SoulCalibur III

"An utterly confusing mix of beauty and frustration"

Honestly, I didn't pick up the Soul Calibur series until the second one. There's a story? Meh. The Dreamcast version is amazing? Who cares? I remember Heihachi, Link, and Spawn, Weapon Master mode and Berserker. Siegfried rang no bells for me. Neither did Rock.

Regardless, I enjoyed the game a great deal, enough to jump at the opportunity to grab this third installment as soon as it popped onto store shelves. After thoroughly playing it, I want to call this game the fighter's nirvana. But some really bizarre decisions by Namco only make me want more.

First off, let me say that Namco probably could have just called this game "More Soul Calibur". Honestly, I can't imagine it would have hurt sales much, but all the same, it's the truth: most of the changes in this game are either cosmetic or not all they're cracked up to be.

Most of Soul Calibur 2's characters return, and several characters who didn't make the cut in 2 return as well, which include not only the aforementioned Siegfried and Rock - unintentionally witty word play, I assure you - but Mitsurugi's foreign replacement Arthur as well. Sure, there are 3 brand spankin' new story characters - the skanky nymph Tira, the scythe wielding Zasalamel, and the umbrella swordswoman Setsuka - but for the most part you won't really be surprised by the character selection or their move set either.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, Soul Calibur 3 boasts a huge selection of playable fighters, and that's not counting ones you create (more on that later). Although it may be perhaps a hair faster than Soul Calibur 2, the fighting is exactly how you remember it. This, however, is both a good and a bad thing. Yes, there is a great deal of complexity to the characters and their move sets, especially when you throw weapons with different stats into the mix. But yes, it's also very easy - and very rewarding - to completely throw that strategy to the wind and just knock opponents out of the ring. Dead or Alive has walls. Mortal Kombat: Deception has walls or sometimes "deathtraps" which, though functionally identical to ring outs, are much harder to utilize. Tekken was pretty much always a fan of infinitely scrolling backgrounds. There's a reason why these major fighting franchises eschew ring outs: ring outs don't promote strategy; they promote a lack of it. While Soul Calibur 3 occasionally introduces rails - which you can still knock people over, it's worth noting - or a fighting venue that's simply a cage, most of the arenas are still cramped isometric shapes with oblivion on all sides of you. It might not even have been such a big problem if the arenas were big, but they aren't. Heaven forbid you're in a special battle where either the wind is pushing you or the battleground is essentially a field of ice. You might as well just jump off the ring yourself and save yourself the impending frustration. Especially against the computer, cheap tactics and ring outs are still far more rewarding than strategic fighting and skill. This problem plagued Soul Calibur 2, and it also plagues this installment. At its best, battles are pitched, intense, and strategy-laden to the point where you can write a book about each individual round. At its worst, however, it's a migraine inducing lame-a-thon that might result in a busted controller, or, worse, a busted friend.

Uneven difficulty also continues to plague this series, especially in its signature modes. Sure, one fight might be easy enough that you could do it with your eyes and arms chopped off, but the next round - or even in the middle of the same round - the computer is all over you. The AI seems to emphasize artificial over intelligence. I guess, though, this can be remedied somewhat due to the fact that the computer still falls to cheap nickel-and-dime tactics. Sure, you can't get away with this against a player, but cheap tactics make slogging through one-player modes a much less frustrating ordeal.

Weapon Master mode is gone, replaced with a mode called Chronicles of the Sword. It's advertised as a real-time strategy mode, but the emphasis here is on real time, since I didn't really see any strategy. You have units, you have an overworld, and you have strongholds that heal your units. That's it. If it helps you, think of Starcraft for the blind at one-quarter speed and you sort of get the strategy level in this mode. When units fight each other in strongholds, or if you interfere in the field, you fight a one-round, straight-up, one-on-one Soul Calibur duel. So much for the strategy. This mode suffers the most from uneven difficulty. One mission may be exceedingly easy while the next one results in you being owned and violated in every way possible. There is no nice gradual increase in difficulty, especially as you press on. Be prepared to play this mode, though, since it's the easiest way to earn the vast amount of gold you need to unlock the even more vast amount of unlockables this game has to offer. I'm not saying this mode is absolutely horrible, but I buy Soul Calibur to play Soul Calibur, not slog through irrelevant mini-modes and genres. Interestingly enough, you have to create the main character for this mode, which is a decently cool way to introduce players to the fairly robust create-a-fighter system. But guess what? You can't use this created character in any other modes, and you can't use ANY of your other create-a-characters in THIS mode. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Rounding out the negatives of this game is the "World Competition" mode. Basically, it's a way of having you run through tournament after tournament of pounding through computer opponents and calling it a world contest. You know what I think of when I think of "World Competition"? I think of COMPETING against other PEOPLE from around the WORLD. Filtering through my heavy dose of both sarcasm and obviousness brings me to my next point: there is no online play. Not only that, there are no 4 player tag matches, or even a 1 player versus mode. Didn't Dead or Alive or Mortal Kombat: Deception teach Namco anything? We want to play against other people! We want to play against lots of other people! We want to play other people without the hassle of making friends! Obviously, Namco missed the memo, as this would have greatly increased the replay value of the game for even the solo player.

I've deliberately made this review negative early on so I could focus more on the many things that the game does do right, since after all, I'm giving the game an 8 out of 10. First off I have to touch on the create-a-fighter system. Although you have to buy most of the cosmetic designs you can put on your characters, the sheer variety is immense. Even better, the color of every item you throw on your character can be changed. There is enough variety that people have made really neat recreations of popular characters like Cloud, Sephiroth, Crono, Yuber, and even people like Jesus, Maddox, and Abobo. My point is that your imagination is pretty much the limit for what you can create. And best of all, you can create ninjas. That's right, just creating ninjas is worth price of admission. In addition to the cosmetic depth of these fighters, many cool new weapon designs were introduced, including dual Wave Blades, dual Kunai - think stealthy daggers - Sickles - Ivy's sword without the short range option - and Cloud-sized great swords, among many others. You can even steal the moves of the main characters and make them yours. This makes the connection between your character and the established characters much more real...

...To a point, anyway, and that point is the fact that the established characters' models rock face all over anything you can create. That's not to say your created characters will look ugly, but compared to the other characters they'll look generic, which keeps the connection from completely forming. Yes, the character models look great. As do the arenas. As does, well, damn near everything in the game. There are tons of visual details, the weapons look cool, and there are even cool blurring effects when the action heats up. If I have one gripe about the graphics though - besides the generic look of your created fighters - it's that all the female characters have been reworked in the name of jiggliness. I understand that Soul Calibur is mostly played by my demographic - males between oh, say, 16 and 24 - but the bouncy effects are ridiculous. It's clearly done just on account of the fact that sex sells, but it's overly exaggerated - have these developers ever actually seen how they jiggle? - and not even that amusing after you see it two or three times. Hop past that, though, and you'll like what you see, and you'll like it a lot.

The voice acting is pretty good, too...if you listen to it in Japanese. I don't have that much of a problem with the American voice actors but the Japanese put them to shame. It's nice to know that the dual language option is there, though, so if you hate one you can listen to the other. The music, on the rare moments you stop to listen to it, is adequate, but the sound effects really shine. Weapons clang against each other, grunts and screams are exchanged at key moments, and the announcer knows that his role is to say as little as possible while still telling you what round it is and if you won or lost.

Again, I can't stress enough that I'm not saying the gameplay sucks. At its best, Soul Calibur 3 smokes its competition in terms of the sheer strategy, variety, and dare I say fun of its battles. At its worst, though, it makes you wonder what the developers were thinking when they made so many ridiculously poor decisions.

Bottom Line: You need to find a friend. You need to find a good friend. Single player mode will only satisfy you until you unearth the vast amount of unlockables this game has to offer. Most of the single player modes will otherwise make you cry. If you find that friend, however, you can play this game forever...or at least until if/when Soul Calibur 4 comes out. With that friend, you will never regret your purchase and the dump truck's worth of created and non-created characters will accommodate any and all strategies. Without that friend, though, the game is a rental. A good rental, but a rental all the same. Go out and make some friends!

Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Innovation: 6
Gameplay: 8
Replay Value: 5 without friends, 10 with friends
Overall: 86, rounded down to an 8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/05