11/07/05 >> Soul Calibur 3 (PlayStation 2)
Genre: Weapon-based fighting
After a few years of wondering whether another sequel of Soul Calibur would appear on the current generation consoles Namco announced they were making Soul Calibur. Many feared that it would not live up to the stellar Soul Calibur 2 and were very weary on buying it, but luckily it has even surpassed the second installment of the series by adding new modes, characters and even a grand create a character mode that puts even some wrestling games to shame.
Story: The worst aspect of the Soul Calibur series is the story, and to be honest this game does not take much effort on improving it. This game follows the main story of the other games, in which the evil sword Soul Edge is being controlled and used for evil and it must be stopped. By playing as good characters the goal of the story is to destroy the sword and by playing as bad characters your object is to gain its power. There is some variation in the stories of the characters but they aren’t different enough to be satisfying. You will often be treated to the same cut scene over again in different stories in the Tales of Souls mode and it gets slightly annoying when trying to beat it with all the characters. One aspect of the Tales of Souls mode that does turn the story towards the right direction is the endings to each character. Unlike the last installment the endings aren’t still frame pictures but played out with the in game graphics. If the rest of Tales of Souls played out like the endings and there were longer cut scenes it may be a better experience. There is another mode in the game called Chronicles of the Sword, which is a totally different story, but just like Tales of Souls the story is extremely lacking and at times you will wonder why they even added one at all.
Gameplay: The gameplay in Soul Calibur 3 is where the game really shines. There are over thirty playable characters and with the addition of bonus characters and the created characters you have a wide range of fighters to play as. All the characters have different weapons giving each a different style of fighting techniques and moves. There is a wide range of speed and power with the characters giving the stronger enemies slower attacks and the weaker characters quick attacks. The gameplay is still pretty balanced and many of the “cheap” moves from the last installment have been altered or tweaked to make them less imposing and in some cases hindering a character over all. The characters mostly retain most of there moves from the previous games but some of them may have a few different moves and a lot of the moves have been mapped to different buttons. While the characters may feel different to some people it does not take a long to relearn the moves that have changed. The same style of playing from the old games remains with all the same techniques still intact and there are a few new additions.
The single player of this game is pretty good; you have many options to choose from the two main ones being Tales of Souls and Chronicles of the Sword. Tales of Souls pits you in any characters story you want and you go through it much like arcade mode in the other games but this time it tells a story as you go along and you have choices you can pick to alter the story a little. This mode is a great addition but the choices you make don’t really change the story that much as there is only two set paths you can go on in the story. One leads to an optional boss which is extremely hard to get too and the other leads to the normal boss but ultimately both stories lead to the exact same ending which you can alter a bit in a push button sequence that will take place during the cut scene. Chronicles of the Sword is an RTS mode which allows you to make your own characters and use them to battle against armies while leveling them up and unlocking stuff for other modes in the process.
In Chronicles of the Sword you control your people on a map and the main goal is to capture the enemy’s stronghold. To do this you can take over buildings and fight enemies that are placed around on the map. There are many different ways you can lose depending on the map but the most common is that your stronghold is captured. When you approach an enemy you can either let them duke it out on the mini map where you have no control over how your character does, it just depends on his level and the enemy’s level or you can fight in a battle much like you would in the normal game. This mode is great but the load times and the slow speed of your characters moving on the mini map causes a problem and you will be often frustrated waiting around doing nothing.
The new Create a Soul feature really adds to the replay value of the game. In Create a Soul you can create a character in the game to be used in special modes or versus. These characters can vary a lot due to the new weapons added just for them or you can have them use the same weapons and have the same style of play as your favorite characters. There is tons of customization with create a soul but the main problem is that you can not change the characters height or weight making all your characters have the same proportions and it hinders some of the creatable characters that you may have had in mind.
Graphics: The graphics in Soul Calibur 3 are not much of an improvement over its precursor but they are still great. The textures are extremely nice and fluent and the animation for all the characters is very crisp. For the main characters they are extremely polished and they flow very nicely with the game but with the created characters there is a bit of problems. A lot of the items on the create a character flow through each other, such as hair through a cape and it shows lack of polish on what could be the greatest addition to any fighting game. The cut scenes in the game are extremely well done and you can see there was a lot of effort in them to make them look great. The levels themselves are amazingly well done and are defiantly much more detailed and better then Soul Calibur 2’s. The opening cut scene, which is done in FMV, is one of the best FMV’s I have ever seen. The movie look extremely good and it is very detailed. Overall Soul Calibur 3 has a decent improvement over SC2 on the graphics department but it could have been a bit better.
Sound: The music in this game is just as good as the other games in the series but its nothing memorable. The music usually works extremely well with the levels they are played on and you will never get annoyed of hearing the same track over and over again. The only problem with the sound in this game is some of the American voice acting is atrocious. It’s a matter of opinion on the voices but some of the new voice actors for the characters in previous games don’t sound correct and sometimes down right awful. There is however an alternative solution to this problem, which is to change the voices over to the Japanese voice track, which is included in this game. While I may not understand Japanese, I would rather read the subtitles then suffer through some of the new voices.
Lasting Appeal: As with most fighting games the emphasis of this game is on the multiplayer, which is great. There are tons of characters to unlock and tons of different weapons you can use. With the inclusion of “create-a-character” and the shop to buy new items you will be spending a lot of time just fooling around with the different options in the game. The single player modes in this game can be challenging and last a while but at core this game is multiplayer. Fighting your friends is much more fun then fighting the computer opponents and using your own created characters to fight each other is great fun as well.
Soul Calibur 3 is a great improvement on a great franchise and I believe it will last everyone who enjoys it a long time. There are tons of options and things to do so keeping yourself busy in the game is not tough. While some modes may seem repetitive after a while you will always have something else to do instead. Overall Soul Calibur 3 is a great game and to get the full experience I recommend buying this game and playing it with a bunch of friends.
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Game Score: 9.1
