SoulCalibur III

"A Tale of Souls and Swords Eternally Retold…again!!!"

Namco's pivotal fighting series is back with its latest installment. No, it's not Tekken. It's the other game, Soul Calibur 3. This time around the game has been improved over the second installment and is a Playstation 2 exclusive. Now, with more unlockables.

Gameplay: 9/10

An obvious point is the controller. The setup that made the previous chapter of the two swords accessible for most gamers is back. There are three offense buttons with only one defense button, but one is all you need. The attack buttons include two slashes, a horizontal attack and a vertical slice, and a kick button. The kick button can either be a saving grace (by way of characters like Taki) or a hindrance (via fighters like Siegfried). The controller is completely customizable, allowing the player to adjust the buttons to their preferred setup. This can make throwing your opponent, done by using both a slash and the guard button at the same time (why did they do this to us?), much easier. You can even turn on a vibration function, but it only works when you hit your opponent and is very annoying during a fight. It's actually better to go without the distracting vibrations.

The fights take place on a 3D arena. Many have sidewalls, others don't. An easy way to win is to toss your opponent over the arena sidewalls, an instant kill if you can manage it. Often, though, you will end up winning the round by knockout just trying to throw your enemy over the wall. Ringouts, as they're called, aren't always an option, however, as some arenas have sidewalls that completely box in the players, making sure that only one fighter is able to walk out at all.

Each fighter has his or her own weapon(s) and fighting style. Some characters are mainly close-ranged (i.e. Taki and Talim), others are medium-ranged (such as Siegfried and Nightmare), while others are long-ranged (mainly Kilik). There are a few new characters available right from the start. They are Tira, an assassin, Setsuka, a pseudo-Japanese (she's not really Japanese) swordmaster, and Siegfried, the guy inside Nightmare's armor who managed to escape. Other new characters are unavailable in the Tales of Souls mode, but they are not really the best in the world. These fighters have their own weapons, and their own fighting strategies. Each character's move list has a basic root system, but as you learn the moves, they become increasingly more complex to the point where you're doing finger gymnastics to perform some moves.

Speaking of gymnastics, this game destroys the fighting game standard by not being a mere button-masher. Many moves require that you time your button presses in order to successfully perform them. The only thing is that most of those moves are so complex it's impractical to use them in any battle you're in.

Game modes have been improved, somewhat. The new Arcade mode is called the “Tales of Souls.” This is the game's story mode, where you select a main character and play through their individual chapters in the tale of the battle between the evil Soul Edge and the purity of the legendary Soul Calibur. The mode starts off easy enough, with the opening battles easier than taking over your little brother's room. The game has a horrible idea of how this should progress, however. The stories in between each battle are purely text paragraphs shedding a little light as to whom you are fighting next and why. Special battles can take place if your fighter feels like they're being watched. These fights have special conditions attached to them, giving your opponent the huge advantage. There is no consequence if you choose to skip them or if you lose them. Later fights are problems, too. The game has this issue of difficulty. Namely, as you progress through the Tale, the fights become exponentially hard. Continuing becomes second nature, even frustrating when you face the same enemy for the hundredth time.
The cutscenes are now interactive, with the battles right afterwards depending on whether or not you succeeded at the QTE (Quick Timer Event) in the scene. The practicality is rather low, since once you play through the character's Tale you can just about perfectly time the necessary button presses.

Other modes exist too. The versus mode is pretty standard. Two players pick a character and have at it. That's all there is to it. There is an unlockable versus mode, but you really don't need to play it. Normal versus is good enough.

There's a new mode called the “Chronicles of the Sword.” It's here to replace the Sword Master mode that was so incredible in the last game. It's a nice distraction from the meat and potatoes of the game. You create a character to act as the commander of an army so small the most you can have on it is about 25 people, with only up to the mission's limit active at a time. Each level, or chronicle, is a strategy game. You and the computer move your units around the map, taking control of strongholds placed around the map. Completing the level's conditions is the only way to move on, while getting thrashed will force you to restart the level from the beginning. Oh, and just so you know, each chronicle starts with a couple of screens telling a generic story that applies to every character that you play this game as.

Battles in this mode can occur in two fashions. One is a battle on the field, where your unit repeatedly bashes an enemy unit, and vice versa. The other is to select the unit in field combat and hit the “Battle” option, turning the fight into a Soul Calibur style fight. Ending a fight, win or lose, will net you experience points. Experience can let you level up, allowing you to handle higher-level enemies much easier than if you were at a relatively pitiful level. You can battle the Soul Calibur souls scattered in the many levels, but they are all at Level 60 and have effects that can give the souls a huge advantage. Not very fair, if you ask me.

Commands are given by way of a menu that pops up when you manually select a unit. There are four different types of units, with each having a different effect on the enemy units and strongholds. This can actually make a difference as to whether you win or lose the level. Once you beat the entire CotS, you will have the option of saving your game, allowing you to transfer your entire stats into a new game.

While (like I said), this game is a nice distraction, Chronicles of the Sword feels somewhat out of place in a pivotal fighting game such as this. A strategy game is not really welcome in a fighting game, even if the strategy game is as good as this one is.

There is another new mode in this game called the “Soul Arena.” This contains battles with special conditions attached to them. Completing these battles can earn you some cash, but there is really no incentive to play this mode. Some of the battles have to be unlocked in order to fight in them, but unlocking them is rather difficult, so there is no real point in unlocking something that really won't enhance a dull mode.

A final mode added is a Create a Character mode. This is one of the best modes in the game since, for the most part, you can let your imagination run wild with the look of your character. You select whether the fighter will be male or female, their job (this determines which move sets the fighter will have), and their appearance. You start off with a few standard types in each of the fields, and you have to go to the in-game shops in order to buy (unlock) the costumes available. The costumes are actually very nice, with great hairstyles available as well. If you manage to unlock the entire costume list for a gender, which can get very costly, a new set of costumes will become available. You'd better be rich though, as the new set is the most expensive set available. For the males, not much too impressive appears. The women, however, get an incredible set. Once you unlock it all, you can create the world's greatest female android. That's right, it's Xenosaga's own KOS-MOS. She's here and ready to kick [explicative deleted].

This brings up another point. The developers have decided to put in a new shop mode. The game uses a gold system, where battles, completing CotS, and completing Soul stories awards various amounts of money. This money is used in these shops to buy new weapons for your characters, new costumes for the character creation mode, and various items that you can see either in the Gallery, like artwork and movies, or other modes, like more custom character slots or jobs and other battle types in Soul Arena or the versus mode. The only problem with money is that items can get so expensive that buying a couple of them can leave you all but broke.

Gameplay has really improved. My hat's off to Namco for vastly improving a game that really didn't need it. GREAT JOB, NAMCO!

Sound: 9/10

The games have had some really good sound effects in the past, and now they're back. Voiceovers in English are very well done. I especially like Tira's voice. She often switches between playful and sadistic within seconds, and her English voice actor is a true testament to her mood swings. Some of the Japanese voiceovers are incredible as well, but others, like Taki and Tira, could've been better. The Japanese voiceovers are very quick, though, so trying to learn the lines could take a very long time to understand and enunciate. The weapons have a very good effect to them. Weapon clangs are very convincing, as are the strikes from the various weapons. The weapons are very, very pleasant sounding.

Graphics: 8/10

This is where the game could've been better. The opening movie has the best visual detail in the entire game. That's saying a lot when the graphics of the game are exactly the same as the previous installment. It's insulting when the graphics are the only way the game has not been improved. That's not to say that the visuals are bad, they're great, but Namco could've followed in Tecmo's footsteps by way of Dead or Alive 4 and increased the quality of the graphics. There is a graphical problem, though, as some character's pre-final battle cutscenes and every character's ending look like they were built for a Playstation One, with some graphical slowdown occurring way too often. Like I said, this is where the game really lacks.

Story: 9/10

This is the series' only storyline. It tells of how two swords have been battling for eons over the balance of the light and the dark. Each character in the game has their own agenda for the swords, which is where the Tales of Souls mode comes in. Though there is really only one given story, each Tale occurs as though nothing else but their story matters, often in the character either taking up the evil blade or destroying it. Though the story may be faked, you can take an interest in how your Soul's chapter in this story plays out. It's one of the better stories I've seen in all of gaming.

Lifespan: 9/10

The game has so many unlockables that it'll take you several weeks to unlock everything. Some items can be unlocked by fighting in a certain number of battles. The best way to do this is to play through Chronicles of the Sword over and over again. This can accumulate the battles and open the unlockables very quickly. The main problem with the lifespan of this game is that there is absolutely no online play at all. For some reason, Namco made it completely impossible to go online with anything, even your character creation masterpiece. The only way to fight someone else is to go to their own house and beat them with their home-court advantage. This is the only thing that kills the longevity of this game; otherwise it has the best replay value I've ever seen.

Overall: 9/10

Improved gameplay, new modes, new characters, excellent sound, and excellent sound makes this game the fighting game to beat in the Playstation 2's entire library. It's only a shame that the game is a Playstation 2 exclusive. I'm sure that the Xbox only owners are feeling left out of the fun of this game. Of course, we can safely ignore the GameCube people. At least, until the Nintendo Revolution is released. At that point, I'll be hiding from them in my grandpa's WWII bomb shelter in our backyard. Until then, buy this game and love it. It's one of the best games I've ever played.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/06