SoulCalibur Legends

"A huge blemish on an otherwise great series."

(Note: this review was written on the hard difficulty. It may also contain some spoilers.)

Before I get this started, let me say that in my twenty years of gaming; I have never been anyone with particularly high standards or expectations. I've played many games that have been considered mediocre or bad by reviewers and usually; I can still think of something positive to say. For example, I loved "The Getaway", am a fan of the "Dynasty Warriors" series, thought that "State of Emergency" was enjoyable in short bursts and have played quite a few "awful" licensed games. Don't get me wrong, I love "Devil May Cry", "Ninja Gaiden" and "God of War". But for fairness; I wouldn't even think of comparing something like this, to those far better games. Unfortunately, even as a stand alone game, "Soul Calibur Legends" is quite possibly one of the worst games of 2007.

With my fairly low standards and having been a fan of the "Soul Calibur" series since playing the original "Soul Calibur" (and its two sequels) back on Dreamcast; I thought that this was definitely a game that I could get into. Also, being a fan of the Wii's motion controls, this seemed like a game that while it would never be a masterpiece; would still be enjoyable. How wrong I was.

Story 4/10- The "Soul Calibur" series has never been known for its fantastic storytelling. What was in the fighting games, was just there as a means of giving you a reason to continue fighting and it worked fairly well. It gave you a reason to keep playing (besides the excellent fighting mechanic) but didn't intrude much on the gameplay. "Soul Calibur Legends" attempts to expand on the universe, but fails miserably.

The story follows Sigfried as he attempts to gather the missing shards of the powerful sword "Soul Edge" in hopes of fending off the powerful emperor Barbaros and his invading Ottoman empire. Along the way, he is joined by other characters including familiar faces Sophitia, Astaroth, Mitsurugi, Taki, Ivy, and even Lloyd from "Tales of Symphonia". Along the way they also encounter new characters and a few other unplayable characters from the "Soul Calibur" series.

Now this sounds like it could be a decent story, but don't be fooled. The story basically boils down to the cliched "powerful weapon/artifact which everyone is after" storyline. Its been done a million times and better in other games. Even if the story wasn't so cliched, the terrible dialogue and endless exposition hold it back. Also, get ready to read huge piles of scrolling text before each mission as this is basically its storyline. there are only a handful of cutscenes and what's there is pretty mediocre anyway. Also, the new character Iska has to be on of the most irritating characters I've encountered in a long time. Get ready to read his endless whining about his lost sister, the cruelty of war and his desire for power to protect those he loves. It comes across as heavy handed and long winded and you'll probably be skipping through the text after a while.

Gameplay 2/10- This is where the game suffers the most. To say that this game is repetitive, is an understatement. All games are repetitive to some degree, whether its shooting endless mobs in an fps, to level grinding in an rpg. No one expects games to stay 100% fresh the whole way through. But this game is sickeningly repetitive, it doesn't try to hide this like other games do. It just forces you into doing the same thing over and over until you can't take it anymore.

The biggest problem is the levels. The levels consist of a mansion, an arena, a snowy mountain, a grassland, a cathedral, a Japanese village, a pyramid, a pirate ship, a battlefield and a few more locations which you won't be seeing often. Now this sounds like a decent collection of levels; the problem is you'll have seen them all by the third chapter. Now consider the fact that this game has over six chapters. That's right, this game has no problem sending you back to the same levels at least once per chapter, sometimes you even go back in the same chapter. By the end of the game, you'll have seen the levels at least seven times each. The other problem is that once you've seen the level, you've seen it all.

The game tries to mix it up by changing the layout of the level a bit, but it all comes of as extremely predictable. Most of the levels consist of long halls littered with traps, then a large circular or squared room in where you encounter enemies. When you enter an enemy room, a barrier comes up and then you have to kill everything until the game allows you to proceed. That's it, that's the whole level basically, this repeats this same pattern until the end of the game. The game also adds the occasional "puzzle", which consist of either hitting a switch/lantern to open a door, turning a statue to open a door or cutting a rope to lower a bridge. There is zero thought required for this and to call this a puzzle is insulting, it's more like an obstacle.

Then there are the traps, which are one of the worst things about the game. Each level is filled with annoying traps and it seems that the only challenge (or is that cheapness) comes from these. It doesn't help that you can't really move your camera around, so avoiding some of these is harder than it should be. The worst are the giant boulders, which you can always tell are coming up when you see a sloped hill or path. In theory they are easy to dodge, you just run and stand at an angle so that the boulder misses you. The problem is the atrocious camera doesn't always allow this and half the time you'll end up running into them instead of away from them. This gives some of the later trap filled levels, a real trial an error feel. It's even worse when the game mixes boulders with other traps, as sometimes your character can get caught in an animation loop; in which you stand up and are knocked down again, taking double or triple the damage. it doesn't help that a boulder takes something like 40% of your health away. The traps are in no way fun and should simply have been removed altogether.

Finally, we come to the combat. Like everything else it's repetitive and not very fun. The enemy ai is generally brain dead and they tend to stand around while you beat their allies to death. Once in a while they will attack, but it's easily avoidable. In fact, most of the enemies can easily be beaten by simply repeating the same couples of swipes over and over again. The worst part is, that like the levels, the game loves throwing the same handful of enemies and bosses at you. I'm not kidding; when I say that you'll have fought the same dragon boss from the first chapter, over a dozen times by the end. One level hilariously forces you to fight the dragon boss, go down a hall and fight more enemies and then fight the same dragon boss in the next room; without changing its attack or difficulty. The enemies stay the same too, except that they eventually change in color, do more damage and take more damage. So brown Golems become gray Golems, blue eyed skeletons become red eyed skeletons,etc. It's the oldest trick in the book and shows laziness on the developer's part.

The game also has some light rpg and ranking elements, which allow you to unlock more weapons. But the unlockable weapons don't really seem that much more powerful from their earlier counterparts, even when fully leveled. Especially since most of the enemies go down without much of a fight anyway. Making this feature useless.

Control 4/10- The game's main attraction is the use of the Wii remote and unlike everything else, it works fairly well. A horizontal slash will make you character do the same on screen; as will a vertical slash or thrusting slash. The faster characters such as Sophitia and Ivy seem to emulate your movements better than slower characters such as Astaroth; whom I almost never played as. The problem with the motion control is not that it's bad, but that it come off as feeling gimmicky. I never felt immersed and all they really did was tire me out, making long sessions of play hard to cope with (maybe for the better though). This game could be easily ported to the ps2 and lose nothing in the translation. The motion controls are decent, but unnecessary. The lock on on the other hand is terrible, usually locking on to enemies which pose you no threat at the moment. This mixed with the hard to control camera, make for the only real challenge in combat.

Graphics 3/10- I'm not one to make a big deal out of graphics. But for the Wii, which is at least as powerful as the original xbox; to have a game which looks like an early ps2 game, shows the lack of effort that went behind this game. The environments are bland and lacking in detail, as are the enemy models. The main characters and bosses look a tad better, but not too much. The textures are washed out and there is really nothing that is pleasing to the eye to be seen. The game has almost no cutscenes and instead is replaced by scrolling text accompanied with the character's picture. A looker this is not.

Sound 6/10- Probably the only passable thing about the game. What little voice acting there is, isn't too irritating and the music has a nice symphonic feel, which fits the game's old world setting. But like everything else, the songs tend to repeat.

Multiplayer NA- I don't own a second controller so I can't fairly judge this. But like everything else, I'm sure it's lacking.

Replay Value 0/10- None, in fact I would never play this game again. That's why I'm trading it in.

Closing: I know I'm coming off as harsh, but I think that some people really need to experience this game for themselves, just to see how bad it really is. It almost comes off as a parody of bad game design. I wouldn't be surprised, if this was originally planned as some bargain game. But when the maker's realized how awful it was, they added characters from the Soul Calibur series; knowing it would move more copies. And sadly it will probably work; I know that's why I bough it. Let's not kid ourselves, almost no one would have taken an interest in this, if it didn't have the Soul Calibur name on it . This is an insult to the fans and will forever ruin what was once a flawless series. For a game like this to cost $50 is madness, even at $20 it would still feel like a rip off. Avoid this game at all costs, I wouldn't even recommend renting it.

2/10
(Not an average)

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 12/17/07

Game Release: SoulCalibur Legends (US, 11/20/07)