SoulCalibur III

"6 Controllers down, and only a billion more to go. I wish I had that kind of money"

There are so many 10/10's and 9/10's here, and this is here to break that chain.

I came into the SC universe when SC1 was out on the arcade. I loved it and I easily spent more quarters on that game than I do now on DDR. Sadly, I was too cheap to spend money on a PS1 and get Soul Calibur 1. I smartened up and bought SCII for Gamecube when it came out and, albeit it being a little on the easy side, loved it. When I did my research and found this game was comming out, I was midly ecstatic, and would have pre-ordered a copy, but I forgot. Anyways, enough of my mindless bantering that you don't need to hear because it's boring and worthless and only is here to fill up that 1500 word requirement they have here on Gamefaqs, which is really really dumb, because I don't think I've ever said that much in a day, ever. Do you? Nah, of course you don't. To the game!

Graphics: 10/10

Easily the best part of the game. PS2 whips out some of the best graphics I've seen, easily almost on par with the Gamecube, the graphics king of the triad of systems (my opinion only). I didn't seem to find any problems with the graphics at all, and the C.A.C mode only enhances it. They have a ridiculously large color pallete, 4 costumes per standard character, endless armor and clothing matchups, which seems a tad much, but hey, it's fun. The stages are well done and very realistic. The intro and movies are very good, too. One would almost feel they were real before realizing "What? Oh this is just a game. Adur."

Sound: 10/10

I'm not too much of a fan of game music, but this soundtrack they composed is pretty darn good. It's catchy, usually upbeat, and very well assembled. They got another thing right. Some of it reminds me of that alternative music that you could get on that zelda stage in SSBM for Gamecube, and I liked that stuff. Didn't you? Yea, we all know you did, don't hide it.

Playability: 4/10

And for the fallout, hopefully not radioactive. This game is as hard as hell. Remember Karate Kid for the NES? That was hard, wasn't it? Well, at least it was linear-aly hard, meaning it was hard by level 2 and stayed that way. SC III, no. Tales of Souls mode, which is a nice spinoff of the original mode of fighting a set number of characters to the destined battle livened it up a bit. But it's mercilessly unfair. First, you need to go into practice mode, and do the tutorial for EVERY, and I mean EVERY, character or you'll be analy raped. This isn't the wonderful button masher of SCII that we all know, this game forces you to think about what you're doing and the right stuff to press. You can get away with mindlessly pushing buttons till about stage 5-6 depending on the character, and you're screwed after that if that's all you can do. Another terrible flaw with difficulty is not being able to CHANGE it, in ANY MODE. I find that midly rediculous. All fighting games have difficulty modifications, why doesn't this?

Logic: 4/10

What do I mean by logic? This: When in the history of logic did a 140 zanbato-like sword weigh as much as a pair of nunchukas? When?! This is a huge needed fixup for when/if they ever make another installment, which they should call "Soul Calibur: We're Sorry We Eff'ed up the Last One, Guys". The weapons have terrible collision meshing, meaning I could be 3 vitural feet from Seig.'s sword and STILL get hit. Throws are useless because you can't even get them in due to the insane difficulty, the fact that moves aren't named for a created character is just stupid, and the whole level thing in the Chronicles of the Sword mode was rediculous. My created character was at level 8 and it demolished the first level 60 game character, Astaroth, easily without taking a hit. Yet, when I went up against Cervantes, it was taken out in 5 seconds at level 18. What is that? And why are levels so worthless? At chronicle 6, where you invade Dalkia's castle, i have a level 22, a level 18, a level 17 and a level 20 team, and none of them can beat the level 20 mini-boss. To go with that, why do the enemies have all the good weapons? They always have a weapon that you don't, and it's always 2 weapon+ levels up from yours. That's so stupid. And when can you spin a lance that fast? Play CoTS mode, and some of the CPUs spin their lances as easily as you can spin a stick. Where's the logic here? Where's the sense? And the pricing is rediculous. Although they give you 40 billion times as much gold for doing stuff than in SCII, it's not worth it. And why didn't they port this to the other systems? Why? That's their stupidest move. I was hoping for this game to see a gamecube release and I had to go out and purchase a PS2 just to play it. That's bull. That's a way to make more money, and they, more or less, shot it down. How stupid can you be? That's like when DDR Mario Mix came out and Nintendo didn't say "Let's get a contract from Konami to remix their other mixes for Gamecube!" Stuff like that makes my skin boil, and it should make yours too.

Content: 5/10

Content means how well each plays, the story stuff, and the extras. By each, I mean each character. The rating would have been higher, if Namco hadn'tve screwed around with character builds so much. Some characters they slaughtered, such as Mitsurigi, who was the fastest powerhouse in SCII, and my second fav. character. I can understand the fact that some people didn't like the super powerfulness of some characters, but why just destroy them and give what they had to others. Seigfried and every character who wields a huge weapon is as fast as Sonic the Hedgehog, and that makes no sense. However, some characters are much more fluid. Maxi, for instance, got some rework in the comboing department. Easily the best character for new players and combo-lovers, his fighting system is redone so that you can actually defend yourself from behind and all angles. I hated how it was almost impossible to come back in a fight when he was faced away. Now, if you screw up a combo due to missing the opponent, Maxi, Tira, and Zasalamel, in particular, can recover much faster than normal. This may not be right, but that's just what I saw. The other modes, such as tournament, cots and practice were revamped quite nicely, the CoTS mode being a wonderful reworkment of the incredibly boring Weapon Master Mode, which I still loved. The artwork galleries are very detailed, much more so than SCII, and the Create-a-Character just completely rocks out loud.

Overally, 5/10.

The fact that the game wasn't ported to all the systems, is too damned hard, and the fact that it defies all logic, in the real world, and in it's weirdo make believe world, just makes this game suck. Like...really suck. The fact that is was never made onto arcade first may be why it sucks so hard, but hopefully Namco will get it right next time, if there is one. At least the fact that it's so long and addictive won't completely destroy your SC experience for you (it hasn't for me :P)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/26/06