Fox's Review: Soul Calibur IV

[Fusion]

We return to the stage of history for the fifth time (That is, counting Legends) to a set of emotions that drive every character and their desires.  All of the most fan-favorited Soul Calibur characters return once more, along with 5 extra characters whose designs are made by famous Japanese manga artists, and 3 other characters who come from a galaxy far, far away.  But does it stack up?


(Graphics 8/10):

The graphics in this game are a major factor, they show up and represent the characters for what they are.  Most of the characters carry their respective looks, almost completely matching the artwork that was drawn of them.  Most of the characters' new outfits are interesting to see in action, but you shouldn't expect anything more than just the unpredictable change in clothing some characters seem to have, while others like Ivy, Taki, and Maxi do not change their look but on a minimal level at best.  Some of the alternate costumes don't really have any redeeming value or real purpose other than to just be there.

One of the features of the graphics is clothing damage.  As you battle, you can "break" a piece of clothing, weakening the opponent's defenses.  This feature happens rather randomly, and doesn't actually depend on damage taken.  I've damaged clothing wthin seconds of starting a match and in other matches, there were never any lost threads by either character.  Unfortunately, Yoda, Vader, The Apprentice, and the 5 bonus characters do not have any cosmetic changes when their clothing is damaged.

Our fair characters from the far far away galaxy, as expected, share their appearances with almost complete accuracy.  I say almost because some pieces of clothing are illuminated in ways that don't really seem correct.  Vader's helmet also appears to be off somehow, and most of the animations are just recycled from previous Soul Calibur games.  I recognized Raphael's endless sword poke victory animation from Soul Calibur 3.


(Sound 7/10):

So we're back again with the english voice actors and such.  There's only a few problems this time around... First, the announcer has made no effort to keep his speech from overlapping the characters' own speech.  Even though the lines he recites are from previous games, the recital takes far too long and cuts into characters' intros.  That's my first beef with this game: the voice acting, as expected.  Yun-seong's english voice has taken a total nose dive from Soul Calibur 2, having taken the cliche route of "arrogant punk".  Everybody else subsequently has uninteresting and\or annoying voices.  I will say that I do recognize Siegfried's voice as being the same actor from Soul Calibur 2 (Nightmare, only without the Angry motif).

The Create-a-Character voices are absolutely terrible on both the male and female ends of the spectrum.  More than half of the voices are just outright bad with no quality whatsoever.  It's like when writing the lines for the characters, the script-writing for making them as unique as the main characters took a back seat.  "It's really boring when I know I'm going to win." "Effort doesn't equal victory, dumbass."  There's only 2 voices that aren't the voices of total pricks, those are the voice of Megaman X from X7 with better talent, and the voice of Siegfried's dad, which sounds like Dan Green's standard one-size-fits-all voice.

As for the music & sound effects... It's your standard Soul Calibur fare.


(Gameplay 4/10):

For being a Soul Calibur game, this game sure does have a lot less Soul to it.  Even though there are additions and changes, there are features that were left out that could've made this game a much more worthy entry into the series.  Gone is the Soul Charge, replaced with the Soul Gauge and Critical Finishers.  A Critical Finish is pretty much like Mortal Kombat's fatality system, except it will only happen under certain conditions.  Thanks to Namco-Bandai, those instances will be even few and far between, so if you want to get a look at critical finishes, you may as well just set them up in Training Mode and watch them.

Side-stepping has been nerfed to hell and back.  No longer can you dodge attacks by side-stepping them, you must either guard or counter.  Even then, attempting a side-step is pointless because even vertical attacks with slow speed will still hit you most of the time unless they have horrible tracking.  Outside of that, the characters pretty much play like they used to in earlier installments.  There's also a new balance issue that I've noticed: Certain characters appear to be perfect counters to others.  Try fighting a Cervantes user as Astaroth.  Then, as Yun-seong.  After that

When you go online, be prepared to fight with massive amounts of input lag, as it will be all over the place.  Your timing will be knocked off course and you will probably lose a lot of matches even though you had anticipated a lot of your opponents' attacks.  Soul Calibur 4's online gameplay mode punishes those who try to play strategically and rewards button-mashers.  I also don't recommend you try Ranked mode.

A major feature this game could've used would've been an actual story mode.  The Story mode we get is simply arcade mode with less difficulty & weapon skills enabled.  Even when playing a character you know nothing of you will be able to beat this mode with ease.  The only new mode is the Tower of Souls, and that's just a glorified challenge mode.

(Overall, 6/10):

Soul Calibur 4 may be the latest, but it's not the greatest.  I would've rather Namco actually enhanced the playability, but it's clear that they don't give a crap about the "minimal" Soul Calibur fanbase and have only offered one patch that did things to only minor characters while they remain convinced that the characters that actually have broken combos are "perfectly fine, this is what we intended."


Stay tuned for an upcoming review of S4 League, the Korean PC MMO Shooter hosted by a company who's doing their best to try and make it as crappy as possible outside of playing a match!