Soul Calibur 3 [PS2]

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.