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In love with this game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game has been so much fun and I just got it. I love the graphics and the movement. They did make the game more sexual like dead or alive but its still worth playing; especially online. There arent many new things from the old games but it doesnt matter. I guess they felt, why fix it if it isnt broken. People want more more more and that is their main complaint. I'm happy with what I have in this game and will be playing it for quite some time.

Soul Calibur IV

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've played the first and second Soul Caliburs plus the horrid Legends for Wii. I missed out on the original Soul Edge and Soul Calibur III. So those are my qualifications for reviewing a Soul Calibur game. I may not know everything about the SC series, but neither am I a complete newbie.

BUTTON MASHING VS. FINESSE: With Soul Calibur II, I never felt any incentive to get better and learn more than my button mashing roots. While I'm sure fighting purists would think finesse fighting is its own reward, there's little reason to bother when button mashing with Link got me past every character on every game mode of SCII. It's a rare balance to find a game where button mashing can work long enough to get you into the game, but then just by virtue of having played, you start to get some finesse and find out just how deep the control system really is. This is what SC IV does. It still rewards button mashing to a degree. I was able to get through the Arcade and Story modes before learning much about the character I was controlling. But I did have a hard time of it. You'll find that things get significantly easier for you if you learn just a little bit of finesse.

CHARACTER CREATION: You can altar any existing character to a degree. Mostly you can just upgrade their weapon, change out a single stat-altering quality and change some of their abilities. So no gold-plated Vader.

Having only used the Mortal Kombat Armageddon Kreate a Fighter tool before, I can only compare to that. It is nice to have fifty slots worth of character creation (including the altered main characters you've made) compared to MK's two slots (one if you have the Wii). Original character creations aren't quite as all encompassing as the MK fighter creation, however. Every one you make must be a human. No tails, horns, wings or faun legs. You also can't do anyone who's really fat or really skinny. Even the faces are chosen from several presets. You can't thin out a nose here, widen the spacing between the eyes there. You have the presets and that's it. Same goes for fighting styles. Where in MK you could have Scorpions spear mixed with Subzero's freeze, Raydan's teleport, Sony'a weapon, any mix of combo's, here you have the style of one fighter and one fighter only. No mix and matching. So basically, you're just making male/female clones of already existing characters. Most annoying of all is that your stats (attack, defense, guard) are dependant on what clothes and weapons you give your character. Thus you often have to choose between a great looking weak character or an odd looking uber character.

GAME MODES: Story Mode is great but short. This is how you would unlock character endings and some things to use in character creation. Tower of Lost Souls is the bulk of where you unlock content. But it's also an exhausting gauntlet that can be frustrating endurance trial that feels like trying to open a big steel door by banging your head into it. This is definitely where that finesse that I was talking about comes in handy. Arcade Mode is just like you'd think. Square off against opponents until you get to the end. But there's no ending as a reward. That comes from story mode. Also all the stats you worked so hard to boost in character creation don't mean anything in Arcade mode, only Story and Tower modes. So you're left to wonder why you would bother. Honestly, I'd stick with story mode.

ONLINE: Stay away from it at all costs. If you do a quick join, you'll more than likely find that all sessions are full. You can create your own, but in the off chance that you do find someone, the combination of your lag time and they're button-mashing spamming of moves can and will often end in your defeat before you can even make a move.

FINAL WORDS: This is a great game. While it may seem like I'm being highly critical of this game I wouldn't be credible if I didn't list a games short comings as well as it's high points. It has its faults. But at the end of the day, the graphics are great. The control is some of the best, most highly responsive controls you could ask for. Button mashing versus finesse is balanced better than most fighting games I could name. If you want a high quality, fun fighting game, this is one of the better ones.

Good one-on-one fighting game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Soul Calibur IV for the PS3 is a fun, quick play in campaign mode. The visuals are good and there are a lot of characters (plus a character creator) to use. Different skills and fighting styles keep the play fresh. There is an update for the PS3 version which is detected and installed from the PlayStation Network when the game disk is first inserted. With the update I found the load time to be very quick, and if you fail a level and then retry, the load time is very quick. There are a lot of options to keep game play interesting, for a fighting game.

Great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 17, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game. Great graphics and control.
I find it a little bit easy even in hard mode but it keeps you interested because it has a lot of unlockable items.

The only bad thing... DarkVader has a fake ligth saber... He gets his but kick all the time.

Great game.

Slightly Disappointing

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The first Soul Calibur game I played was Soul Calibur 2. I didn't get to play Soul Calibur 3, so I'm not a total SC fan, but I enjoy the series more than other fighting games due to it's simple fighting system.

The Good:

The graphics are incredible. The character models look fantastic; Darth Vader never looked this good, and each character is incredibly detailed. Even Starkiller looks better in this game than he does in The Force Unleashed. And, as always the cutscenes look great.

The sound design is as good as you'll find in a fighting game, with nostalgic sounds of metal bashing against metal. The lightsaber effects are great as well. The dialogue and voice acting is cheesy, but that's become a staple in the series and it's pretty entertaining. Some characters have better voices than others.

Fighting is as fluid and simple as always. Casual players will find it accessible enough to button mash and get by, while hardcore players will find some depth with it and get rewarded for mastering it. It's well balanced. New features have been added, such as armor breaking and the critical finish. There's a large chance that you will never use critical finishes due to the requirements you need to pull one off, and most of them aren't worth the trouble.

The Bad:

Single player is absolutely pathetic compared to the previous installments, with only three modes, not counting training mode. The story mode is terrible and short, with re-used cutscenes and only FIVE stages. Tower of Lost Souls is too hard for the casual players, and only appeals to the hardcore players who can handle plenty of punishment, or players who want to collect every item in the game. Arcade mode is fairly lengthy and is the only enjoyable part of the single player. But even that can't save it.

Character customization provides a few hours of fun, but it loses it's excitement after a while. You can choose the gender, alignment (Good, Evil, Neutral), hair style, voice and voice pitch, facial features, armor, weapon skills, etc. And while there's tons of equipment to unlock and equip, and plenty of weapon skills, much of it seems like it's more for style than usefulness.

Finally, the online play is a welcomed addition, but is very laggy. Lag can be anywhere from a nuisance to controller smashing frustration. Cheap shots and hit-and-run techniques are much more useful than trying to pull off more advanced combos, if you are even able to pull them off with the lag.

quite fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

well, its pretty fun if you play it with friends. Anything more than that is just repetitive.
recomend it as a stress relief.

Two steps forward, one step back

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Allow me to start by saying that this game is fun, but it is short lived fun. There are a vast number of characters in the game, including Darth Vader and his Apprentice (whom you have to defeat in Arcade mode using Darth in order to unlock for use). You can create your own character, or modify the characters that came with the game. You can play through all their stories, use them in arcade, try to assemble the right mix to conquer the Tower of Souls, or go online (the much touted new feature). But that's pretty much it. Unfortunately, the stories are very poorly written, often making no sense in English whatsoever. Arcade mode is relatively quick, the Tower is more difficult, with hidden goals to unlock treasures that are sometimes near impossible to achieve. Online is what you make of it, but it's never more than just fighting people that aren't sitting on the couch with you. One would have thought that with the vast capacity of a Blu-ray disc, the makers of Soul Calibur would have been able to include more features, possibly a return of the Chronicles of the Sword feature from SC3. The training mode was also unhelpful, essentially worthless. All in all, I'd reached the peak of pleasure from this game well within the time frame of a rental. Might I suggest renting this game before buying it, you may save yourself a lot of money.

What an Upgrade

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing the Soul Caliber series since it first came out , This game is def. an upgrade from the previous ones with more in depth graphics , fighting and character creation. I would def. reccomend this game to anyone who is a fan of the series and while there is not to many next gen. fighting games around right now this is the one to def. own. Plus amazon got it to me quickly on the release date , so i have nothing bad to say...

Great fighting game- online play still has issues

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is easily the best 3d fighting game out there. Balanced (for the most part) deep and engaging. Character creation mode is almost a game unto itself and the Tower of Souls game is challenging without being too much of a pain.

That said, the online play needs some work. Game matching is buggy and frustrating. If you're getting this to play online either pass or wait for an update to fix the issues.

A tale of souls and swords. . . frequently retold.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Ultimately a disappointing title Soul Calibur IV does not up the ante for the series as it plays itself way to safe for its first new generation outing. The core gameplay found in the Dreamcast title Soul Calibur remains the same which isn't a bad thing per se. Soul Calibur after all perfected weapons based 3d combat to an sharp sheen. Dicing and slicing your foes with all kinds of cool martial arts hardly gets old especially now as you can fight players worldwide through the PSN. Matches remain pretty smooth and lag free and it remains a fairly exciting feature as you work your way up rankings. From the beautiful visuals, tried but true gameplay, and comical guests from the Star Wars franchise, Soul Calibur IV continues to burn the soul. It won't rock your world though as the game needs some serious overhaul in terms of gameplay features.

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