Soul Calibur III

Oct 27, 2005

It's official: it is very much possible to sit next to someone while playing Soul Calibur III and not exchange a word for the better part of two hours. You might mutter curses at each other every second match, in response to a cheap loss, but basically, most communications will happen by means of steel (that's been tempered by hours of hate and resentment). Or wood, as it were.

If you're a Soul Calibur fan, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe it was through demon-worship or alchemy, but the Soul Calibur team has managed to imbue its games levels with depth and accessibility that no other fighters have been able to match. The bottom line: if you dedicate yourself to sublime mastery of a specific character, you'll reap great rewards. Namely, you'll be able to own the faces of your opposition. But if you have a rookie friend over, watch out! The fight system is such that button mashers can disturbingly often get an upper hand on a seasoned vet. In Soul Calibur III, just like in real life, chaos will often prevail.

When it comes down to it, though, Soul Calibur III is a fighting game sequel. What this means is that its improvements to the core gameplay are largely incremental. Some of your favorite characters are likely to have changed a bit, but with a little readjustment, you'll get back in the groove. The underlying mechanics have undergone some tweaks as well, most notably, the game's patented "Guard Impact" system. You now have more options when it comes to countering an enemy's attacks, and if your timing is super on point, then your own counterattacks will pack a noticeably increased punch. Make no mistake, the Guard Impact system has gotten a tad more "hardcore." The timing is less forgiving, and requires you to more effectively predict what sort of attack (i.e., high/mid, or low) is coming at you. SC vets will definitely appreciate this, but as for their aforementioned button-mashing friends? Well, they probably weren't bothering to Guard Impact anyway.

The game's single-player component fares somewhat more poorly, unfortunately. The crown jewel of the single-player game is the "Chronicles of the Sword" mode. In essence, it's a watered-down RTS-style game mode starring your custom-created character, and your goal usually involves traversing an overhead map (at a plodding pace) and beating on enemy strongholds. Whenever you encounter an enemy unit on the field, you can choose to either allow the battle to resolve itself on the map, or duke it out in real-time.

My problems with this mode are that the load times are oppressively long, and the custom-characters aren't anywhere near as interesting as the game's original cast. Really though, I was happy with the previous two games' mission modes, which Chronicles was seemingly designed to supplant. It takes a good deal of time to go through the 20-odd missions in this mode, and the rewards don't seem as immediate. But then again, all I want out of a fighting game's single-player mode is a method by which to unlock cool stuff at a reasonable pace and hearty practice mode to hone my skills.

The rest of the single-player modes are decent enough. "Tales of Souls" comprises the game's story mode. Each character's story unfolds via moderate amounts of text and some recycled cutscenes, but like it or not, you'll have to play it to unlock the main cast of characters that aren't available from the get-go. It bears mention that the enemy A.I. in Soul Calibur III can get pretty brutal, so prepare yourself for some frustration (not to mention possible peripheral damage) when you're trying to go beat Tales with a character you're not familiar with.

The "Soul Arena" mode, meanwhile, offers more quick-and-dirty matches, most of which are fun, and all of which are gimmicky as heck, alluding to some of the zanier missions in past SC games. Finally, there's "World Championship" mode, which aims to re-create, in your own home, a sanctioned Soul Calibur tourney. If you make your way through the brackets and win the trophy, you can earn yourself a small fortune in in-game gold, with which to buy whatever unlockables your heart desires. But be sure to use a character you're familiar with -- you can't change it once the tourney starts, and the enemy A.I. gets pretty brutal in the later brackets.

Not that it'll necessarily be easy to choose, given how insane the character count is in Soul Calibur III. In total, there are more than 40 character hidden in there, though to be fair, a whole bunch of those are pretty throwaway (they're either B-grade palette-and-moveset swaps of "real" characters, or else some designer's create-a-character experiment that made it into the final game). There are three new "real" characters in the game, though, and for the most part, they seem to be pretty much on-par with the established cast.

Zasalamel seems to be one of the best characters in the game. He's a large-sized character who wields a bulky weapon -- a wicket scythe -- but he's devastatingly mobile despite, and armed with some brutal juggles and air-attack throws. Fans of Mitsurugi, who craved a bit more mobility with his reserved style, will definitely take a liking to Setsuka. Armed with blade hidden in a parasol, and decked out like she'd belong at an Edo-era tea house, Setsuka is very good at closing distance with lightning-fast quickness. Finally, there's Tira, the one you're probably most familiar with if you've been following SCIII throughout it's development. Personally, I can't get a handle on her. She's the one with the crazed countenance, the outfit that's tattered in all the right places, and jagged hula-hoop weapon. She seems to be good on ringing opponents out, but other than that, the jury's still out … as far as I'm concerned.

As mentioned before, the create-a-character mode lets you increase the character count indefinitely (so long as your character slots hold out), but honestly, I can't see anyone using these fighters in any serious way. They're not too compelling to play as when you first create them, and once you start expanding their movesets, you can get them to mimic the moves of the "real" characters. I guess the fact that you can mess with their appearances makes them somewhat more attractive, especially when you arm them with your favorite character's weapon. And in that regard, the options are pretty staggering. If you want to make a ridiculous-looking character, well, you won't have to try too hard, but if you approach things earnestly, the results can actually look pretty cool. It's just a shame that the higher-tier character classes can only be unlocked by playing through Chronicles of the Sword.

If you're anything like me, then all this single-player stuff is fluff anyway. The Soul Calibur fighting system is back, and it's the best it's ever been. The new characters are interesting and they seem like solid contenders. If have ready access to real-live humans to compete against -- hopefully, ones that will approach this game with as much fervor as you -- then you can do no wrong by going down this path. A word of warning, however: you will come to hate your best opponents while playing Soul Calibur III. Be prepared to resent the characters they use, their "cheap" strategies, and ultimately, the sound of their voice. But it will all be worth it, in the end.