SoulCalibur II

"I guess no one noticed people's weapons going through their owners during cutscenes!"

This game is a fighting game, created by Namco, said to be the greatest fighting game on Gamecube. I personally agree that it's a really great fighting game, but still doesn't have what it takes to get a 10. Still, I don't see any games for Gamecube beating it.

Story 10/10
Surprised that a fighting game even has a story? Well, it does. And it's so good, you can see the way it effects people during the fights. There are fifteen characters, and each one has their own story written in a long biography you can unlock, but it all has to do with the evil shape-shifting soul-devouring mind-possessing sword called Soul Edge (surprisingly, the angelic shape-shifting Soul Edge-battling good-lookin' sword called Soul Calibur has little to do with the story). All of them come together to make a story so bending and emotional, you'll find it hard to follow, since they sometimes don't call other characters by name, so if Sophitia meets Taki, the bio will say she met an Asian woman. Story is still pleasing, and pulls you right in.

Gameplay 9/10
This is a fighting game, and a 3D one at that. You've got tons of characters with all sorts of weapons and Martial Arts, and all of them are masters of whatever they learned. They're lucky they knew some form of attack when Soul Edge pulled them into the story. You got your samurai, swordsman, guy with a staff, double-swordsman, ninja and people already possessed by Soul Edge. In a fight, each martial arts comes together cleanly, and which person you're using will greatly affect what you can do. These styles won't clash during the fights, so you'll get good clean fights.

It all comes together in a simple button scheme that allows you to easily learn the basics and allows you to still perform beautiful combos when you get better. You can do more than just hit people with your weapon during these fights. You can jump (not twice your height like in SSBM, but realistic heights a real person could jump), guard, knock weapons away and leave people open, grab and throw people in spectacular throws, kick and crouch. Whatever you're doing at the time of pressing a button will affect what comes out. However, you can't do stuff like knock weapons out of people's hands and make them fight with their fists until they can pick it up. Even if their is an attack where a person is seperated by their weapon, you can bet they'll have it back in their hands by the end of the attack.

You also can't affect people with fatal attacks. You'll just attack them, then if they're not at the end of their health bar, they'll get back up and into fighting stance. One person has an attack where he'll knock you to the floor, stab his sword into your chest, then kicks it further down until it goes through your chest and into the floor. A second later, he takes it out and you both rise back into fighting stance, completely unharmed looking. The whole fight, you hurl sharp objects at eah other, albeit until one of you is too inured to fight, but until you're knocked out, you get no blood, no gore, no injuries, no nothin'. I guess it helps to keep the rating down, but it takes from the realism.

You fight in a variety of stages. However, they're all clearings, with nothing in them at all. No stage interaction here, but it does effect what sides you can get rung out on.

There's also a nice story mode that has something to do with Soul Edge, but nothing to do with the story of the game. In it, you go to an area, read a chapter of a book about what went on there, then fight someone under frustrating and unfair conditions, favoring the other guy. This is the mode where you unlock everything, even alternate weapons you can choose from before fights.

There's a mode where you look the history of each weapon a character weilds. There's mode where you watch the characters dance with their weapons. There are modes where you do a series of regular fights, but in a different way, such as a mode where you fight gradually tougher enemies until you lose, a mode where you fight people like you were on an arcade machine (which ends in a cutscene where you fight your destined opponent), and there's a mode where you do all of this, but you get to choose from different weapons before you start. Oh, and you can play multiplayer, too. Go figure.

You get a nice museum as well, where you can watch and look at things, such as CPU battles and illustrations. This is where you can look at people dance, and look at people's weapons. You'll read the history of the weapons, and even read what about the weapon makes their stats the way they are. That's pretty cool.

Graphics 8/10
Sure, you can say they're realistic, smooth, and shiny. They make the people almost look real, with graphics that move nicely and aren't chunky. When a person does a move, you won't see much graphical glitch, but it is there. You do see a nice trail that the weapons make when you swing them, so if you swung your sword, you'd see a nice light like the ones lightsabers make in Star Wars, only longer. It makes for really flashy battles.

But there are graphical glitches. I suppose no one noticed when someone stabs the wooden, nicely carpeted ground, it doesn't even tear? How about weapons going through their owners during cutscenes? People's clothes, weapons and bodies are all separate, and such move separatly. Weapons will slide through people's hands like they were buttered in the conjunction of moves, and in one girls third outfit (each person has two or three), she wears a dress that her legs go through all the time. One guy has a staff, and a version that's extra long. In his poke attack, the excess staff that didn't go in front of his hands when he stabbed went straight through his chest. However, you might not even notice these faults and be impressed with the graphics (I was, despite these things I noticed), so don't hold yourself on this paragraph.

Music 7/10
You can hardly notice the background music in stages during the fights. It's soft and repetitive, and you can't here it. You will notice if you turned off the music volume in options, but it doesn't fit fight situations, but more fits the stage it's on.

Points for having that opening! It was so cool! It had graphical sweetness not achieved in the game, and the music, twisting, emotional and flat out nice to listen to. Best opening EVAR!

Sound 9/10
They're nice. If you hit a person with a sword, it won't necessarily make the sound it would in real life, but what you do here has pain noises and grunting. I especially like the echo-ey screams you get when you KO your opponent. There's a special move where you knock your opponent's weapon away and leave them open just at the point of attack. It always makes a "Shing" sound, even if the weapons in question are wood. But the characters have nicely done voices with accents and emotion. Those are good.

Overall 9/10
What a great game. It's not quite as good as most people say, but I had plenty of fun with this game, and you probably will too.

Buy or rent?
Buy it for a full experience. Rent it for a few fights with your friend. Play your friends copy. It doesn't matter, you can enjoy this game either way.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/27/05