Soul Calibur

by Namco

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00000K125
• Item Weight: 5 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: September 9, 1999
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (268 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,262 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Editorial Review

Featuring graphics that surpass even the amazing NFL 2K, Soul Calibur is the martial arts fighting game to end all fighting games and the game to get if you're a Dreamcast owner. Based on the arcade classic of the same name, Soul Calibur lets you choose to represent one of 10 fighters in a series of battles against your peers. If you can successfully defeat all of your opponents, you will then face the fiendish Inferno in a final showdown that will determine the fate of the world. Each of the game's warriors is armed with a different deadly weapon--sword, ax, stave, nunchaku, you name it--and an assortment of special moves all tailored to that specific weapon. The warriors include men, women, and creatures from all over the globe and from various mythologies. Each is brought to life with amazing motion-capture animation, which results in incredibly lifelike and realistic duels. If you own a Dreamcast or are thinking of buying one, do yourself a favor and add Soul Calibur to your collection. --Mike Ryan

Pros:

• Exceptionally lifelike graphics and animation
• Multiple game modes--1-player, 2-player, team, computer vs. computer, martial arts demo, and more
• Secrets and extra features will keep players coming back

Cons:

• May be too violent for some parents

GameSpot Review

Let's get one thing out of the way: Soul Calibur is the best 3D fighting game ever released in the arcades. Better than Virtua Fighter 3. Better than Tekken 3. If that weren't enough, the Dreamcast version one-ups the original arcade release in just about every way imaginable. Now that we've established that, let's explore why, and what it is about the Dreamcast version that raises the bar on fighting games in general.

From its debut at the 1998 Electronics Entertainment Expo, tucked away in a remote corner of Namco's booth, it was obvious that Soul Calibur was something special. Namco had pushed the PlayStation-based System 12 hardware farther than anyone had a right to expect from such a modest chipset. Namco took what it had learned from Tekken 3 and built on the ambitious, but limited, Soul Edge fighting engine. Soul Calibur was not only a substantial leap in graphics, but in gameplay as well. Employing a new eight-way directional system in conjunction with a physics engine that took weapon weight into account, Soul Calibur's gameplay reached new heights in both complexity and depth. Perhaps one of the most crucial additions was the inclusion of the tech-roll found in Tekken 3. No more lying on the ground as your opponent rained down attacks from the sky. Just a quick tap of the guard button and you were back on your feet, quick as a whistle. Graphically, the game was a fireworks display of particle effects, complex polygonal character models, and a light-sourcing tour de force, all running at a blazing 60 frames-per-second.

The short of it is, if you haven't played Soul Calibur, you need to. For sheer adrenaline working in tandem with eye-melting graphics, nothing could touch it. What then, does the Dreamcast version (Namco's first "real" game developed for archrival Sega in ages) of Soul Calibur do to leapfrog past its arcade counterpart in every way possible?

To begin with, the most obvious enhancement are the graphics. Despite the lack of a prerendered FMV intro, the likes of which we're used to seeing from Namco, the opening offered here will drop more jaws than Muhammed Ali. Think of the intros usually seen in Capcom games like Marvel vs. Capcom, but rendered in full, hi-res, 60fps 3D (with a splash of Samurai Shodown thrown in for good measure), and you're not even close to imagining how awesome the intro to Soul Calibur for the DC looks. Picture a first-person camera zooming in over some sandy horizon, as weapons slam into the foreground. Keep going until the weapons are replaced by a swiftly approaching Kilik (the staff user in SC). Trigger an impressive sequence of character cameos and a dynamic soundtrack, and there you have it. This has to be seen in person to appreciate. It looks so good it might as well be CG, because five years ago, graphics like these were impossible.

The reason the arcade version couldn't be ported home to the PlayStation was due to hardware limitations. Despite the fine conversion of Tekken 3 to the PlayStation, Soul Calibur on System-12 used an extremely high amount of RAM to enable effects like Z-buffering and other processor-taxing effects - effects that were not present in Tekken 3. The Dreamcast, on the other hand, represented the perfect solution to Namco's problems. With hardware roughly ten times as powerful as the PlayStation, the DC can not only manage Soul Calibur's graphic fireworks, but also enhance them by leaps and bounds. With characters boasting not only improved polygon counts, but high-resolution textures, each member of Soul Calibur moves around each stage looking larger, tougher, more solid, and more detailed than ever before. For example, Astaroth's alternate costume sprouts Godzilla-like spikes out of his back (these spikes wobble as he moves), along with a tall Alfalfa-esque hairdo that swings and sways depending on what direction he's moving in. Soul Edge alumni and Siegfried's alter ego, Nightmare, wields the Soul Edge itself, with an eyeball set in the center that looks around at the proceedings independently of the sword. Details like hair, clothing, and accessories all move in rhythm with an extremely realistic physics model. Improving the quality of the characters wasn't enough for Namco's programmers though. They also added a muscle-flexing system that causes pectorals to ripple during victory poses, breasts and buttocks to jiggle realistically (read: subtle, not exaggerated as in Dead or Alive), and skin to stretch in a most natural way, with not a polygon tear in sight. These characters look incredible, and some benefit from the enhancements more than others (Lizardman's tail no longer looks like a polygonal mess). Everything looks perfectly smooth (especially faces), with minimal blockiness, putting the models in VF3tb to shame. This is an extremely solid-looking game. The characters have also been outfitted with an extensive set of facial expressions that add greatly to the game experience. Take Mitsurugi, for example. With every sword slash accompanied by a grunt or yell, his face synchronizes the appropriate expression as well. Even during win poses, each character mouths his own victory speech. Even little things like fingers are individually rendered.

Weapons are also impressive enough to simply sit back and watch: The blades on Voldo's twin katars move independently; Kilik's bo flexes with each swing; and metallic weapons like Mitsurugi's sword feature specular highlighting (think Gran Turismo, but better) that reflects the environment around it. Other things, like head tracking, dust clouds kicked up by the characters' feet, and amazing real-time shadows (check out Ivy's flaccid whip-sword in practice mode for a good idea of how cool simple shadows can be), round out the visual impact. Soul Calibur is so detail-intensive that even your character's breath can be seen on some stages. --James Mielke
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soul Calibur, January 7, 2001

By 

jakep86 (Iowa, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soul Calibur (Video Game)

Wow. I pride myself on my vocabulary skills but this is the only one-word definition I could come up with for this game. Soul Calibur is the best fighting game ever made...hands down. It also ranks in my top five favorite video games of all time, which is saying a lot because I've played hundreds of games. Now that I've said that, I can get down to the big question: why should you spend your hard earned cash on this game? I'll tell you why...

Graphically, Soul Calibur has some of the best visuals on any system, including PS2. The first time I saw this game in action I was amazed. I've simply never played a game that looks this good. The character animation is incredibly lifelike, both during fighting and in the pre-rendered opening and victory scenes. The backgrounds are very realistic and add to the overall atmosphere of the game.

The music is well done and the sound effects are tremendous. The sounds of blade hitting blade, blade hitting air, and blade hitting flesh are dead-on accurate. I mean I've never actually heard somebody being hacked into with a broadsword in real life, but I'm willing to bet that it would sound pretty close to the sound you hear in Soul Calibur. Other impressive sound effects are the character voices both during and between battles. From the grunts and roars of the hulking Astoroth to the Bruce Lee-esque high-pitched hooting and hollering of the nunchaku-swinging Maxi, these characters come to life.

Control is extremely tight and responsive. Which makes it a lot easier to learn new moves. Every move in the game is easily accessible through the in-fight move menu. Just push pause during a battle and the entire arsenal of moves for your character is available for the taking. The characters are also very well balanced each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

There are 19 characters in all, although nine of them must be unlocked through beating the game in arcade and mission modes. It's through all of the unlocking hidden characters, levels, costumes, options, art cards, game modes, etc., that the game shows its true depth. Each character has his/her own unique weapons and fighting styles. Each character also has hundreds (yes, hundreds) of attacks, combos, and special moves to keep you coming back for more.

As if you needed any more reason to pick this game up, I will mention that the menu system is very streamlined and straight-forward, the two-player mode is a blast, the art gallery is surprisingly well done, the story lines are more than adequately interesting, and at the recently discounted price you'd have to be crazy to pass this one up...Wow.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch., July 10, 2000

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Soul Calibur (Video Game)

Beautiful graphics and music, unbelievably diverse range of character (all well balanced in ability), mind-boggling extra options...all these were to be expected of the company that brought us the superlative Tekken games. And Soul Calibur exceeds these expectations.

I've never mastered the game, finding the 3D system hard to adjust to, and I still dislike fighting games that use the block button (eg. Mortal Kombat) instead of the Street Fighter system. Also, the game endings in Soul Calibur are on the flimsy side, with beautiful hand-drawn art for all the characters, but somewhat unsatisfying story endings for many of them (Astaroth and Lizardman, for example). But this is cosmetic. despite my lack of skill in this game, I keep coming back to it. And like in the Tekken games, the intuitative control scheme allows for much improvisation so that even if you're an amateur 3D-fighter player like me, there's still plenty you can do. All in all, even though I'll probably never master this game, it's still a lot of fun. And that's all I ask!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Believe the hype, but believe the reviews too, November 25, 1999

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Soul Calibur (Video Game)

Believe the hype, SoulCalibur is the real deal. It is...exactly what everyone has been saying it is, and more: a truly stunning game visually, extremely fun in single-player mode, not hard to catch on to, etc. However, the reviewer (below) who gave it only two-stars has a very valid point. Button-mashing is rewarded, often quite frustratingly (wanna make people really mad? Use Kilik and just press Y and up repeatedly. You'll see... ;). However, I disagree that the veteran cannot overcome this. One of the best parts of the game is that every character has an implicit weakness--the strong players are slowest, the fast players weakest, the longer-range attacks are slow-developing, etc.--and therefore it is up to the opponent to find and exploit it. I've played this game one-on-one with friends upwards of 48 hours combined and there is not yet one dominant character or player. That is indicative of a well-balanced game, I think.

So believe the hype, buy the game, and remember: every diamond has a flaw, if you closely enough. In the end, though, it's still a diamond.