Soul Calibur Legends was a frustrating mess.
Oh man... Soul Calibur Legends was bad. It was really bad. Maybe not a 3.5 that Gamespot handed it out, but it wasn't much better than that really. What really annoyed me the most about this game was I had expected a short game. I expected no more than 5 or 6 hours, but I ended up getting twice as much time out of that. That's a good thing for most games, but Soul Calibur Legends was torture. Ok, so the first 6 hours of the game was actually really easy, and while I wasn't have fun with it, it still felt like something I could breeze through and forget about. Then the difficulty ramped up. I died atleast 100 times within the last few hours of the game. Most of it wasn't even my fault. I mostly blame the lousy camera or cheating enemies that box you into a corner and spam you with special attacks.
Overall, it's frustrating, boring, and tiring. I can't think of anything in this game that I LOVED. A few boss fights maybe, but that's all I can think of. Basically, this game was slapped together at last minute. You fight through the same 8 or so levels atleast 10 times, you fight the same bosses atleast 3 or 4 times, and you fight the same enemies 1,000,000 times. There are puzzles in the game, but once you figure one out, then you basically know how to do the rest.
The storyline is forgettable, and the graphics are dated. Screw this game.
----------Battle System----------
Soul Calibur Legends is a simple beat'em up, hack n' slasher. There isn't much to talk about in this section because the game is super freaking simple. When you start a stage, you are given your goals, 99 times out of 100, it's to kill everything and not die.
There are about 3 moves in the game it seems, a horizontal slash, a vertical slash or a stab. You can take a guess how to make those Wii-motions. When you kill a monster or take damage, you'll gain a little bit of Magic Power. Once you get enough, you can unleash a special move by holding down the C button and performing any of those previous attacks to create up to 3 special moves. I don't mind this battle system, but in a hack n'slasher like this it does get a little tiring. I think the Wii picks up on the movements pretty well, expect for the horizontal slash. I have trouble time and time again trying to perform this move.
You don't fight alone in this game, well for the most part you don't. You find 6 different partners in the game. During most of the stages, you can take a partner with you. You can switch this character in and out of battle at will, it's a shame they couldn't be an AI character like in Kingdom Hearts or Summoner 2, but whatever. Each character has their own HP and Magic points. So you have to stratigize a bit when to use them or not. Each character can equip up to 4 different weapons, but you have to unlock them through out the game.
I honestly can't tell the difference between the weapons. They do level up though, but I'm not 100% sure how that happens. You find Skill Items on the battle field, this makes your character better, but I honestly don't know how it makes them any better or worse than they were previously. After you beat a stage, all your points tally up and you can gain a new title. There's a ton of titles you can get, but once again, I'm not sure if they affect your characters or not. So yeah, your characters do grow a bit, adding a bit of RPG element to the game, how there is hardly an indication telling you how they grow.
My biggest complaint overall has to do with the camera control. You don't have ANY control over the camera, but rather your character will automatically lock on to the nearest enemy. This is fine, but if you are running straight, and then all of a sudden you lock onto something, your camera will spin and confuse the hell out of you. You can unlock on the character, but it's still frustrating. Another problem I had with the camera is walking up stairs. You can't check and see if a bolder is tumbling towards you most of the time. Boulders only take 3 hits before you are dead, or less if you are low on HP. When you can't see or even hear a boulder coming at you because of the crappy camera, then theres a problem here.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Siegfried, and you find the Soul Edge on board a ship. Siegfried gets a strange power, and he must use his new power to defeat the gods that are terrorizing the world. Or something like that. The story was terrible and made little sense. I like the dialog scenes between the levels, they remind me alot of Fire Emblem.
----------Graphics----------
Ehh... The graphics during the cutscenes are good, not great, but not terrible. The Wii could do better than this, it's a shame the developers got lazy. The problem is there are very very few cutscenes. There are actually two styles of cutscenes. The opening and end sequence uses that stop-motion cell animation, with a little bit of CGI to spice it up. I like those, because it's stylish, but they only show up a few times. The other cutscenes use full 3D character models and clever camera angles. The characters move fluently, and I did these cutscenes too, however there are only a few of them. Another problem with those cutscenes is they repeat them a few times.
Besides that, the level designs are TERRIBLE. They seriously look worse than Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. Not only do they look worse, but they play worse too. The whole game is a corridor to room to corridor based gameplay. Screw that.
The boss fights look really cool though, nothing the PS2 couldn't do, but they're still cool looking. The normal enemies are petty lame though, you'll fight atleast 100 of the same enemies within a stage. They need a bigger variety of enemies.
----------Sound----------
There isn't much voice acting in this, but there is some. This reminds me of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, durin the cutscenes the characters will talk, but during the dialog scenes, they will not. The only other time there's voice work is within the stages, your characters will chat with each other. The problem is you are concentrating with the battle, and between all the sound effects of the monsters and your sword clashing, you won't know what the hell they're saying. The music is repetitive and hardly rememberable.
----------World Map----------
The map is a standard linear menu map. The storyline flows pretty linearly, but you will eventually unlock multiple locations at a time, and you can choose which one to do first. You can't go back and replay a previously played level, however I do have a MAJOR beef with the way they make the levels in this game. There are only about 8 or so levels in the entire game. The problem is you have to go through these levels atleast 5 or 6 times or even more, through this game. The level design might be different, but the goals are usually the same. It's frustrating and lazy.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
11:09:55
After you beat the game, you unlock new modes for your Party mode, everyone gets their fourth weapon, and you start a New Game+.