By Stephen Kleckner
Weapon Master section by Jeff Veasey
Design by Katie Bush

This GameSpot Game Guide to Soul Calibur II was put together with the sole purpose of giving those with novice skills the background knowledge to step up their games and be well-prepared for the intimidating world of advanced, high-end play. Soul Calibur II is a very big game with a mind-boggling amount of technicalities and strategies. It is safe to say that higher end techniques will change radically with time, especially with the game still in its infancy, but the basics covered with this guide should stay true for years to come.

In this game guide you'll find:

• All the terminology you'll need to know to understand how to read move lists and interpret high-end strategy.
• A full run-down of all the basic moves you'll use, including the 8-way run, and guard impacts.
• Strategies for all the base characters in the game, including each platform's special character (Link, Heihachi, and Spawn).
• Complete, printable and downloadable move lists for every base fighter as well as some of the game's unlockable fighters.
• A walk-through and maps of Weapon Master Mode.

GameSpot paid subscribers have the privilege of downloading a searchable and printable version of our game guides. Our guides are in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format, and they're laid out so you can print them out and have them at your fingertips as you're playing.