Customer Reviews

Soul Calibur IV Premium Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're reading this it's because;
A) You're gamer and you're considering this game for purchase
or
B) You're adult considering purchasing this for your friend or loved one.

Not that the two are mutually exclusive or anything.

Anyway, I'll skip telling you what you can already gather from the other reviews. Yes, Star Wars characters are in it, yadda yadda yadda.
I will add however that I disagree that adding the Dark Apprentice (Star Killer) to this game was a smart move. Why? Because he looks good! I know that sounds weird but anyone who's played the demo of Force Unleashed knows that the appretice's head look like a rotting grapefruit about to split compared to his SC4 likeness. He looks waaay better in SC4. More, well,...human.

Now, the Premium edition is just another marketing scheme to get more money out of you. The T-shirts are pretty flimsy, and the other content in the tin likely cost the publisher less than a third of what we're being charged for it. The tin itself is of more value than it's contents, other than the game itself, of course. So unless you're a die hard SC fan like me, and absolutely MUST HAVE all things SC, just buy the regular version of the game, so publishers will stop throwing cheap novelty crap in with a game and calling it a special edition, then charging us an arm and a leg for it.

The content is pretty kid friendly. I'd say it's safe for anyone over 10 years old as long as they have a pretty good grasp on reality vs. fiction. There's next to no gore or blood, despite the heavy use of weapons in this series, and there's absolutely no cursing. It has a teen rating from the ESRB because of "Animated violence" and "Suggestive themes," meaning which loosely translated into human-speak means that the characters are sticking each other with swords in a fasion that WOULD be violent if there were blood and gore to go with it, and some of the females dress kinda skimpy,... okay really skimpy, like dominatrix skimpy.
So it really depends on what kind of content you as a parent decide what's appropriate for your child.

Online, you can expect the usual mix, of screaming children, and angsty teens, and amused adults. The ESRB can rate the online content because they can't be responsible for what some idiot online is going to expose your child to. Considering that this is a game that features a character creator, you may want to take that into consideration. I myself have created a "Party boy" character based on the guy from the show "Jackass" who dances in front of strangers in thong underwear. (I did this to both amuse and disturb the people I play the game with. Yes, I'm a sick, sick person.)

Outside of that, while the game's has a deep supernatural bent, dealing with demonically possessed swords and all that, it really doesn't touch on anything religous or political, so I would imagine only the most conservative of parents would be offended by the story content of the game.

That's going to be the extent of this review because my opinion is far too biased in favor of the Soul Calibur series, to truely write a non-judgemental review of the game. I've been a die-hard fan of the series and in my opinion this has been the best release to date. Yes, there are some flaws most of which are aptly described by other reviewers, but thanks to that wonderous thing called internet Bandai Namco can fix and improve this game until the end of time via downloadable content and patches. Let's hope they're on their toes.

Tidbits about the Premium Edition goodies:

Disappointed with the artbook. Amazon still hasn't updated the product description, but it's a mini DC comic book/art book. Half of it is the comic book and the other half is the art book. The game already has a story line, so I don't need it in comic book form. I was hoping to get a whole book of just the beautiful concept art and stuff. Instead, the art book section is very rushed and lacks a lot of art. Some characters got a whole page of sketches, while some got it bad. Taki, for example, got one page but it was just the same promotional image of her I've seen everywhere. Poor Rock got half a page! (not that I really care too much about Rock, but come on).

Now, I guess I'm one of the few out there that wasn't too happy with the Star Wars marketing in this game. The t-shirt that came along bundled has Yoda on it. I mean, come on. It would have been great if it had Hilde or any of the female characters on it, but no. I get a tiny green monster and Siegfried to flaunt around. The Apprentice is cheap, in both AI and player controlled. It hurts me to see the Soul veterans get beat by this newcomer, whose sole purpose is to advertise for another game. Star Wars has a huge fan base, I don't think Lucas needed to market their game by interfering with the Soul universe.

The tin case is great. The bonus costumes code is great. These are the only good things about the Premium Edition. People are jealous when they see my characters wear school girl outfits. I know they'll release them later on Live but for now, I can be the coolest kid on the block.

Tidbits about the game:

Biggest disappointment would probably be the Character Creation. Although it is still the best thing in the game, there are some things that just makes me sad. Now, maybe it's because I haven't earned everything, but I don't know yet. There aren't that many faces and hairstyles to choose from and the main characters' Player 1 features can't be used. So when I tried to make Hilde without her helmet, I found out the horror. I mean, she has a nice hairstyle. It's a shame we're not allowed to use it on other creations. One more disappointment is the bonus characters. You can only edit their colors! I was hoping to mess with Angol Fear's outfit (those pointy things aren't cutting it for me) but I was not allowed to.

To sum up:
I know most of this review is negative, but I assume many already know what to expect in a Soul Calibur game. It's still fun and the character creation is great for showing off your characters to friends on Live matches and such. As for the Premium Edition, $20 more for very little pleasing content.

I got this game from a store a few months ago. I've played the game a lot, unlocked all the characters and have played about 60 matches online. I've been a fan of Soul Calibur since Soul Calibur 2, which I purchased on my Gamecube. Let me explain what the game is about.

Soul Calibur is the updated version of the series on the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. The roster includes about 30 fighters, a dozen stages and a character creator mode.

In the singleplayer department, you get 3 modes. The first mode is Story Mode. What happens here is that you are shown a written history of the character before you even play. Then you are shown a screen with some odd collections of words such as "A Dark Warrior" and proceed to fight a match. Now what surprised me was the addition of tag teaming. With a press of a button, you can switch your characters in a match. After you beat the enemies you face the boss and are treated to a short cutscene.

Then there is arcade mode. In this mode, you fight enemy after enemy until you get to the end with the same boss. One thing that I think improves on SC2 is that the boss does not always predict your moves and counter it so effectively. He's simply the same AI, except twice the amount of health.

Finally, you have a Tower of Souls mode. This mode has two variations. You either "ascend" and fight tough enemies or you can "descend" and fighter hordes of weaker enemies, sort of like survival mode in the old games.

That's about it for the singleplayer modes, other than practice and character creation. Now for character creation, you can change things such as the sex, the weapon, clothes, hair/eye/skin color, name and a few other things. The clothes and items that you use also affect the attributes of your character. You can also take a custom character online.

As for multiplayer mode, you are given two options, normal and special versus. Normal is simply a normal mode, where status effects are not played. So items don't mean anything. Special versus is where the clothes you have chosen have status effects that work. Interestingly, there is no tag-team mode.

You can also play online, either casual or ranked. Latency will affect gameplay, making moves much more difficult to time.

So what is my opinion on the game? As the title implies, I'm not completely satisfied. Yes, the graphics are great, the gameplay is still there and you do get more characters, but I think a lot of additions are unnecessary.

The critical finishes that they've worked in the game rarely happen and contribute nothing to the gameplay. The character creation mode is where you can play Barbie, but again, not necessary. The female characters in the game do not need to have implants and revealing outfits. The singleplayer modes don't impress me over how SC2 did it. The multiplayer modes are pitiful. They added tag-teaming in singleplayer, yet fail to include it for multiplayer.

Online play is painful, especially if you have a slow character. Fast characters can spam their moves and interrupt fighters that operate slowly. Now you are supposed to counter these pokes with guard impacts, but that technique requires timing, which the online latency makes impossible.

If you want to get the Soul Calibur experience at a fair price, I highly suggest picking up older versions, Soul Calibur 3 if you want, or Soul Calibur 2 if you have a Xbox. The change isn't too great. The online mode is the only thing that sets SC4 apart, but that is flawed. As of now, the latency makes playing slower characters an unnecessary and frustrating challenge.

The best way to play this game, as well as all fighting games is with a competent buddy in your living room. The core game itself is very strategic, where pattern recognition and applying counters is a key part of the game. Soul Calibur sets itself apart form other fighters because it's not execution that wins the game, but strategic decisions that determine the outcome.

Overall, it doesn't reinvent the series and if you have older games, the game only feels like a patch. I would only get this game to play online. Otherwise, I would purchase an older copy, save myself $50 or so and still experience 90% of what Soul Calibur 4 is.

This is my favorite SoulCalibur to date, not least of the reasons being the ability to play not one but TWO characters from the Star Wars universe! The great thing about the 360 edition is that you get both a Jedi and a Sith, while the PS3 gets two Sith. And come on, you get Yoda! YODA!! Plus, I feel that putting Darth Vader's Secret Apprentice into SC4 was perhaps the greatest marketing move of all time, because thanks to his stellar performance, I have now preordered Force Unleashed! Another notable newcomer is the extra character Shura, who is incredibly lethal with her twin katanas.

Other than that, SC4 seems to be a bit confused on whether it wants to be a fighting game or a role playing game. Both the preset and the custom characters gain LEVELS, and custom ABILITIES, based on their STATISTICS. SC3 featured weapon effects, but SC4 takes that system to a whole new level of dizzying complexity. Your armor now has stats, forcing you into the old MMO dilemma of looking good vs fighting good. There is a precarious balance to be had between making a character look the way you want, and them being able to do the things you want. Sometimes this comes down to sacrificing important stats, like you HP. Yes, I've made characters with default 50% hp whose Attack rating was so low they may as well have been using a plastic sword, but damn they were hot! Oh well, just means you have to learn to fight better... or unlock better armor. Truly the sky's the limit as far as customizing characters goes. I've made Drizzt and Entreri (Forgotten Realms), and my Griffith and Guts (Berserk) tag team is cleaning house in the Tower of Souls!

So, to summarize:

PROS
- Jedi and Sith Star Wars characters with Force powers!
- Same fluid fighting system that you know and love plus extra strategic features like (non-permanent) equipment destruction and critical finish.
- Beautiful graphics.
- Gigantic roster of characters.
- Unprecedented customizability.
- RPG elements like levels, statistics, and abilities.

CONS
- RPG elements like levels, statistics, and abilities.
- Can't give custom characters the extra characters' fighting styles (ex: lightsaber, dual katanas, ball-on-a-stick err thing).
- Less interesting backgrounds than SC3.
- Only one anime-pretty male face option.
- Can't adjust height.
- Can't sit back and watch your characters duel each other in Versus mode like in SC3.
- Other petty things.

The Pros far outweigh the Cons, though. If you don't like the abilities/effects, you can turn them off in Versus mode. I, for one, am completely in love with this game and would reccommend it to anyone who enjoys fighting games.

Soul Calibur 4 - Circa 2008

GOOD:
- Good/Tight controls.
- Overall balanced gameplay.
- Tons of different and unique fighters.
- Minutes to learn years to master type gameplay.
- Lots content to unlock such as new Fighters, costume pieces, stages, and extra modes of play - this might keep you busy for some time.
- All returning characters from Soul Calibur 1, 2 and 3 have their move sets/styles upgraded and slightly changed sometimes.
- Two new Soul Calibur fighters Hilde a woman Knight who uses a lance and a new playable boss called Algol. Also note there is a few bonus characters designed by Japanese manga artists and the inclusion of two Star Wars characters.
- Build your own unique characters from tons of costume items (and you can change the colors on any one of these items as well). You can pretty much make any character you want. Also you can edit the clothing of any of the regular fighters as well.
- Finally be able to play Soul Calibur online over Xbox Live (note this is only for Gold users).

BAD:
- A lot of the cheesy/easy win moves discovered in Soul Calibur 3 are back and there are some new ones are well. This is really a pain online and worse with laggy.
- The story is total nonsense and thankfully be just ignored.
- Laggy online, while this is more of an issue with your internet connection if you don't have a strong connection your gonna see lots of lag online.

IF IT FITS YOUR TASTE:
- Has medieval theme, both European and Chinese/Japanese.
- Not traditional fighting game in the sense that there is no real combos and or supers, and there is limited projectile moves.
- Fight with weapons, like a 3D Samurai Showdown type of game or a Tekken/Dead or Alive with weapons.
- A 3D fighting game that really uses the 3D space (with eight way run).
- Build your own unique characters (pretty much costume only, you pick a pre-set fighting style) and fight with them in Versus, Tower, as well as online modes, (Lots of the new items and costume parts should be unlock to really get a better selection of costume accessories, not much to pick at default).
- Have to unlock most of the game content like fighters, stages and items through many different modes of play, which takes time and skill (some people do not have either and will be upset with this).
- Tower modes help you earn in-game money to unlock stuff. This tower mode is broken down into two different areas. The first Ascending the tower has you playing matches against the CPU in harder and harder matches and you can save and rest at the end of every level. Descending now has you doing a similar trial but you can not save after each level, since it more like endurance encounters.
- Earn in-game money (like in Tower mode and playing ranked online matches) to unlock tons and tons of stuff from new fighters to new costume items for your custom character, or art work and videos.
- A new finished system makes it so if you get enough powerful hits on your opponent with our being interrupted you can now do a splashy finisher type move to them, wining the match.

GAME ITS MOST ASSOCATED TOO:
- Soul Calibur 3
- Tekken 6
- Samurai Showdown

ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- The Premium edition comes with the game, a download code for more exclusive costume items, a real world t-shirt (with Yoda on it), a mini comic, art book and it all comes in a metal case for save keeping.
- There are a few download packs for this game in terms of new costume pieces and weapons, but be careful some downloads for this game are nothing more then unlocks for content already found within the game. There is also a download the add music from the first Soul Calibur game from Dreamcast.
- There are two Star Wars characters in Soul Calibur 4, Yoda the little green Jedi master from the movies and The Apprentice from the game Star Wars: Force Unleashed. These new Star Wars characters can use Force abilities (limited use energy use but they can recharge). There is no real good reason (story wise) for these characters to be in this game.
- Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies and who was once only exclusive on the PS3 version is now a Download for the Xbox 360 version.

This collector's edition comes with a ton of extras, and while the box it came in isnt huge, they crammed a lot into it. Shirt, poster/tourney chart, pen, comic, code, game. Plus the game itself is fun to play, and has excellent graphics. Controls are a bit difficult on some of the charachters I want to play, but other than that no real complaints.

The game is one of the best balanced fighting game for the summer.The graphics are very nice and the stages are very eyecandy due to very detailed representation. The games offers a lot of unlockables and a big list of characters to choose from. Even you can customize you own character , plus other features of the game. I recommend this game for people who likes to challenge other players to see which one is mightier.
Also online versus mode is very efficient.

This game is very polished and balanced, and I think fans of fighting games as well as casual gamers can enjoy it. Novice and expert fighters seem to have close battles more often, unlike Dead or Alive where experts always clobber novices, or the opposite end in Smash Bros. where the battles can be very random. Also you can make your own character and the online mode is pretty good, but not amazing. There's no online tag team and it's one-on-one fights only, but at least you can spectate when it's not your turn and there's not a lot of lag. Unlocking things like new weapons, characters, stages, and clothes is very rewarding.

The graphics deserve special mention. They're probably the best I've seen in a video game ever, with emotive and nuanced facial animation, antialiasing, blur, heat effects, and 1080p running at 60 fps. If you have an HDTV, this game will surely impress. The sound isn't nearly as amazing but there are some catchy songs in the soundtrack and the voice overs and weapon effects are decent. Yoda and the Apprentice are cheap, but beatable and it didn't seem as important as many other reviewers said it was.