will string off from a combo depending on where he flips his nunchaku around. My favorites is his high starts but finishing with low kicks. Unfortunately, will you play as him you will begin to notice that some of his monster combos were taken away from the previous game. However I quickly figured out how to do some of the old ones from this game and enjoyed playing with Maxi once again.
Playing with other players again made me enjoy the love of playing Soul Caliber II on Gamecube. If anyone enjoyed Soul Caliber II on Gamecube and has a PS2/3, they need to get this game. You will absolutely love the new stages, modes, music, unlockables and characters the game has to offer. As Super Smash Brothers holds the title as the best Multiplayer fighting game in my book, Soul Caliber III will continue to hold the title as the best 3D weapon fighting game.
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