First let me say I have been a Soul Calibur enthusiast not just from Soul Calibur 1, but from its often forgotten  predecessor Soul Blade on PS1, remembering vividly the crazy hours I dedicated to the world tour mode in order to get every possible sword!

So you can imagine my excitement when I heard about the next gen title, and I must say I am quite pleased. First of all if you haven’t already seen, the presentation is incredible. The lighting, character models and overall art style is masterful. However it may at times feel a little congested, the simplicity of the older games due to less graphical capability made it feel more raw and precise. Here characters have so much beautiful follow through and secondary action with cloth, armor and hair, albeit stunningly gorgeous may be a little much (just a little). Yet every time I pop that game in I am taken back by the beauty of it.

Gameplay is as responsive and fluid as ever, but they changed my Ivy I admit she was a little over powered but she was always the toughest character to master, so having her a little over powered when mastered seemed like a fitting reward… Anyways, my brother seemed to be doing well with his cheesy Mitsurugi. I can see what IGN meant about being able to win through button mashing, right now it is possible to win that way, it was always possible to win with button mashing against weaker opponents. But the only reason why it worked is because the characters have changed a little and we were trying to find a good hold of the game again.

That being said, I have seen the computer do some DAMN impressive stuff, and absolutely own me when I try to button mash. So I believe with a few more bouts and practices the button mashing thing will go down heavily, (although may never completely vanish, due to characters like Maxi and Raphael). I must say the only fighter on earth that button mashing wont work at all for is Street Fighter and perhaps Virtua Fighter, NOTHING else…

The character creation I didn’t try, but my brothers were jumping up with joy and begged me to just do a character while they watched, they love it that much. I didn’t do it though, I wanted to play. When I got my hands on Seung Mina that wasn’t changed much, it all started coming back and the tightness and lack of button mashing victory was clearly there, that’s why I say a few more bouts and I will be good with Ivy again.

I actually had a lot of fun, and can’t wait to go back and play some more. I DO recommend you buy it. When you see it,  first you will be in awe of the graphics, then you will feel that some characters are a bit alien to you, but when you start getting into it, that great feeling the series brings will come flooding back. And the character creation is apparently incredible, I wont find out for a while since I really just want to hone my skills. What I do want to do is create alternate costumes for the characters which you can do…