Soul Calibur 4 Guest Review

Hey guys, today’s review come courtesy from my friend guneden! Look forward to more of his posts in the future!

Soul Calibur 4 (PS3 version) review
by Guneden (Gun-Eden)

Soooo…after playing like 4 hours of this game i gotta say its “not as good as it could’ve been”. The first thing i noticed was the use of in-game graphics for the opening, which is not quite what i expected, as the in-game graphics arnt superb considering it IS ps3….plus its extremely short, showing random people that have nothing to do with each other whatsoever facing off against each other (darth vader meeting Mitsurugi in the middle of a volcano area? (What the heck?)  If u guys are wondering…NO lightsabers cannot chop through katanas in this game just cause bandai namco says so. Anyways i proceeded with story mode (not like theres any story to begin with and its so made-up complicated anyways) and found instead of the 9-stage somewhat coherent story we get in SC3, it has been chopped to 5 consecutive battles with a little cutscene at the end. Not that im complaining, cause who cares about the SC storyline anyways? (if you’re interested i’ll just sum it up to “everyone beats the crap out of either knightmare, Algol, or Siegfried and gets the soul edge/calibur”)
Unfortunately for me, they have taken away the long strategy rpg thing from SC3 and replaced it with a survival tower of sorts, with the option of ascending or descending.

Having played SC1 and 3, im happy to say the main part of this game- the actual fighting- is still as good as before. A noticeable change is in team battles, where instead of going back to starting postion at the end of every KO the next guy actually runs up to you right after you KO a person. My tip to players is to block right after you ko someone cause i had the experience of getting surprise attacked and getting ring out twice in a row. Pressing r1 will also automatically change your character for some crazy tag combos…Weapon effects and character skills, such as hysterical strength, will power, auto unblockable attack, and invisible make the game more interesting, but can be quite overpowered if you customize a character with all the best equipment and skills. Theres also now a “armor break” system-the opponent’s armor breaks off if hit at that place too many times…”armor” as in clothing…sigh…i sense some perverts are going to exploit this (as well as another feature in the character creation).

Character wise they’ve added 9 more-vader, algor,apprentice, hilde, and 5 other random characters with little relevence under “bonus characters”. I wont count those guys under character creation. what really struck me first was the insanely HORRIBLE Horibble voice acting. Coupled with a lame script, not matching lips, and expressionless faces, this is probably the worst thing in the entire game. The new character designs are okay, but is it just me or are some characters wearing less and less clothes (like xianghua) and some more (like kilik). And also why is the soul calibur and soul edge different in every game? This time round theres no character with a random weapon like inferno, edgemaster, or olcadan but apparently the “final boss” Algol wields both the soul calibur and edge. Oh and he can also fire these spheres and protrude spikes from his body. On the other hand, darth vader is, as expected, quite slow….and quite dissapointing. His moveset includes swinging his lightsaber epsiode 4-6 style and some force moves, only one of which i find useful. What really ticks me off is his winning pose totally does not match his style. Really, would vader ever cross his arms or point his finger at someone while saying something along the lines of “The force is not with you.” (btw the way i just made up that line)

Well overall its still a good game thanks to the multiplayer…yeah and probably mithril will write the xbox360 version…maybe.
Oh and “No matter how many times you say PS3 sucks the fact is that I have one and nothing can change that”
…whatever…

(Once again thanks to guneden for his contribution! I leave you now with a lovely comic on how to play SC4!)

Click to enlarge

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