So it's been asked: Is Soul Calibur II good?
A simple answer would be "Yes -- very, very good. Just as Soul Calibur is good, so is Soul Calibur II."
A more pressing question would be: Is Soul Calibur II necessary?
And the answer to that question is . . . not so simple.
One thing that's for sure is that there are a lot of un"necessary" elements in Soul Calibur II's console outing. My clinical approach to beating the game as every character, row-by-row, is indicative, perhaps, of a sickness deep within the concept of the fighting game console port. This is the "unlockables" sickness.
When Street Fighter II hit Super Nintendo, we were happy with a Vs. mode and an arcade mode. Now that home systems are capable of putting out graphics that look better than arcade games, someone must figure that all kinds of crap needs to be shoved into the game, just because it can be. This syndrome has been responsible for such brain-snappers as "Tekken Ball" and the unforgivably idiotic "Tekken Force."
Soul Calibur II, too, is not without a veritable shitload of unlockable weapons, costumes, characters, and arenas. This shitload of items is unlocked by completing the game as every character, and then running through the "Weapon Master" mode, completing all the missions, then completing all the missions again, then completing all the missions again so as to earn enough money to buy all the things you didn't yet buy.
The "Weapon Master" mode contains the meat of the unlockables. It's a cross between the "Edge Master" mode of the PlayStation Soul Edge -- in which you trek around a map, playing out each character's story in a quest to win all the weapons -- and the "Quest Mode" of Soul Calibur, in which you can freely choose characters and conquer several missions that increase exponentially in difficulty.
In Soul Calibur II's "Weapon Master" mode, you are given freedom over which character you choose, and then thrown into a world-map setting and expected to conquer all kinds of insane challenges, which reward you with experience points and gold. The experience points raise your player "rank," which doesn't seem to do anything; the gold is used to buy weapons and new costumes. There is little fanfare behind the buying of costumes or weapons; simply press start, choose "shop," and buy.
The challenges themselves range from easy to dog-knocking-overly hard. To wit: one knockdown means death; defeat six opponents on one life bar; defeat eight opponents in a hundred seconds; fight on a tiny, round, ice-covered platform; fight in a cage with electric walls; kick your enemy out of the ring to win; beat an enemy who can only be harmed while in the air; beat an enemy who can only be hurt with throws; survive thirty seconds against an invincible enemy; beat an enemy while poisoned; beat an enemy whose life is constantly regenerating -- or some insane combination of many of the above.
Those who played Soul Calibur will find no surprises in the challenges that await in Weapon Master mode. I, for one, found myself capable of finishing the hardest missions in two tries without even breaking a sweat. It is perhaps a testament to the design of the challenges that I know something is hard even when I beat it seemingly easily.
And it's a testament to something else that the opponents in these challenges are mostly random. Battles are prologued with a screen of text detailing, yes, voices in the dark calling your character into battle; this might lead one to believe that the battle has some storyline significance. Then, when you lose a battle against Voldo, restart the mission, and find that your opponent is now Taki -- you feel kind of cheated. Even if you're not paying attention to the story, it feels vaguely wrong.
One thing that got me straightening up my posture was the first time I had to fight the straight-ninja-looking "Assassin" in the Weapon Master mode. He wields the same weapon and moves as Yunsung, and I had believed for a while that -- what with him popping up all over the place -- he was really Hwang in disguise, soon to be unlocked. No such unlocking occurred. "Assassin" is merely a Yunsung skin thrown at the player in certain random battles, just as the massive Gladiator-like "Berserker" is an Astaroth skin.
Sure, they're interesting skins -- I just wish they'd do something.
The weapons, at least, do things. There are general attributes for the weapons, and they're mixed and matched pretty well. Weapons can contain great physical strength at the cost of draining the user's HP, have low physical power, yet hurt opponents even while they're blocking, recharge the user's HP slowly, absorb the opponent's HP, or have crazy-insane reach. The discovery of Yunsung's godly-long "Inviso-sword" -- returned from the Edge Master mode of Soul Edge for PlayStation -- prompted me to start learning some combos, and calling my new favorite Korean "Oppa," to the dropped jaws and "What the hell?"s of all those gathered.
Each character has a "super" weapon of insane strength, and also a "joke" weapon -- like Kilik's green bamboo pole, which makes cartoonish knocking sounds whenever it lands a blow.
The Weapon Master mode also unlocks the "Extra" modes -- which allow players to select weapons at the character selection screen. "Extra Vs." mode lets you and a friend -- or room of friends -- use your favorite characters and weapons.
Over here, we have a rule: no ultimate weapons in the Extra Vs. modes. It's just not kosher. Of course, this doesn't stop me from using Seung Mina's ridiculous HP-draining ultimate weapon in Extra Survival Deathmatch mode.
The weapons really add some beautiful colors to the competitive side of the game. And that's what this is -- a competition. Two fighters standing face-to-face with weapons. "Two men enter, one man leaves" -- that sort of thing.
The problem is how we're forced to endure a pseudo-"RPG" "quest" to unlock all these weapons and costumes. In the competitive, testosterone-y, "must-kick-ass-now" flip-mode that comes over me when I play this game, I could care less about voices in the darkness. And I'm not just saying this because the challenges scare me: I can, and will unlock everything in this game. It's just a matter of time.
The "quest" becomes a problem when it cuts into my game time. Someone wants to use Seung Mina, and I explain how I haven't unlocked her yet. So I sit on the floor, beating stages until I uncover Seung Mina, and everyone sits around watching for an hour. This is time we could be using to beat each other with rods and blades.
The biggest offenders in this "quest" mode are the "dungeons." Basically, they're extensions of the map screen -- and ones where you're allowed to change only weapons, not characters. And they have no shops.
In these "dungeons," you use your stick to maneuver from one map square to another. Then you press a button, and a one-round fight begins. You win the fight, and move on to the next square. Sometimes, you have a choice of paths. You pick a path, click a button, and fight once again.
One friend saw me in the middle of a dungeon just as I uncovered the boss square.
"What's that red thing?"
"That means it's the boss," I explained.
"Oh. So you beat him and you're done."
"Pretty much, yeah."
"Dude, you didn't look over there."
"Over where?"
"Up in the upper-left."
"Oh, there's nothing there," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm pretty sure," I replied.
Poor guy. He mistook this for a Zelda game or something.
Now, before it seems like I'm angrily ripping on these dungeons, please -- please -- just take a look at one of them, thanks to my digital camera. Click the pic:
Note how there's not a single branch off the main path. Note how the dungeon is ridiculously long, and snakes all the way from one side to another.
Now listen to this: you need to play this twice.
Now this: it takes about a half an hour each time.
And the kicker: there are four billion dungeons like this.
Yeah, the above dungeon is full of clever little battles with random combinations of wacky rules (see above) -- some even going so far as to force you to hit an enemy in the air while battling in a round cage with a fire rim. Each of these battles is a nice, quick test of my and your fighting wits.
What sucks is how selfish I feel playing this. While a lot of newcomers to the Soul Edge/Blade/Calibur series may get something of a kick out of the challenging new battles, I sit on my friend's floor, wondering aloud if there's a way we can fight each other in a cage with a fire rim -- and maybe with wind, too!
(Protip: There isn't.)
Here's what I say, Namco -- do something crazy. Next time, give us all the weapons and characters from the start. Give us a versus mode where we can mix and match weather and winning conditions. Hell, let us make our own stages. Give me some reason not to always ferociously pound on "Random" in the interest of getting the fight started.
Actually, in all honesty -- I've several times found myself breaking the cardinal rule of versus Soul Calibur: I've been scanning through the stages. They've got me curious.
See -- some of the stages have walls. If you've played Soul Calibur (and who hasn't?), you might be able to imagine what walls would do to combat tactics. In Soul Calibur, it was always possible to kick an opponent out of the ring. In Soul Edge, ring size could be changed on the options menu. In Soul Calibur II, each stage has a different assortment of walls and pits. This is intriguing indeed -- especially when you fight your first battle in a cage and get beaten by some bastard who laughingly backs you into a corner and kicks you against the fence over and over until you're dead. It reminds you of Dead or Alive, except now you have a perfect fighting engine at your disposal, and it's possible to have fun.
Hell -- I am that bastard who will back you into a corner. Ask anyone who's played against my Chun Li and ended up weeping.
That eight-way run Namco is so proud of never struck my fancy. I was always more of a "stand and fight" kind of guy. Now that stages have walls, moving about becomes interesting. I want to see this feature exploited.
More specifically, I want to see this feature exploited by me. I want a room with walls on three sides and . . . wind blowing in from the wall-less side. I want a fire pit against the wall opposite the wind-hole.
Maybe even . . . spikes?
Ooh, I'm thinking of more even as I write this. I'll spare you the details -- I'll just say that I find this kind of functional fighting environment far, far more interesting than Tekken's "Dude, they break!" walls, far more design-progressive than the (purposely!) ridiculous Power Stone's "Dude, they have bazookas on rooftops and shit!" "go-anywhere," "pick-up-anything!" gameplay. Leave your breakaway walls and giant boobs to people like my little brother, who proudly informed me once after band practice that "Dude, with drop-D tuning, you can play anything!"
The music in Soul Calibur II might have benefited from some drop-D tuning, come to think of it. Sure, it all sounds pretty, and orchestral. Sure, it compliments fighting stages with giant yin-yangs in the middle of the floor and yellow mountains in the distance. It speeds up when the action gets intense. It sounds spooky and echo-y in the dungeon battle stages. There's just nothing really memorable about it. Am I the only person who mourns for Soul Edge's sometimes-delightfully-technoanachronistic "Khan Super Session" soundtrack? That the Khan Super Session supplemented the original arcade and arranged arcade soundtracks made Soul Edge the most musically versatile fighter of all time. That I once made a tape out of my favorite tracks and listened to it in my car (I swear this alone does not make me a dork) is another thing altogether.
One thing's for sure, though -- that announcer doesn't sound any less enthusiastic about this "tale of souls and swords, eternally retold!" He doesn't quite tell me that "The Legend Will Never Die" as much as I'd like to, and that's okay. The battle screams are better-acted than ever before, and the weapons clash and slash in a way that chills my bones, and makes me think my dad is somewhere nearby eating a salad. I used to have nightmares about my dad eating salad. I grew up with that terror.
From now on, though, I have nightmares only about Soul Calibur II's box art.
In case you've been getting your internet news from unimportant places like, say, MSN.com lately, you might have missed the announcement that each version of Soul Calibur II's box art will prominently display each console's respective exclusive character. I can confirm that this is true -- and that, shockingly, the trend of crimes against box art is not limited to the North American and European continents: even in Japan, Link stands proud atop the triangle of characters on the Gamecube version of Soul Calibur II's box art. This is wrong on many levels, most generally the same level as that which pushed Namco and Square to feature hidden character Cloud (of Final Fantasy VII) on the cover of Ergheiz, which probably wouldn't have sold more than a thousand copies outside Japan without the familiar face.
Ergheiz needed that sales boost, much as postmodern fundamentalists like myself are able to use so many unclear arguments to put the marketing tactics down. Soul Calibur II does not. One should hope it can sell on account of its being the sequel to Soul Calibur. For the love of God.
[Next: scores, importing tips and miscellany ]
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