The latest in the Soul Caliber series, Soul Caliber IV is the apex for the series, something not achieved since the original Soul Caliber.
Game play is improved from the past two installments. Most of the fighters are well balanced, each with their own movesets and combos. The same rock, paper, scissors relationship to attacks is still present. A couple of new elements have been added, the "Soul Gauge" and destructible armor that affects how much damage you take.
The "Soul Gauge" is the colored gem next to the fighter's life bar. The color of the gem changes as attacks are blocked and landed. As the gem changes red and starts flickering red, you are in danger of being "Critical Finished." The purpose of the "Soul Gauge" is just to prevent people from blocking too much.
The new destructible armor system isn't too troublesome. If a certain position is hit with strong attacks or combos repetitively, a piece of armor falls off and if an attack is landed in the area where the armor is damage is increased by a small percentage(2-6%).
The new Create-a-character allows you to not only create your own fighter, but also customize characters from SCIV's roster(Star Wars and bonus characters omitted). The equipment used in creating your own fighter are no longer cosmetic but now affect character stats and sometimes have special abilities. With this addition those who want to take their fighters into special versus have to keep track of those stats.
Create-a-character is deeper than the one in Soul Caliber III. You can now adjust the build and muscular definition of your fighter along with the ability to adjust the pitch of the voice of your fighter. Sadly, there are no classes from the previous game, you pick which fighter from the roster your character will emulate. After all your fighter is done, you can now test play them before saving them.
Soul Caliber IV finally introduces online play. The online has the typical free matches and ranked matches. Joining matches is tiresome though and lag is pretty significant to cost you a match. I hope it improves in the future with possible patches.
Overall Soul Caliber IV is one of the best looking fighters out there right now. Definitely a must buy for PS3 owners who have some friends to play around with.
Soul Calibur IV launched worldwide 15 years ago, bringing with it the best performance of the series to date.
Hell no. It was the start of the downfall (SCV) of the series. Huge downstep from the giant SCIII
Used to love this series, probably my favorite 3D fighter, perhaps together with the now also dead Dead or Alive (2-3-4), but as with so many games in the fighting genre, their short-term greed (season passes) has made me lose all interest, sadly …
Loved Number 2 and 3( loved all the solo modes like chronicle of the sword ) so was super hyped when 4 came out but the lack of single player content was disappointing. Still love soul calibur to this day though
2 was definitely the golden era of Soul Calibur for me. I was a bit conflicted about it at times because there were 3 different versions (I liked the PS2 version for controls, I liked playing as Spawn the most, and I thought the addition of Link was really awesome). Even so, the single player content was outstanding. Easily the most fun I've had with a fighting game, followed closely by Tekken 5's single player modes
From VG247: "Link suits the world of Soul Calibur. The elf-like little twink fit into the roster as well as any sword-wielding fantasy hero could – facing off against the likes of the machiavellian Frenchman Raphael, the inhuman hellspawn Astaroth, or the horny gimp Voldo, the Legend of Zelda guest character fits right in. Weaponry, aesthetic, move set… all of it gels with Soul Calibur’s camp high fantasy world – even when you’re pulling massive bombs out of God-knows-where and hurling them across the stage. It just fits.
You know what doesn’t fit, though? Lightsabers. No amount of sci-fi reasoning, magic, or blaming it on wizards can make Yoda, Darth Vader, and (eurgh) Starkiller fit in the war-torn European and Silk Road settings of Soul Calibur. It just doesn’t track. Why Bandai Namco decided to shoehorn the trio of characters into the fourth Soul Calibur game, then, remains a mystery; it’s damaging to both brands, it makes no sense canonically, and – more than anything else – it’s just all a bit tacky (or should that be Taki?)"
Bandai Namco's other premier fighting game series, Soulcalibur, has been around for over 25 years, but what game is the best?
Really loved Soulcalibur on Dreamcast. Truly blew all competition away back then when it came to graphics and fluidity, and I liked the roster and arenas.
Haven’t bothered with the newest release because sadly fighting games these days have become too expensive. They’ll release a base-game, then add all the interesting characters through expensive season passes, so unless there’s a Complete Edition released (and if I’m still interested in the game by then), I’m better off just shrugging my shoulders and skipping it completely.
The direction the fighting game genre has picked for itself means it will now only appeal and sell to the hardcore fans of the genre, while the mainstream gamers will spend their money elsewhere.
I played Soul Calibur 2 on the PS2, it was great and I got pretty good at it, decimated most of my friends at that game. I recently got VI on the PS4 and it just doesn't have the same magic, plus it seems to have stuffed some extra mechanics in there that just complicate it too much for me, although I really do agree they're too expensive, I've always wanted to get all the DLC characters for Central Fiction, but it's way too expensive.
I prefer SC VI to the SC III. SC II had a really fast pace for a fighting game, when new SC III bursted into the scene it felt sluggish when compared to the second one. On SC VI they brought back the quicker pace of the game, but not as much on SC II, though I think it was a good decision. I wish they would go the MK11 route with their games, but we all know that Bandai Namco is not interested, they hardly gave the devs time and money to support SC VI.
i agree wwith all of that but having the game myself was a huge flop why in the world did they have to take out so many modes...being on next geb consoles or current gen...it should more modes the fact that they have less modes is dumb but good game i must admit
nice review, if you want to play over the PSN sometime add me
PSN: ShadowGhost752