Soul Calibur's flashy, fast paced gameplay remains intact and exciting as ever, but does the experience hold up online?
I've been an avid follower of the Soul Calibur series since the days of the Sega Dreamcast. In particular, my friends and I have logged a ridiculous amount of time into SC3's versus mode. Now, while no one can say Soul Calibur is the most technically competitive 3D fighter out there, what it does, it does very well. At first glance, the stylish action and fast pace of the combat draws you in. Once you start playing, you find that it's actually quite accessible, thanks to the relatively simple button inputs for many of the moves and basic combos. Then you end up staying because the game has a surprising amount of depth that you may not have picked up on at first. Between all the fighting games my friends and I dabble in, Soul Calibur tends tends to give us the most tense final rounds, with the K.O. usually culminating in a collective "Oh!" from any audience that may have gathered.
Aside from two arguably minor changes, the core of the game has remained relatively unchanged. The first of which is that armor is now destructible. After taking repeated blows to a certain area (Low/Mid/High), your armor will break, causing you to take more damage when hits connect in that location. The second is the addition of the Soul Gauge which is kind of a rework of the Soul Charge system. As you continue to block attacks, the gauge slowly turns red, until finally your guard breaks and you're placed in a state known as Soul Crush. Provided your opponent is quick enough and doesn't hit you again once you enter the Soul Crush state, by pressing all four buttons they can execute a Critical Finish. This starts up a flashy little animation sequence where your character is beaten senseless and is automatically K.O.ed. Both changes were designed to encourage players to play more aggressively, and they do give you that extra incentive to avoid turtling, however in the end you'll find that they affect normal versus gameplay very little. Armor breaks feel like little more than thinly veiled excuses to see the SC girls in their undies, and Critical Finishes are actually much more difficult to pull off than you might initially think. You'll find that aiming for one is more trouble than it's worth unless you're trying to humiliate a much less skilled opponent. Aside from certain solo game modes, chances are you're probably not going to see them used much.
Of course, any respectable fighter will offer you ways to pass the time when your buddies aren't around. Arcade Mode has you working your way through six random matches, a sub-boss, then finally Algol himself. Story Mode, as you would expect, expands on each character's narrative as you fight your way to the boss. It utilizes the same gameplay style as in Tower of Souls, and also allows you to make use of customized characters; both of which I'll go into in a bit. Each play through begins with an introduction via scrolling text bringing you up to speed with the story and ends with a fairly short cut scene of what happens after the final opponent is defeated. This is followed by what's usually a very short, abrupt epilogue that's usually something along the lines of, "And they disappeared into the pages of history." I'm one of the few weirdos who actually enjoys the underlying story in fighting games. As far as the Soul series goes, overall it's quite nice and feels appropriately epic, but after five installments (including 'Soul Edge'), I feel like nothing major has really happened for many of the characters. Still, Soul Calibur wouldn't be the first fighting game that skimps on that detail, so I won't hold it against Namco.
When you've had your fill of Story Mode, the real bulk of the offline action is had in the 'Tower of Souls', which replaces SC3's awful 'Tales of Souls'. Gone are the monotonous battles against randomly generated, bland, generic characters. Gone is the need to put up with half baked 'Thief' or 'Dancer' styles until you earn the ability to make one derived from the main characters. Instead, you're able to either modify an existing character, or create an entirely new one using the normal cast's styles from the start. Depending on what types of weapons and armor you use, your basic stats for attack, defense and HP can be boosted. Many also give you points that you use towards equipping skills. This can be anything from passive skills that do chip damage against blocking enemies, to Soul Gauge activated skills that boost your stats or make you move faster. It's often a good idea to tailor certain characters to certain goals, such as one who can drain and deal more damage to your opponent's Soul Gauge, making Critical Finishes more viable. If you're looking for a character who can last for awhile, you can go with one that drains HP, and automatically parries a percentage of blocked hits. There's much more depth in SC4's offline content, and I enjoyed this aspect much more than I thought I would. Also, many armor combinations actually look pretty slick this time around, and as far as color customization, pretty much everything is changeable.
The Tower of Souls gives you the option to either ascend or descend. Descending is basically Survival Mode; you choose a team of two and attempt to clear 40 floors, earning treasure in the form of equipment for every fifth floor cleared. It should be noted that you also have the option to buy every piece of potential treasure in the game if you want; earning gold instead if you've already purchased them. When you ascend, you typically tackle two or three floors at a time, sometimes with a team of up to three; sometimes solo. Many of these battles requires certain strategies to accomplish. Some enemies are immune to Ring Out, while some enemies have insanely high defense, but weak Soul Gauges; this is where Critical Finishes come into play. When you're running a team, you can switch characters on the fly, allowing for a bit of Marvel vs Capcom style gameplay. Interestingly enough, the switch happens quickly so you can chain combos between characters together. While this allows you to pull off some insane combos that would be otherwise impossible due to recovery time on attacks, there's no way to practice them. What's even more confusing is why this style of play is unavailable outside Story and Tower of Souls, since it's actually pretty fun. Each floor while ascending also has special bonus conditions that, if met, also award you with equipment. These conditions range from scoring Ring Outs on the entire opposing team, blocking 10 attacks in a row, never missing an attack, and so on.
With all the solo stuff aside, it's time to get to the stuff that actually matters. SC4 is reasonably well balanced, and honestly that's the most you can ask for from any competitive fighting game. The new characters, Amy and Hilde, are generally considered by the competitive community to be quite potent to say the least. Amy, who had a bit part in SC3, returns with a refined and much more fleshed out fencing style that she can call her own. Hilde, sporting a spear and short sword, which give her solid options at practically all ranges, melds with the rest of the cast quite well, both in-game and aesthetically. Finally, Algol fills the roll of the big bad boss character. Unfortunately, while he's flashy, he's also a very gimmicky character with a rather ineffective offense. This should come as no surprise, since boss type characters very rarely find their way into sequels anyway.
Soul Calibur IV also includes three bonus characters from the Star Wars franchise, presumably to plug Star Wars: Force Unleashed. All three are given an extra 'Force Bar' to prevent you from spamming some of their more powerful Force-reliant moves. Starkiller, or 'The Apprentice' might actually fit in with the rest of the cast if he were sporting clothes from the 1600s. He leans more towards being a rush down character and even has a Force move that's akin to Taki's Ninja Cannon. Yoda and Darth Vader also make an appearance. While initially being console exclusives for the 360 and PS3 respectively, they are now available for download as DLC. Between the two, I can really only comment on Yoda, as I've played against Vader only a handful of times online. Play-wise, Yoda is by far the most awkward character to have ever been a part of a Soul Calibur game. Given his short stature, normal throws actually *miss* him. Many standing "A" attacks also whiff on him as well. To make things worse, his standing and crouching animations are slightly tricky to read, as only his lightsaber moves. He even has a quick, spammable guard breaking dive move that sends you flying backwards when unblocked, making it a very effective ring out move. I don't like calling any character cheap unless they're obviously broken, and Yoda does not fall into this category. Yet, once we go online, things change dramatically for many of the characters...
The main draw of Soul Calibur IV is that it's the first in the series to support online play. It has the usual choice of Ranked and casual 'Player Matches'. Then there's the choice of playing 'Normal Versus' or 'Special Versus', the latter enabling all the extra stats/skills that you've given your character. Special Versus is not so popular online, and with good reason; all character balance is pretty much thrown out the window. It might be fun for a couple matches with friends, but no one really bothers to play it online. Player Matches are what you would expect - a lobby with a few open slots and players taking turns fighting and observing each other. It's a more casual style of gaming without the pressures of ranked play. Ranked play, like in most fighting games, queues you up and sets you up with another random player. Winning earns exp which of course you accumulate to level. However, as far as I can tell, levels serve no real purpose, other than the increased chance of matching you with other players close to your level, if you prefer to have it that way.
I've always had trouble finding competition for Soul Calibur outside of my group of friends, and though I live in an area where the arcade scene is still kicking, coming across players willing to play SC has always been uncommon at best. Naturally, the thought of being able to play against different people more consistently made me giddy, but after a solid three weeks or so of really trying to adjust, I just have to come out and say it; Soul Calibur fails as an online fighter. Playing anything online ultimately means latency will factor into things, and while for some games like Street Fighter and BlazBlue, the effects of a bit of lag are negligible, Soul Calibur just doesn't make the transition particularly well. If you can find games that are rated 5 (of 5) bars for you, then chances are you can still have an enjoyable match. Perhaps keeping in mind people with whom you have a consistently good connection with would be something to do for the sake of future games.
The overwhelming majority of games that you'll come across however will most likely be around the 3 or 4 bar range. Even then, the effect of a 4 bar connection will be really pushing it for any serious player. This is about where I'd say over 2/3rds of my online experience fell into. Simple combo strings for most decently fast characters like 'B,B' (vertical strikes) become much more difficult to work around when spammed. If you block successfully, and you know it's coming again, the natural response would be to sidestep, parry, or throw out a faster attack to interrupt your opponent. These all become much more risky, since now you're adding latency on to your block stun recovery time. Now, you simply won't be able to sidestep fast enough. Your parry timing will be extremely chancy at best; and even quick moves like "2A" that you *know* should stuff your opponent's attack, come out much too slow. The end result is, most of the time you end up eating the combo over and over and over.
Eventually I found a way to combat such players by staying away until I scored a knockdown, then aggressively rushing in with my usual mix-up game. This leads to another problem however, since blocking mix-ups on reaction becomes extremely difficult with the added latency. Apparently there's some sort of etiquette I wasn't aware of until I received a dozen player reviews as being 'unsporting', and even more angry messages of being a 'lag abuser'. I've since had to dumb down my game style to avoid any more negativity and ultimately just put up with everything until I got the level 20 achievement; at which point I pretty much set the game aside. I come back to it on rare occasions but still find that things always end up the same. It's very disappointing, and my experiences are unfortunately not uncommon among the SC4 community as many people on 8wayrun.com and many other message boards will attest.
Soul Calibur 4 is without a doubt a solid fighter, and offline matches are still as exciting for my group of friends as they've ever been. I was much more engrossed in the solo aspect than any other in the Soul series, mostly in part to the refined Character Creation system. The graphics are wonderful and the music is appropriately epic as it's always been. The changes to the fighting system are mostly cosmetic, but why fix what's not broken? In closing, if you've always been a fan of the Soul series, SC4 will not disappoint It's also not likely to win over any converts. Finally, while I've no doubt others have varying opinions, I would caution those who are thinking about getting this game looking for a remotely serious competitive environment online. Eventually, you'll find that Soul Calibur really doesn't translate well into the realm of online fighters. Just keep this in mind.