Soul Calibur 2

omoi · Site Admin Joined: 04 Nov 2006 Posts: 154 Location: GA

“Soul Calibur… two!”

This phrase is used by the game announcer (a random character voice) at the opening screen of this game.

So what is this game about? “Well, I’ll tell ya!” It’s about the ongoing struggle of several warriors, each pursuing power from one of two swords: the Soul Calibur and the Soul Edge. In the basic arcade mode, you can pick one of a group of basic characters to play through the game with first.

That being said, we move onto the aspect of gameplay. What fun!! The gameplay is quite exciting, but is not – I repeat not – for the button pusher. This game has a very interesting battle system involving parries of varying kinds. These are definitely worth mastering and using! A 3D combat area allows you to sidestep characters, get knocked into walls and fall off of edges.

There are few characters that this game will allow you to play at first. Completing the game with these characters can unlock characters, game modes, and game features. With these features unlocked, you can have access to art galleries, a theatre area, and even another story within the Soul Calibur story! This story takes you to different places in the world, conquering enemies that you encounter as the story progresses, in one-on-one battles. As you go through the towns, you are able to buy armor, outfits, and character movies.

Wonderful and terrific! But wait, there is yet another feature to discuss. That of the special characters. These characters appear on Soul Calibur 2, but are indigenous to one and only one system. Here’s a listing:

1. Heihachi (Tekken series) – PlayStation 2
2. Link (Legend of Zelda) – GameCube
3. Spawn – xBox

Seeing Spawn on the xbox made me smile. The special characters here have many fun abilities to use. If you don’t know what they are, then you can play the game to find out. The sad thing is that you can’t take these characters moves and take them to another system – they simply won’t work at all. Not only that, but the characters are limited to that system only. Many are the people who have fallen in love with Link or Heihachi only to be disappointed when they played Soul Calibur on an xBox.

The downside is that there is little replay value; if you finish this game, you may want to repeat it once, but outside of that, unless you are playing versus mode or are seriously into just fighting the computer on insanely hard settings, you really won't get too much replay out of this.

Going on, there are a few other very fun things in the game to do and try, but I will leave that to you actually doing and trying and with that, I end this review.

A 4/5.

Game on!
omoi
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