Soul Calibur II

Beat’em up games never rely on their story, but on their innovative gameplay and their radiant-looking atmosphere.
Take Bloody Roar: Primal Fury a nice looking game, but it didn’t have what the right beat’em up game needed.
Which game does have this is… Soul Calibur.
Only a limited number of gamers were able to enjoy this beautiful masterpiece on Sega’s Dreamcast, but now Namco comes with Soul Calibur II and is available on all three next-generation consoles!
Is this a step in the right direction or did Soul Calibur have worn out its best days on the Dreamcast?

As in all beat’em up games, this is also about knocking out your opponent as soon as possible or throwing him/her out of the ring.
But of course the way plays a big role, in Soul Calibur II this mainly happens with many different arsenals.
In all three console versions there is a different extra character.
On the Gamcube version it’s the famous link from the Zelda series of the same name, on the Playstation2 version it’s Heihachi and on the Xbox version it’s Spawn.
Once you’ve started the game and you’re facing someone in the ring, you can show your opponent all the corners of the ring in a variety of ways.
The A button surprises your opponent with a horizontal attack, the Y button a vertical attack, the X button kicks his *** and the L, B or R button defends your opponent’s attacks .
You also have the c-stick that you can use to perform different combos in combination with your control stick.
There are more than 20 different characters in total, who have their own attacks and don’t all do the same by default with the desired button combos.

In Soul Calibur there is a lot to unlock by thoroughly overhauling the Weapon Master mode.
In this mode you get to hear a wafer-thin story that keeps expanding as you play through the chapters, there are 10 in total and a number of subchapters.
Along the way you will have to play on time, which means that you have to beat five characters in 40 seconds, for example, which is quite challenging and addictive.
You will also encounter circumstances that you will lose your energy like a candle and therefore have to KO your enemy in no time without taking too much damage.
Once you’ve wrestled through these 10 you’ll get a fiery boss called Inferno that looks challenging at first glance and transforms multiple times, but actually isn’t at all.
The more you fight, the more experience points, and the higher your ranking becomes.
You also get gold for your efforts from which you can buy new costumes or a new sword for your characters.
After these 10 you can play the entire quest again, but at a higher level, so you can play everything again to get the forgotten unlocked items.
But it is of course more fun to play against a human being of flesh and blood in the Multiplayer.
In this Multiplayer you can compete against each other by both choosing a character, or by both choosing a number of characters and whoever has characters left at the end wins.
There is a lot to earn in the Weapon Master mode, there are new stages, new characters, LOTS of new weapons, new costumes and many new modes.
There is also an arcade mode and survival mode which in itself provides some variation.

Namco’s new graphic gem?

Soul Calbur I was already a feast for the eyes on the Dreamcast, part two clearly adds more graphic quality to the whole.
But I must confess that there are better fighting games on the market, but the fantastic gameplay makes up for it.
The characters are quite well developed, but the level design, with the emphasis on the water, sometimes still looks a bit lacking in atmosphere.
This means that Soul Calibur II is certainly not the lesser in the beat’em up series in terms of graphics, but that the Gamecube can handle better.

Sound

The background music is a bit standard, but still nice to teach your opponent some morres.
In the Gamecube version, there’s also a remix tune from zelda, which stands out along with the general tune of Soul Calibur II.
While loading your opponent you can press the A or Y button after which you hear a nice battle cry through the voice acting of the character.
During your fight you will also hear all kinds of Japanese battle cries, which of course belong to a high-ranking game Soul Calibur II.
There is also the cool voice of the commentator who introduces each fight with a nice story and also indicates when you can tackle your opponent.

Clunky Controls?

No, absolutely not!
SoulCalibur II is one of the best controlled beat’em games I’ve ever played, and due to the many combos it’s much better than it first appears.
Partly due to the wide range of game-modes and the multiplayer you will still be able to enjoy this game for quite some time, and this game will never bore me.
The Weapon Master mode is pretty small on its own, but after you’ve gone through it, you can get on with the other unlocked modes or play the whole thing again.
The many button combos provide even more variety in the whole, and due to the large selection of characters there are many different combos to discover.
In short, a mandatory purchase for the beat’em fan of every console!