Amazon.com: Soul Calibur IV: Xbox 360: Video Games

52 Reviews

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

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4.3 out of 5 stars (52 customer reviews)

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21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid release from IMHO, the best fighting game series out there, but not worth $60, July 29, 2008

By	Shann Yu "Go Rice Owls!!!" (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars

If you've played any of the other Soul Calibur games, this game plays pretty much the same way. The reason this series is so much better than the other series out there I feel is the ability to, blow-to-blow, attack your opponent with series of attacks that do not involve memorizing a long string of commands like in the Tekken series. That said, this game is basically Soul Calibur III plus some small enhancements (outside of HD graphics) that I personally don't notice that much.

This is a really simple fighting game to pick up for first-timers, and there is almost always a character and a fighting style to suit your desire. Really, the only two very similar characters in the game are Siegfried and Nightmare, apparently for a good reason if you know a bit about the forgettable story.

Some specific notes:

Gameplay: Single player - A- ; Multiplayer (local + online) - A
First off, I don't believe games like these aren't really meant to be bought for single player. Clearly, you'd expect to practice your game in your time so that you can lay down the law against your friends on multiplayer modes.

AI is reasonably intelligent in this game, outside of being very simple in the earlier levels on the Normal difficulty setting. Higher up in difficulty, the AI plays defense very well, and this can get really frustrating, sometimes even forcing you to abandon normal attacks and to go for grapples, which for some reason the AI is pretty bad at countering.

Otherwise, when playing your friends, this is not exactly one of those fighting games that you can button-mash and expect to win. Definitely some skill and practice is involved, and the smoothness of the fights and the transitions from blow to blow make this THE fighting game to get.

Online gameplay is smooth and overall as good as the local multiplayer experience. I have not experienced any issues with lag or skippy gameplay. My only complaint here is how selecting "Quick Match" in ranked has the tendency to just match you with someone who has an open game. As a game creator, you can select the level of players you intend to play against. As a level 1 trying out the online game, I got put into too many matches against level 60+ and got slaughtered.

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Story: C
This is the the only reason I am giving this game four stars. For a game that seems to promote its story about the struggle between an evil sword and a cleansing sword (assuming I even understand it right), especially from the moment the trailers hit TV screens nationwide, this game does a terrible job of incorporating the story into the game. This said, most fighting games that even have storylines do terrible jobs at integrating the story into the game as well.

If you are looking for a fighting game with a pretty nicely integrated storyline, the best that I can think of are the WWE Smackdown series. In this game, the story consists of short cutscenes between fights that hint at the location of the next fight, and maybe short snide remarks that the characters say at each other right as the fight is about to begin (that in most cases don't even seem to make any logical sense together).

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Overall, this is a great fighting game to have. It's purely that and nothing more. Expect to play single player mode quite a bit in order to unlock characters and items. The real fun of this game really comes from multiplayer modes. I think that fronting $60 may be a stretch for this game unless you're really into this series.

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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What's Within Your Soul?, August 4, 2008

By	citan-uzuki "citan-uzuki" (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

What's within your soul? Do you have what it takes to defeat the deadliest warriors in the universe in order to possess the awesome power of the Soul Calibur? Are your mental and physical skills up to the challenge of facing other warrior-wannabes in online play?

If so, then I highly recommend that you purchase this game. One play-through and your soul will be changed forever. Complete the missions, and you will be on your way to becoming a TRUE WARRIOR!

Ok, enough of the corny stuff. Soul Calibur IV is an awesome game. For solitary players, it offers the following adventures. Story, Tower of Lost Souls, and Arcade. The Story mode is similar to what we've known over the years. Each fighter goes through his or her unique story, fight battles, and then reach their own unique story ending. Arcade should also be familiar to most soul calibur veterans. Basically, you pick your fighter and fight through stages until you battle The Apprentice. Upon beating The Apprentice, which is easier said than done, you get to fight this strange guy (strange, even by SC standards!) called Algol. Algol reminds me of Necrid from SC2. Tower of Lost Souls is an advanced stage. Basically, you want to be very comfortable with your chosen characters' move sets before you set out for the Tower. I suggest that you play through Story and Arcade modes with your favorite/created characters before going to the Tower. You want to be able to use helpful skills, as well as the best weapons, in order to play through the Tower. The weapons can be expensive to purchase. Hence, the need to play for cash first. Tower of Lost Souls is somewhat similar to Weapon Master from SC2. Basically, you play against the CPU.

Character Creation is back! This time, your model will look like one of the main characters in the game. You can outfit your model with armors, head gear, etc. You can even strip Sophitia and the other ladies down to their bikini, if you want! Bear in mind though that although that's eye candy, leaving your character without armor will lower their stats. In SC4, the armor affects the character stats.

Are the characters "balanced", in terms of fighting effectiveness in versus play? From what I have seen so far, they seem to be. My experience in Versus play is limited though. Does the CPU play fair in single player mode? Ofcourse not, this is Soul Calibur! Fight The Apprentice in Arcade and you will see how this works against you. Even a good Soul fighter will find themselves repeatedly off-axis. A lot of your moves, especially vertical ones, will miss. However, The Apprentice will usually be on-axis. And he can pull together a long string of moves that is very, very hard to interrupt. I found that a character like Amy, with her 4B is much better against this guy than say, Sophitia. But that's just my style of play, perhaps. Using a player with hard to pull combos, like Ivy, required me to use a lot of throws just to beat The Apprentice. But I lost many, many more battles against this guy than I won.

I have always been a fan of Namco-Bandai. They seem to release games that appeal to me. From Xenosaga, Baten Katos, Eternal Sonata, Tekken, and all the way to the Soul Calibur series. They have a way of making even the characters in a fighting game very endearing.

Yoda or Darth Vader? I have the XBox version of the game, so I get Yoda with my edition. Yoda is fun to play, however, I have read other reviews from people who have both PS3 and XB360 versions of the game that say they prefer Darth Vader on the PS3. I do not have the PS3 version, but let me just say that for fighting games, I prefer the playstation controller to the 360 controller. I have SC2 in PS2 and Xbox versions. I much prefer playing the PS2 version due to the design of the PS controller. But that's just a personal preferrence on my part.

To sum up, this is a great game. SC4 is more technical, and the move sets are a lot deeper than in previous versions of the game. I believe you could play this game for a year, and still find ways to improve your game during the second year. And maybe beyond. The replay value is endless. And if you are very technical and enjoy complication, you will just simply love Ivy. If you thought her move list was extensive in SC3, think again. Learning how to pull off Summon Suffering is a major hobby unto itself! Yeah, I love Soul Calibur! I believe you will also.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly just okay, September 26, 2008

By	R. Awbrey "cbandico" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

I'll admit right off the bat that I'm new to the Soul Calibur series. This is the first one I've played. That being said, I am no stranger to fighting games. When I read about SC4 it sounded like it had so much promise. What I got seemed kind of just okay. There are really four things going for SC4: 1)Terrific graphics, 2)Large number of characters, 3)Customized Equipment, and 4) Customized Characters. Number three is the stand out of the game. Through purchase and acquisition there are a huge number of equipment and weapon pieces availble in the game. They let you give your players a very respectible range of abilities. Couple that with the ability to customize your own character down to their facial features and you get something really great and unexpected in a fighting game. But all this seems like window dressing. It's all very pretty but feels of little substance. The game play is repetitive and the story is really non-existent. There's nothing that pulls you into the game. It really seems to be an almost XBox Live geared release. That's where the fun is had. But strangely the single player game takes up most of the space and feels dull. $60? No. If it was a $20 Xbox Live download I'd be all over it. My recommendation? Save your dough.