What's within your soul? Do you have what it takes to defeat the deadliest warriors in the universe in order to possess the awesome power of the Soul Calibur? Are your mental and physical skills up to the challenge of facing other warrior-wannabes in online play?
If so, then I highly recommend that you purchase this game. One play-through and your soul will be changed forever. Complete the missions, and you will be on your way to becoming a TRUE WARRIOR!
Ok, enough of the corny stuff. Soul Calibur IV is an awesome game. For solitary players, it offers the following adventures. Story, Tower of Lost Souls, and Arcade. The Story mode is similar to what we've known over the years. Each fighter goes through his or her unique story, fight battles, and then reach their own unique story ending. Arcade should also be familiar to most soul calibur veterans. Basically, you pick your fighter and fight through stages until you battle The Apprentice. Upon beating The Apprentice, which is easier said than done, you get to fight this strange guy (strange, even by SC standards!) called Algol. Algol reminds me of Necrid from SC2. Tower of Lost Souls is an advanced stage. Basically, you want to be very comfortable with your chosen characters' move sets before you set out for the Tower. I suggest that you play through Story and Arcade modes with your favorite/created characters before going to the Tower. You want to be able to use helpful skills, as well as the best weapons, in order to play through the Tower. The weapons can be expensive to purchase. Hence, the need to play for cash first. Tower of Lost Souls is somewhat similar to Weapon Master from SC2. Basically, you play against the CPU.
Character Creation is back! This time, your model will look like one of the main characters in the game. You can outfit your model with armors, head gear, etc. You can even strip Sophitia and the other ladies down to their bikini, if you want! Bear in mind though that although that's eye candy, leaving your character without armor will lower their stats. In SC4, the armor affects the character stats.
Are the characters "balanced", in terms of fighting effectiveness in versus play? From what I have seen so far, they seem to be. My experience in Versus play is limited though. Does the CPU play fair in single player mode? Ofcourse not, this is Soul Calibur! Fight The Apprentice in Arcade and you will see how this works against you. Even a good Soul fighter will find themselves repeatedly off-axis. A lot of your moves, especially vertical ones, will miss. However, The Apprentice will usually be on-axis. And he can pull together a long string of moves that is very, very hard to interrupt. I found that a character like Amy, with her 4B is much better against this guy than say, Sophitia. But that's just my style of play, perhaps. Using a player with hard to pull combos, like Ivy, required me to use a lot of throws just to beat The Apprentice. But I lost many, many more battles against this guy than I won.
I have always been a fan of Namco-Bandai. They seem to release games that appeal to me. From Xenosaga, Baten Katos, Eternal Sonata, Tekken, and all the way to the Soul Calibur series. They have a way of making even the characters in a fighting game very endearing.
Yoda or Darth Vader? I have the XBox version of the game, so I get Yoda with my edition. Yoda is fun to play, however, I have read other reviews from people who have both PS3 and XB360 versions of the game that say they prefer Darth Vader on the PS3. I do not have the PS3 version, but let me just say that for fighting games, I prefer the playstation controller to the 360 controller. I have SC2 in PS2 and Xbox versions. I much prefer playing the PS2 version due to the design of the PS controller. But that's just a personal preferrence on my part.
To sum up, this is a great game. SC4 is more technical, and the move sets are a lot deeper than in previous versions of the game. I believe you could play this game for a year, and still find ways to improve your game during the second year. And maybe beyond. The replay value is endless. And if you are very technical and enjoy complication, you will just simply love Ivy. If you thought her move list was extensive in SC3, think again. Learning how to pull off Summon Suffering is a major hobby unto itself! Yeah, I love Soul Calibur! I believe you will also.
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What's Within Your Soul?