The game that started everything.
Story: A long time ago, there were stories told of a Sword that can exceed the limits of man it self, this sword was named Soul Edge. Not many knew of the sword's existence, some even believe it doesn't exist. However there are those who knew of its existence, some say the sword grants the wielder great strength, while some believed it to be a sword of relief. There are also rumors saying that the sword was actually a cursed Sword that feeds on human souls.
Many Warriors travel the world to seek the sword for their own ideals.
Transcending History and the world, a tale of Souls and Swords, eternally retold.
Game design: The game is basically a 3D fighting game, but its not any fighting game, it's a fighting using swords and other close range combat, which was quite a new thing. There are various modes to choose from.
Arcade: Where you select a character and go through a series of battles and reach their endings. The endings are animated scenes where you press buttons to trigger different endings (a feature that has gone missing until Soul Calibur III).
VS mode: Where you battle 1 on 1 against a friend.
Edge Master mode: The game introduced an RPG style adventure. In this mode you select a character and go through their stories as they search for the Soul Edge. As you go you will gain experience points and level up, as well as getting new weapons.
Other typical fighting game modes like practice are also available. There is also a museum from where you can view your weapon collection and soundtracks to listen to.
The game will also allow you to change the game's music themes, a feature which was never in any Soul Calibur games to date.
Game play: Soul Blade is a close range weapon based fighting game. Characters that you have grown to love like Taki, Mitsurugi and Sophitia were all introduced in this game. Unlike other fighting games each character has his/her own story to tell about themselves and their reasons for searching for Soul Edge (which distinguished this game from other games).
Each character has his/her own unique weapons. The game play is pretty interesting. Characters can perform horizontal and vertical cuts, kicks, grabs and can block. Characters can move side ways to dodge vertical attacks and can either jump or duck to avoid horizontal attacks. A new feature introduced to fighting games is the guard impact. By timing correctly and pressing the directional buttons and guard you can block and momentarily stun your opponent, leaving good openings for attacks, however while stunned opponents can still perform guard impacts (I've got to say that that time performing guard impacts was so easy compared to now)
Another great feature in the game is sword clashes. If either vertical or horizontal attacks hit each other you will have a mini game of sword clash, by pressing the right button you can repel your opponent and stun them (its like a paper scissors stone game). This was such a great feature, I don't understand why Namco removed it, instead the current games just have plane clash and nothing interesting happens. This was one of the features that made my battles so epic.
Sound: Each character had their own voice casting. Although characters that were particularly from Europe (Like Siegfried and Sophitia) had English dialogues translated over, while foreigners (Like Mitsurugi and Taki) can speak in Japanese. Though I don't really have any complaints, since they clearly wanted to make this more realistic, but still for US and EU gamers, it would have been nice to hear the others speak in English (Just like in the Japanese version all characters spoke in Japanese). I really liked the music in the game, especially the intro movie "The Edge of Soul", it had a really good feel in it. Unfortunately sound effects weren't very various. Almost all weapons sound the same.
Soul Edge was a unique fighting game that gave birth to the Soul Calibur franchise that we all love today. Of course going back and playing it now would be completely pointless but for its time it was an incredible game (It was the most famous fighting game in an arcade I used to go to).
However there are things that turned me off about the game. Characters didn't only have health bars, their weapons also had health bars and it reduces every time the sword is either used or when blocking it takes hits, once the meter is 0 you will lose your weapon and instead will have to use your fists and will have to rely more on maneuvering and throwing, since you can't block attacks anymore and your fists of course don't do as much damage as your weapons. This basically forces you to avoid blocking if it can't be helped. This concept could have been a good optional fighting condition for the current Soul Calibur games but it didn't work well for this game since characters move really slowly and we can't really move side ways freely like we do today. It would have been nice to at least be able to pick up your weapons again or anything to help you back on tracks.
Soul Edge should be praised and should be recognized as one of the best fighting games in history. Just look at how far the franchise has moved, I believe it's an incredible jump.
But hopefully the sword clash mini game returns in Soul Calibur 4, because if it does it would probably receive a perfect score like the original Soul Calibur.