Soul Calibur?

[Vyk]

Surprised I actually have to create this. Well. I got it on release. Go me.. I'm not completely convinced it was worth my 60 bucks. But then I only just played a few hours in arcade with my brother and his girl. I haven't tried out everything. I have mixed feelings on the new character creation but I guess its nice to be able to use the main characters as a base so you get different body types to start out with at any rate

I'm not gonna go into too much detail because quite frankly I don't know much myself. But I assume others have bought this game. There should be a mild discussion in it

[Roto13]

Me a month ago: Alright, I guess we can spend my birthday money on stuff, but you just make sure you have enough money to buy me Soul Calibur IV when it comes out.

Husband: Ok.

Me yesterday: Soul Calibur IV comes out tomorrow.

Husband: We don't have any money.

Me: *DIVORCE PAPERS*

[Magixion]

I picked it up today as well and am enjoying it a lot. The character creation is superb. Nothing like creating a character the way you want to and going and kicking ass with him/her. Regardless of only being able to choose from weapons that the main characters have, you can change up all the abilities and skills which helps a lot. I have lots of fun just making characters in the character creation and thinking up stories for their origins, but maybe that's just the roleplayer inside of me! I got it for the 360, so if anyone wants to hit up some Xbox Live with me, feel free to drop me a line.

[Dreddz]

Should be arriving in the post tomorrow. I don't have much else to say now. Hope it doesn't disappoint like Soul Calibur III did.

[JKTrix]

I just like the fighting. Don't really care about the rest of the stuff. Most of my time has been spent going through the 'story' mode (but skipping all the cutscenes except the end) with everyone, seeing what stuff there is to unlock. I think I have everyone now, with exception to the blank space next to Vader that everyone will have.

Dressing up characters in other characters' clothes is kinda funny though.

I quite like Hilde. Raphael has changed so much since SC2 that I can't use him now without having to try and re-learn his tricks. Setsuka has a couple of new moves that I love.

There are things I'd like to have in the game though:
A 'command training' like the Dead or Alive and Virtua Fighter games, where you can just go through the entire movelist automatically. Having to pause every 3 moves to check out the next move is a pain.
Also in training, it would be nice if they had something to show what buttons are pressed! I prefer VF's one where it shows the stick and the buttons during the demonstrations.

Less important, but games like MGS4 and Halo have spoiled me: Screenshots and saved replays. I know for sure you can't take screenshots, and I'm not sure if you can save replays or not. It would be nice to have those.

Generally though, the fighting itself is still pretty good. It's the extra stuff that could use work.

[Vyk]

Not at all impressed with first player modes... Story mode is more like "5 random challenges then an ending". And wtf is this tower crap. Oh its pretty much the same as story except you're fighting a buncha random creation characters. It took them how long to come up with this crap?

I'll give props to the Character Creation. But where the heck would you want to use them? All the modes are plain and boring I want a -real- story like SC3 had. Chronicles of the Sword was weird but I loved it. Gave you something to DO with characters. And a reason to create dozens of them

Heck the main story mode was better too. Had a good 11 battles to go through. And most of them had a point. Story mode in this game they might as well just make you fight the end guy. And as near as I can tell they don't even explain him. He's just "there" and for no discernable reason has both swords

I would hope there are more modes to unlock. But I highly doubt there is. So basically Namco spent ALL their time on graphics and movesets and whatnot. There's no meat :[ Its just another fighting game now. An awesome one. But definitely not a 60 dollar one

I shoulda waited. Now I wanna play Soul Calibur 3...

[Roto13]

So basically Namco spent ALL their time on graphics and movesets and whatnot.

Like they should. It's a fighting game. Gameplay is everything. There's no argument to be made that the story mode doesn't give you character development or whatever. That couldn't possibly be less important.

[Vyk]

If we're going to put it head to head against DoA and Virtua Fighter and stuff, yeah. Its pretty and refined

My problem is I've played every game since Soul Edge and even that game back on the Playstation had more to offer in story mode. And Soul Calibur 3 was freaking bursting at the seams with content

Just seems like too big a step backward. Fighting games get too boring to me after a while. All that stuff in SC3 kept me playing for months. I'll have done everything in this game in like... a week :/

[Roto13]

They put a bunch of random and boring modes in SC III at the expense of quality. The characters were terribly unbalanced to the point where Sophitia and Cassandra were the only two characters you could possibly need. Not to mention they completely left out Team Vs. (it was mentioned in the instruction booklet but wasn't actually in the game) and Chronicles of the Sword was so messed up you couldn't even save a different game on your memory card without corrupting the data.

[Vyk]

True.. But I mean its stuff they already had going. It wouldn't be too hard to tweak and/or fix the stuff as they move on. No need to completely get rid of it. Like all the bonus characters from SC1 were tweaked into being real characters in 2 instead of just clones of everyone else.

But I suppose building for new systems was probably quite a chore so they had to spend most of their time getting to know the system and building the core

Video reviews I've watched seem to frequently compare the transition to that of 2. Pacing was slowed and not much work was put into modes. Just core gameplay and bonus characters. So maybe I'll get what I want in the next game

I never ran into the Cassandra/Sophitia problem. Maybe I just never faced a talented player with them. I've always made it a habit of playing through Soul games until I can beat it on the hardest difficulty. Random friends don't stand well against that... Thankfully there's an online mode this time so there's at least SOME extra meat. And admittedly that probably took up a lot of budget and production time

My complaints are marginally insignificant though and not very "fighting game" oriented. I was just hoping for things that have no effect (and certainly don't diminish) the core gameplay

But looking back, SC2 was very bare bones. And completely broken. So yeah. Here's hoping that now that they have their next gen engine down, there'll be more to offer down the road..

Edit: How weird... There's an update on XBox Live for it already

[Roto13]

Soul Calibur II was far from broken. III was broken, not II.

[Roogle]

Husband: We don't have any money.

*divorce papers*

Soul Calibur II was far from broken. III was broken, not II.

I think that Soul Calibur II was more balanced than Soul Calibur III, too. I have not played Soul Calibur IV, yet, so I cannot say whether or not I feel that it is balanced, but I know that the fighting game community places a large emphasis on balance of characters.

[TyphoonThaReapa]

I've got it on PS3. I like it a lot. It's way better then Tekken 5R...:rolleyes2

[Ki Ki]

I love it! It's the only fighting game that I can completely wreck my bf in.
Plus Cassandra is hot.

[JKTrix]

That update was out before the game was officially released. I think it was late last week or something.

Namco has the ability to add content via DLC, and they most assuredly will. (Past experience shows that Namco is pretty liberal with its DLC on Xbox Live...) Perhaps they'll even add things more substantial, such as game modes like Team Vs. Sucks that they're pretty much guaranteed to have a price on them though, when they really should have put it in the game.