Soul Calibur III
Oct 25, 2005
When it comes to fighting games, Namco's Soul Calibur series has always been at the top of the heap. A solid mix of weapons-based fighting, varied characters, and complex moves have kept the series popular with the hardcore crowd, while an intuitive control scheme ensures that even a novice can pick up a controller and start playing. With Soul Calibur III, the game maintains its finely honed fighting engine, while branching out with some new modes of play. Although the new modes aren't as polished as the core game, they make a great addition to an already excellent experience.
The biggest draw in any Soul Calibur game is the multiplayer component, and Soul Calibur III is no slouch in that regard. Offering up a full suite of characters, rock solid control, and more combinations than you can shake a stick at, this is one game that is sure to suck away hours of your life.
Some minor tweaks have been made to the fighting engine, most notably to the Guard Impact system. Soul Calibur III does away with the more lenient system introduced in the last game and instead pulls inspiration from the original. You have to predict where your opponent is going to strike: high, med, or low. Guess wrong, and you've just left yourself open to attack. Guard Impact windows have been greatly reduced, so properly executing a reversal has more to do with skill, as opposed to luck, this time around.
It is this intricate balance, the give and take, that drives the popularity of the series. Sure, you could sit down with Soul Calibur III, mash a few buttons, and have fun... but once you learn the system, master the blocks, counters, and reversals, an incredible amount of depth opens up. It's about learning your opponent's play style, discovering the single chink in their armor and going in for the kill. It has the depth of chess, with the speed of a hyperactive eight-year-old.
Every character in the game has been slightly tweaked, with the primary characters becoming even more balanced and the secondary set gaining full moves sets. In Soul Calibur II, the "backup" characters felt more like clones of the popular fighters as opposed to fully realized combatants. Not so here. Returning players will notice a slight learning curve, but it's minimal.
One of the newest, and likely most controversial, aspects of the game is the custom character mode. It allows players to create a fighter from the ground up, although you do have to use a set of templates to form the basis of your fighting style. Once created, it's possible to play with your character in the main game and evolve it as time goes on. You can also tweak with the look, literally spending hours finding just the right face or piece of clothing.
While there is a certain joy in growing your own fighter, don't expect to use it outside of informal matches. Due to the difficulty in balancing combat, chances are good that any custom characters will be banned from tournament level competition.
It's even possible to generate a character on-the-spot before you enter a match. Since you cannot anticipate your character's fighting style, you will have to adapt to the new character on-the-fly. This makes for an entertaining way to add new challenges to the game.
Unfortunately, the game falters a bit with the AI, as it follows no discernable pattern in terms of difficultly. One opponent may be a moderate challenge, the next insanely difficult, and the next a pushover. It's as if the AI's skill level is randomly determined before each fight. When you're trying to learn the game, there's nothing more annoying than an uneven difficulty level.
In something of a departure for the series, Soul Calibur III introduces a brand new strategic aspect. Merging real-time strategy with fighting, the "Chronicles of the Sword" mode tasks you with leading your army to victory in a grand battle. The first part of each mission has you navigating on the field, while the second part drops you into a traditional Soul Calibur match whenever you attempt to capture a base or take on another unit. The catch, as it were, is that your health does not reset after each fight. Leave a battle with an injured character and you may have to move another combatant to the front lines to take care of the next stronghold.
While the concept's intriguing, it lacks polish. For one, there's no real point to the real time maneuvering. After all, the core combat all occurs in the fighting engine. Another issue is the constant loading. Every time you enter a new match, you're waiting for the game to load. After a few rounds on the battlefield, chances are good you'll be itching to return to the core game -- thankfully, it's only a button press away.
Ultimately, the biggest disappointments are the game's platform exclusivity and lack of an online mode. After seeing how well Soul Calibur II both looked and played on all three platforms, it's a shame that Namco chose to limit the release of Soul Calibur III to the PlayStation 2, especially given that it was visually the weakest of the three last time around. As for the online mode, it's something long overdue for a series so vested in multiplayer. After all, sometimes you just don't have a friend to scrimmage with and the AI simply can't cut it.
Despite a few surface flaws, Soul Calibur III is still a shining example of a game done right. With such a finely developed fighting engine, we're more than willing to overlook gripes in the secondary modes. When all's said and done, it's the combat that matters -- and in that regard, Soul Calibur III most certainly delivers.