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Review - Soul Calibur IV |
Do you remember when Soul Calibur was cool? To me, it was a revelation. Holy shit FIGHTING GAMES suddenly became a reality to me, it and the later release of Tekken Tag Tournament, and ultimately sent me down the path that led me to being part of the hardcore and part of this community. The first game, even, actually had me believing for a while that the Dreamcast would be a resounding success, the greatest console of all time, and have a beautiful, prosperous life. Utterly, pathetically wrong, of course, and I realized that not too far in the future, but still - the grip of that game was immense.
So what happened? Somewhere along the way, everything went awry. Soul Calibur II arrived thunderously, with everyone in its grip, and seemed poised to be one of the greats. Somehow, it just didn’t work out that way. Balance issues and glitches plagued it, and thus began the slow death to the hardcore community. II was never really a terrible game, but it wasn’t a great one, and seemed to lack the magic that kept everyone there with the first one.
Then, there was III. It seemed Namco had utterly given up on the series, turning out what they could just to squeeze some money out of casual players. With an overwhelmingly large and stupid focus on (bad) single player modes, terrible balance and one utterly atrocious glitch - “variable cancel” - the hardcore continued their exodus, giving up on the SC series entirely and killing a community. Soul Calibur III: Arcade Edition tried to make up some of that ground, almost apologizing for the many and varied mistakes made with the home game, but never quite made it there. It was a sad and miserable place to end on, and seemed to be where we were stuck for a long time. The hype for IV was mostly about the graphics, how excellent the tit bounce was and how hot the chicks were - not often a word about whether the game would be good or not (because everyone presumed it wouldn’t be, myself included), and mostly just wrote it off as being worth purchasing to look at, much like DOA, but not worth it for the gameplay.
Were we right?
Soul Calibur IV is one of the biggest surprises I’ve had in a while. I never really would have guessed that Namco actually would slap together a decent game - I think it was just simply too hard to believe after SC3, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to set myself up for yet another crushing disappointment. Of course, hindsight now makes this ironic, so I get to feel a bit silly.
The basic formula of Soul Calibur’s settings, style and presentation has not significantly changed. Yadda yadda yadda, evil sword, good sword, people from all over the world are beating each other up over them. The settings haven’t changed much, the roster’s pretty much the same as from III and the soundtrack is once again hit-or-miss, as is the rule of the Soul series. On the face of it, it’s probably fair to say IV is not really anything but a more polished version of III, but it is one heck of a polish.
Obviously, the graphics are a huge leap over the previous entry in the series - making the leap from sixth to seventh gen, the game rightfully looks gorgeous and realizes familiar styles and concepts, as well as some of the same old locations, to the Soul series in lavish new detail. Voldo’s Money Pit stage is of course present, still using a torchlit golden and earthen appearance. Kunpaektu Shrine, around since Soul Calibur, is back again, now surrounded by generic lizardmen holding giant knives and forks.
Stylistically, the game is a step above III in terms of graphics as well, where the design team was led by DJ Tigresa, leading to monstrosities like Tira. IV has none of these atrocious missteps (except, perhaps, Tira’s awful 2P costume), with color choices being more sensible and costumes being put together better on average. And, of course, if you happen to not like the costumes - this is all backed up by an excellent custom mode.
Concerning the custom mode, it’s actually quite surprising it took so long for it to happen, but Virtua Fighter has finally been dethroned for the depth and breadth of character customization. While the Create-A-Soul mode is cool (though not especially different from Soul Calibur 3, just expanded), it actually shines considerably more when you go to customize one of the default characters. Color editing is available for first player costumes, while the second slot is completely customizable. This leads to the annoying problem of not having first player parts - particularly hairstyles, which are severely lacking in IV - being useable, but it’s a minor issue. Changing around bits and pieces is still great fun and you have much greater freedom to toy with your character’s appearance than any other game has allowed. Almost every color is customizable (up to four colors per clothing item), as well, unlike III, allowing you to have more freedom with your designs, whether they are pure customs or edits of default characters. A troubling bit with pure customs is that they’re not exactly 1:1 to all characters - Amy and Talim customs have have larger ranges and hitboxes than the original characters. Considering most people playing competitively will know this, however, this shouldn’t be a large problem.
Other things to mess around with while playing alone are few, and Tower of Lost Souls mode is as horrible as Chronicles of the Sword in III, just in a different way. Story mode, fortunately, is much better - stuffed with some of the weird special item effects and whatnot, included purely for scrubs, but it doesn’t get in the way very much. Arcade mode is back to being easily accessible instead of hidden away and is perfectly serviceable. Probably the biggest loss as far as single player material goes is the guide mode, done somewhat decently (and full of Olcadan squawking at you) in the previous game and could have made an even more thorough and triumphant return. The inclusion of online play, however, should help people to learn by doing, so it’s not too terrible a loss.
So, with all else covered, the burning question - how’s the meat of the game? The thing that so brutally broke II and III, namely, playing like crap, has been alleviated here. Make no mistake, though. IV is a new beast in itself, with quite a number of changes made both system-wide and to characters. One thing I’ve been hearing a lot is that the game is slower, which by frame data does not actually seem to be true at all, and I have to say I disagree with that assessment. It’s arguable with the soul gauge (guard gauge) and critical finish system in place, as well as a number of the changes made to quite a few characters, IV has been made more of a evasion-based game than ever before. Sure, they changed the step system a bit, but it’s still functional (and, in fact, they added a quick step to any side evasion for the purpose of making it easier to get around horizontal attacks with a quick tap). All in all, the game requires a bit of relearning, but it’s there and it’s solid again.
As far as the roster goes, I’m sure some people have noticed that there’s only one new character, the very strange (but sporting some fantastic dick-sucking lips) Hilde. However, this to say nothing of the significant changes made to nearly everyone in the cast. While some changes were kind of pointless, others made were brilliant. Zasalamel has been further worked over to make him his own beast even further, and Tira is completely transformed from what she was in III. Lizardman’s Crawl stance has been expanded and improved into making it a powerful and integral part of his play, and finally putting some very significant distance between him and the Alexandra sisters. Raphael has lost some of his comboability and juggling for better poking and a stronger evasion game, whereas Amy has gone the other direction. Yunsung has had his kick game reworked, his Crane Stance retouched, and some fancy new guard breaks added. He’s finally conclusively more than just a dumb version of Hwang, and he’s tons of fun for it. The changes go on and on across all the characters, for a rework just short of Namco did for the Tekken cast in that series’ fourth entry.
Balance has also been tightened, so that it’s no longer as significant an issue as it was in III, or even as in Arcade Edition, which had already been updated and tightened up considerably. No glitches have yet been found either, other than Ivy’s quite difficult infinite - already banned by the community - which may be patched by Namco, who have already released two small patches to the game.
All in all, I’d say Namco got this one right. I have a few tiny gripes here and there, but as far as I’m concerned, Soul Calibur is back and it’s fucking great. Whether it’s an absolute classic like the first is up to the test of time, but there’s just no question in my mind that it’s an excellent game.
