Soulcalibur IV's odd design choices are what ultimately bring down an otherwise solid fighter.
Enter Soulcalibur IV, a game that is clearly suffering from an identity crisis due to the ridiculous and excessive promotion of Star Wars characters. Guest characters are nothing new to Soulcalibur though, with each version of Soulcalibur II featuring a different guest character. While the guest characters in Soulcalibur II didn't really fit in with the universe at all they at least had some sort of relation to the console in which they were exclusive too (with the obvious exception of Spawn of course). The feature was a neat idea that worked at the time, but in Soulcalibur IV the Star Wars characters simply just don't mesh very well.
Out of the box you'll get Darth Vader for the PlayStation 3 and Yoda for the Xbox 360, with Darth Vader's secret apprentice Starkiller from The Force Unleashed being available for both versions. On top of merely feeling incredibly out of place in the Soulcalibur universe, none of the Star Wars characters play very well either. You will most likely immediately notice that Starkiller seems incredibly cheap and overpowered. He is very frustrating to fight because the AI abuses his moves to quite the exceptional degree. Amusingly enough, once you figure out the majority of his attack patterns you will soon realize how easy he is to defeat. Starkiller is especially annoying though for one specific reason: he's permanently fixed as the second to last character that you'll fight in arcade mode, so you'll have to fight him every single time you play it.
Yoda, who is exclusive to the 360 version of the game, is even worse of a character than the apprentice and is actually the worst character in the entire game. Not only is Yoda's move list not very good, he is incredibly annoying to fight against due to his size. Yoda can only be hit with low attacks and cannot be grabbed, at all. He can grab you though, and he can also hop around a bunch as well. Yoda is simply annoying to fight against and most matches against him will wind up with the opposing player spamming the same low attacks over and over again until one of you has been KO'd.
Darth Vader is the only Star Wars character who actually feels like a proper Soulcalibur character, and he's surprisingly good too. Darth Vader is a much slower character than either Starkiller or Yoda, but he makes up for his slower speed with his superior strength. After spending some time with Darth Vader it's disappointing that the other two guest characters ended up being Starkiller and Yoda. Starkiller is not a very interesting character and lacks any sort of fan attachment due to him essentially being a nobody. Yoda has the fans to support him, but he simply just doesn't work very well within the context of the game. It's disappointing that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker didn't make it into the game instead, as they'd both be a much better fit for the fighting engine.
Aside from all of this Star Wars mumbo jumbo, Soulcalibur IV is actually a pretty fun game. Thankfully it also features two new proper characters of its own: Hildegard von Krone, and Algol, the new boss character. Hilde is a fantastic addition to the series, who uses a spear and short sword as her weapons, making her effective in both short and long range combat. She also has unique charge attacks which can be used by holding down the A and B attack commands, and can even be linked into one another for some devastating attacks. Hilde's design is also incredibly noteworthy as she's one of the only female characters who has not been overtly sexualized, being completely encased in full body armour. Hilde is easily the best thing about Soulcalibur IV and is one of the greatest reasons for buying the game; she's an absolutely fantastic addition to the main cast of characters.
Unfortunately Soulcalibur IV's issues don't end with the Star Wars oddities. To further complicate the design choices, Soulcalibur IV completely misses the mark when it comes to its single-player gameplay modes. The story mode is completely useless, as it simply just greets you with a massive wall of completely uninteresting text and then proceeds to put you in a series of five different battles. The battles are essentially team battles, although you won't always have your own team, often only having the one character. The battles in story mode make use of the game's heavily emphasized character creation mode. You will battle against a large variety of created characters who are simply less interesting clones of one of the main characters, as they use the same move sets. The mode is especially disappointing since there is zero plot development during the time it takes you to play through it. The only thing that ever happens aside from fighting against an enemy team is that during the third fight you'll always fight against one of the games numerous "guest" custom characters. After the boss battle you'll get a cutscene and that's pretty much it.
There's also the Tower of Lost Souls mode, which is the only way you can have a proper team versus battle. You can pick a team of characters and either fight your way up or down the tower, unlocking new gear for the character creation mode as you go, so long as you satisfy certain conditions. This mode has some value but it isn't very rewarding since the character creation mode is not very interesting in the first place.
The character creation mode is arguably one of the worst things to ever happen to Soulcalibur. Character creation worked in Soulcalibur III because it at least had the incredibly terrible Chronicles of the Sword mode which allowed you to create your own characters and play through it using them as your team. The character creation mode in Soulcalibur III also had several unique classes with their own move sets which actually made them feel like somewhat unique characters, despite the fact that they never looked anywhere near as cool as the main characters. Soulcalibur IV has no extra move sets, so any custom character you make is simply a less interesting version of a character that already exists. This essentially makes the mode almost completely worthless aside from the fact that you can customize the main characters.
Editing the main characters is perhaps one of the more interesting things about Soulcalibur IV. You can edit the colours of their primary and alternate outfits, but you can also outfit them with a completely new wardrobe. Unfortunately you cannot use any of the clothing from their default costumes. It's still fun to edit the characters though, and the pieces that comprise their alternate outfits can be accessed by any character.
Unfortunately Soulcalibur IV also places a large emphasis on statistics through clothing and weaponry, but this is also completely uninteresting. It ties into the whole character creation mode and they've tried to pass it off as a significant portion of the gameplay experience. It really just isn't very good though, and if you try to make a character based on the stats from clothing items your character will most likely wind up looking completely stupid. There's also some abilities that you can give your characters and these cross over into the story and tower of souls modes too (even the main characters have stats and abilities in these modes) but it really just isn't something that's probably going to be very appealing to most people.
It's hard to improve upon the fighting mechanics of a game like Soulcalibur, but there have been a few new additions. Aside from some minor tweaks to existing characters that will go largely unnoticed to everyone but the hardcore fan, they've also added the new soul gauge system. Each character has their own soul gauge which is indicated by a coloured gem near the character's health bar. The gem gradually changes colour as the character guards and attacks. Successfully attacking an opponent will slowly regenerate your own soul gauge, but likewise being attacked and guarding too much will cause yours to deplete. There's also a new thing called a soul crush, which is a defenseless state that can be afflicted when your soul gauge is deep in the red. During this state you can be instantly KO'd with a critical finish, which are new powerful finishing moves similar to the fatalities from Mortal Kombat but obviously much less gruesome.
It's disappointing then that Soulcalibur IV seems to miss the mark in so many other areas. The graphics in Soulcalibur IV are absolutely gorgeous, it's easily one of the best looking games of this generation. The attention to detail is incredible, and you'll more than likely be awestruck by the splendor of the battle environments. They've even added a new feature that causes clothing and armour to break if a character takes too much damage to one location. As an example, If Hilde takes too much damage from high attacks, her helm will eventually shatter, thus revealing her long maroon-coloured hair.
The soundtrack is really good too, with a lot of booming orchestral songs that really up the ante and make the fights feel truly epic. The sound effects are amazing too, there are few games that can match the sound design of Soulcalibur's weapons and armour clashing against each other, eventually shattering into a thousand pieces. Unfortunately the English voice acting is not very good. Many voices have inexplicably changed from the previous entry, and regardless of the reasons for these changes, they aren't much better. Some are in fact much worse than before. Thankfully there's an option for the Japanese language track, so if you find the English voices as irritating as most people probably will then you'll be glad to know that it's there.
So while Soulcalibur IV is an incredible treat in the audiovisual departments, it suffers from too many weird design choices that ultimately bring down what could have been a much better game. It's disappointing that such a high quality fighting game has been bogged down by lame modes and a lack of focus on the most important aspects of the game. The fighting is as fantastic as its ever been, and playing online with gorgeous HD visuals is something that this series has sorely needed, but the overall package can't help but feel pretty underwhelming in the grand scheme of things. If you're a hardcore Soulcalibur fan you'll undoubtedly have a lot of fun with the core fighting mechanics in the offline and online versus modes but you'll ultimately end up disappointed at what could have been. Here's hoping that Project Soul can figure things out for the inevitable Soulcalibur V and get things right this time.