The return of a classic of the fighting games
Soul Calibur IV is the glorious sequence of the series and happens two months after the events of the previous game and now a new evil form threatens the peace in the world and it's up to you to save the world... or conquer it.
The game itself didn't really seem to change too much, aside of the graphical improvement. You can play with characters from the previous games plus the brand new characters Amy Sorel (Raphael's adoptive daughter) and Hilde, a young girl who fights for the honor of her family. There is also a cool extra for specific console users. XBox360 SC4 owners will be able to play with master Yoda (yes, from Star Wars) while Playstation 3 SC4 owner will have Darth Vader, each character with their own ending (and a participation in the opening scene).
The game play is smooth as always. Each character has their own speed and strenght and unique moveset, in the classic Namco style. Overall, controls response is fast and precise and the action is furious and beautiful to see. The characters' clothes and armors are full of details and the body physics are astonishing as usual (even though some movements are not exactly realistic, such as the wind blowing in their hair and the characters' breathing, which looks more like they're trembling furiously). You may occasionally see some parts of the character "going through" the clothes' fabric but hey, not everything is perfect. And this happens so rarely that when the adrenaline is running through your veins after a difficult battle, you won't even notice it. An extra of this game is the armor feature. After a couple of striking and kicking, you may see your adversary's life gauge blinking in red. Depending on the strength of the next blow, the character's armor will break, leaving your opponent more susceptible to any other kind of attack. But just remember: your opponent may do the same thing to you, so you might want to prevent this by dodging the attacks or something like this.
Other than this, the old "parry attack" is back and set in such a way that it may break the armor more easily. Undefensable blows are present as well. And I won't even mention anything about the ring outs, since they're present in the game since Soul Edge/Blade.
You can also create your own characters like in the previous game, changing their faces, hairstyle, voice, body model and fighting style and actually use them in the Story Mode. They even have their own endings, according to what you choose. If you liked an existing character but not their clothes, you can also change their clothes... and watch the character's ending with the clothes you chose!
The scenarios look astonishing and, like all the Soul Calibur games, have a high level of details. The background always looks full of life. The lens flare seems to be a constant in most of the scenarios. Water and shadow effects are beautiful as always. Some elements of the scenarios are somewhat interactive. In one of the stages you can hit your enemy against an iron wall and it will fall, making the battle ground slightly bigger. In other stages, if you hit the floor too hard, it will break and you'll see the damage you caused during the whole fight (yes, fortunately enough the damage won't "disappear like magic"). If you break your opponent's armor, you'll see the pieces of it spread on the floor.
As for the game modes, you won't see as many options as the previous game. In Story Mode you choose your character and fight through five chapters. In each chapter, you have to beat a certain amount of enemies, not rarely with the same life gauge. You may think that this is tough and unfair, but depending on the character you choose, you will also have a support character. Each character has some abilities, like a boost on speed, on Life amount, probability to get a Knock Out and stuff like that. You can customize this if you want it, but not changing this will not actually make any difference when you are fighting (unless you increase the game's difficulty).
You also have the traditional Practice, Versus and Survival Modes. You must be familiar with them, so I won't give further details for them.
There is also the Tower of Lost Souls, in which you have to fight through several battles against both regular and randomly customized characters to get to the top of the tower.
If you like to challenge other people, you can always go online and choose the Multiplayer mode. I don't really like that, so I didn't try. Unfortunately, I can't say much about the online mode...
For each battle you win, you get a certain amount of Bonus Points, which you can use to buy more weapons and clothes for character customization. Very useful for people who like to spend some time creating their own characters and stuff.
Bad things about the game: the amount of characters is still small. You have all characters from the previous games, plus the newcomers Amy Sorel (who actually showed up in Soul Calibur 3, but now she's a regular character, not a customized one), Hilde von Krone, the big boss Algol, the Star Wars character (either Yoda or Darth Vader) and a couple of customized characters from Namco (Scheherazade, Angol Fear, Ashlotte, Shura and The Apprentice). Most characters can be obtained on the Character Creation mode and they don't cost much, which ends up making the game's lifespan really short.
The game itself is quite accessible, which is great (because I honestly thought that the difficulty level on the previous game was hard to the point of getting frustrating), but VERY linear. I thought that being able to choose your own path to complete your journey was VERY cool, but unfortunately it was removed from this game, as well as the action buttons you had to press during the cutscenes.
In spite of that Soul Calibur IV is a great fighting game. If you're looking for a no-strings-attached short and fun game, this is the right game for you.