One of the greatest fighting games ever made but a step backwards in some points.
Story: As the hunt for the shards continue, Soul Edge regains consciousness. The Azure Knight who was presumably vanquished returned and once again traveled the lands and continued to leave a path of bloodstain, even collecting missing fragments of the sword on the way.
Now that Soul Edge was on the verge of full recovery the azure Knight traveled to the cursed lands of Ostrheinsburg Castle in order to complete the final phase, but was however challenged by a mortal who seeked the sword's power.
The battle was grim but the mortal was powerless against the azure knight. The knight assumed victorious and as hope was fading away for the mortal a deep consciousness of sanity that was long lost in the depth of the azure knight's mind began to resonate. Deep inside the mind of the azure knight, a conflict took place. While the knight was standing motionless the mortal drew out the last bit of his strength to pierce the center of Soul Edge. The azure Knight let out a cry of insanity and at that brief moment the lost soul reclaimed his body. After a few moments a shining light appeared in the shape of a sword and was slowly approaching the freed soul, it was the spirit sword Soul Calibur that was thought to have vanished. Due to the weakening of the cursed sword as well as the strength of the freed soul's will, the spirit sword broke free from its prison inside Soul Edge. Out of pure instincts the soul grasped the shining sword and pierced the eye of Soul Edge, fully freeing him from the cursed sword's control. However both swords have entered a state of hibernation and their spirits have fully silenced.
Feeling responsible for all the slaughter, as well as his past sins the freed knight assumed responsibility for both swords and began a journey in hopes of sealing Soul Edge for all eternity. However the will of Soul Edge still remained in that land and has embodied itself in the azure knight's remains, but since it no longer had a host, it no longer had the ability to move and was thus slowly losing its strength.
However unknown to the world, a man who seeks death required the aid of both the cursed sword and the spirit sword. After reaching the cursed land and witnessed Soul Edge's crippled state the man agreed to aid the cursed spirit. Enchanting words of an ancient tribe's magic the man succeeded in reviving the azure knight. Now the knight seeks powerful souls in order to restore his energy as well as increase his strength, the knight also needs to recapture the host since it needs a body that can be sustained permanently and in the process destroy the spirit. Many warriors have heard of the knight's return and their ambition to seek the cursed sword have also returned with it, thus the struggle of the 2 swords continues.
Transcending History and The world, a Tale of Souls and Swords, Eternally Retold.
Game design: Gamecube and Xbox owners will be disappointed to hear that this game is PS2 exclusive. Although making the game exclusive reduced the number of people getting this game, it gave namco time to add an insane amount of content in the game. Soul Calibur 3 will probably have whatever players want in a fighting game.
The graphics doesn't look way too far apart from Soul Calibur 2 but its still looks very impressive. There are new environments with great graphical interactions and effects and every character from the last game will appear in new outfits, although you would notice that most look almost identical to the first Soul Calibur.
Game play: 3 new characters were added, Setsuka, Tira and Zasalamel. Every character has their own moves and techniques and the great thing is this time there are no clones (e.g. Nightmare and Siegfried are completely different).
No difference was made to the fighting system. The only difference is the slightly upgraded guard impact, but the problem is you will now require extra precision in order to successfully guard impact, where in the end you will have to be an absolute pro to even think of using guard impact.
There are many modes added to the game. One of the newest ones is Tale of Souls.
In Tales of Souls you will be going through each character's story, you will be going to places with different events and will have the option of choosing a path, each path will lead to different events and different cut scenes. That means if you want to see everything this game has, you will have to go through this mode a lot of times with each character.
A revolutionary feature in the game would be character creation. That's right! For the first time ever you can create your own character in Soul Calibur, you will have a choice of different gender, classes and in each you will find specific out fits and gears as well as weapons. You can customize faces, skin and cloth colors as well as voices.
New features for character creation can be unlocked by going through other modes or can be bought at the shops for gold collected from other modes.
In addition to character creation items you can buy other features such as movies and official artworks.
Another feature would be Chronicles of the swords. This mode takes you to a completely different and new story background. You will basically have to create your own character and will be placed in a real time strategy game, although there isn't really any strategy involved. Your goal would be to basically conquer enemy strongholds. You can create more characters and choose a team. Once your character is set, it will be placed as a miniature figure that will move around a map and each time you face an enemy you can either leave it or choose to face them head on in a Soul Calibur style fight. Although the story in chronicles of the sword can be interesting its not really such a great feature. It's not perfect but it's nice to have more content in the game.
Also characters created in Chronicle of the Sword cannot be used in different modes.
Another mode is Soul Arena, its basically a mode full of conditioned battles such as coin collecting or soul smashing, and if you are not into Tales of Souls and prefer the classic arcade style play you can go to quick play instead.
There is also a tournament mode but it doesn't really work well for a single player, it would have been better off as an online feature, otherwise if you want more challenges you are welcome to go through it. The practice mode has also been fully customized so that beginners may get a grip on the game as well as advanced training for Soul Calibur pros.
Sound: Some music are remakes from the original Soul Calibur while there are some new soundtracks added to the game. The game is filled with countless voice casts. Each character will have over 30 voices, not to mention the narrator.
I honestly cannot think of any other fighting game with so much content. It will take you a very long time to unlock everything in the game (or maybe be impossible to unlock EVERYTHING)
Although the game does have a lot of content they don't really add much depth. For example although character creation is a great addition it isn't perfect, you would wish to adjust your character size and mass and maybe use the PS2 microphone to record your own voice to your character (Then again adding all these extra stuff could have delayed the game by a year).
Tales of souls also isn't really that varied. You will most of the time be reading the same text for each character and cut scenes (apart from endings) are also run the same for each character. Chronicles of the sword isn't really such a special mode since it just eats up your time with all those loading screens and plus some occasional bug corrupts your PS2 memory card because of that mode, but then again to unlock new character classes you will have to play through chronicles of the sword (Which takes a really long time).
But with enough said, all there is for you to know is that Soul Calibur 3 is definitely a fighting game you will love and don't want to miss out, so if you have a PS2 then chances are you will get this game by all means.