![]() ![]() The characters are all rendered well, and the animations are very fluid and look good. The environments are very well rendered, and little animation touches like rats scurrying around and flames burning around the characters bring the battleground to life. The graphics here, overall, are high quality. The only thing missing is an online mode, but with the dozens of single-player modes available, you’ll still get your money’s worth. Namco has also offered a Custom Character Creation mode, which allows you to make your own personal fighter to whoop on other people if you so desire, as well as an option to customize the color schemes of existing characters. Besides standard Arcade Mode (called “Quick Play” here) and versus modes, you also have “Tales of Souls”, which is a story mode for each of the characters “Soul Arena”, which offers you all sorts of challenges to overcome for gold and prizes a “World Competition” which allows you to play against the CPU in various tournament ladders, ala Tekken 5 or Virtua Fighter 4 and “Chronicles of the Sword”, which is a dumbed-down Ogre Battle-esque strategy game that allows you to resolve battles in one-on-one fights. Very few fighting games have attempted to be this story intensive, and this is an interesting development that should please fans of the series.Īs far as the actual game modes go, Namco apparently decided that since SC3 was going to be a console exclusive game, they should cram all sorts of gameplay modes into it. It’s all standard stuff that’s elevated by the amount of storytelling present in the game. Various other characters have reasons to pursue Nightmare and/or Siegfried, while others have their own agendas that are entirely separate from the main storyline. Nightmare, on the other hand, is hunting Siegfried so that he may re-join with him. The story of SC3 is surprisingly solid for a fighting game: Siegfried, who was turned into Nightmare in Soul Calibur, has separated himself from the sword Soul Edge, and is on a quest to seal the sword forever, or at least until the sequel. So, the question is, is SC3 the new and improved sequel we’re hoping for? Does it hurt the game that it didn’t see an arcade release? Are the new single-player modes as good as we’re hoping? Or are we in for another disappointment? Alright, enough rhetorical questions, let’s get to work. It also didn’t help that SC2 was almost a carbon copy of the first Soul Calibur, with no major changes or advances to make it worth playing again. Tekken has managed to maintain its staying power over the years, but Soul Calibur, not so much. These days, DDR rules the roost, and you can barely find a Soul Calibur arcade cabinet anywhere. ![]() ![]() Granted, the arcade business isn’t what it used to be back when Tekken first came out, 3D fighting games were new and interesting and people wanted to play them. On the other hand, I got the impression that Namco set SC3 as a console only release because SC2 didn’t do very well in the arcade. I have to admit, the custom character option was what sold me on the game being able to make a character in a fighting game was a pretty cool idea, and so long as it was done well, I figured that would pretty much justify the asking price alone. Not only was the game going to be a direct to console release, but it promised a slew of new single player modes as well as a custom character creation mode. After February’s release of Tekken 5, which fixed a lot of the issues fans complained about regarding Tekken 4, fans were eagerly looking forward to Soul Calibur 3. For Namco fighting fans, this year has so far shaped up to be the best one in a long time. They’re certainly consistent with their releases with the exception of 20, Namco has been releasing a fighting game every year since 1995. Ah, another year, another Namco fighting game. ![]()
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