Wednesday 31 January, 2007

After a dismal hour of playing, I am starting to wonder how Soul Caliber made the lists as a classic game. I decide to venture into the realm of the one player mode, in which I engage in the story mode, a common feature in fighting games in order to escalate the plot. Yet after defeating an opponent, the player is given a list of paragraphs to read, either search for this mystical “Soul Edge,” or some other trivial mission. Each choice you make affects the opponent you face, but in the end it really does not matter. You meet the “Soul Edge,” but are not allowed to use it because the character then becomes possessed. What is the point in having such a weapon if it is not attainable? This part of the game really just irritated me. Even though the game was already unlocked with all the possible weapons, I still could not find myself wanting to play this game more. The variety of swordplay was accurate, from the samurai stance to a fencing stance, however it lacked some good basis character.
I believe Namco, the creators of this game as well as the Tekken series, lost some basic skills in character development. One such character is Yoshimitsu, whose character has a sword just like in Tekken, and even their fighting style is exactly the same. What is recognizable from the start is the circular movement of the kicks, and the slash that this character makes. Was this a direct idea from Tekken, this lacks originality and I am very supportive of this game to not ever be on anyone’s classic list.
What still amazes me in my second hour of playing, is how my friends and I still did not know how to do specific moves. Unlike other games where the player can develop some type of muscle memory as to what buttons do what, I often felt the same way I started: confused. There is nothing to say more about this game but to save before you turn it off, or all your hard work goes away because the game is filled with glitches that love to corrupt your memory card data. Good luck on figuring out on how to do combos, because it is a total mystery to me.

See, the problem you're facing is you jumped into a series in the 5th volume (If you count arcade games), or 3rd if you're just looking at consol games. Ofcourse you don't understand what's going on. It's not overly reasonable to expect to. The games storyline is complex, but it does add alot to it.

Yoshimitsu is cannocically the ancestor of the Tekken Yoshimitsu. This isnt accidental. It's meant to be a reference to the tekken series. The first installments of the game came out five months apart, and Yoshimitsu was in both. As for combos... Well, you press buttons. That's generally how it's done.