Saturday 26 January, 2008

Entry #2

After exploring more plotlines with other characters, as well as different game modes, I was pleased at how much there is to this game. For the first time in Soul Calibur, the player and create his own hero with equipment he has earned and campaign through different maps in strategy based sieges. Using one's superior fighting skills, each player must eliminate their enemy's base without losing their own.

Gameplay: I thought this was a great idea, having a broader strategy game as background for the smaller fighting game brings gamers into the game more because they can associate with their characters, which gets them emotionally invested in the game.
However, the strategy part of the game is uncharacteristically unprofessional for Soul Calibur. It takes much too long for your fighters to move across the board and the animations are unimpressive. If the strategy part of the game was played on a grid, and produced quick results it could prove to be an intense augmentation to Soul Calibur's gameplay. But sadly, I found the time consuming animations directly conflicting with the pace of Soul Calibur.

Design: I love the tone of Soul Calibur. The high energy music and brilliant colors set up the stage for dramatic showdowns of epic proportions. The art and music of this game are phenomenal, the style is well defined and the character's compliment each other well.
As a classical fighting game, I would say Soul Calibur blows its rivals out of the water. But, new consoles mean better capabilities and I think fighting game designers need to explore new formats to make these games as intense as possible.

You go in depth about things in which Soul Calibur III could have done better, which is good, although some of those issues are inherent with the fighting genre (e.g. ridiculously complex combos). More detail on the fighting mechanic would have been nice, particularly anything that sets it apart from other fighting games.


- David Seagal (Grader)


PS
You can always try switching to the Japanese voices with subtitles, which I find much less grating than the English dub.