Soul Fighter

by Dreamcast

Product Details

• ASIN: B00001ZUM9
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,859 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Editorial Review

Red Orb's Dreamcast debut is a quirky mix of simplistic hand-to-hand combat, maze crawling, and power-up eating. And you'll need the strength of a stomach full of soul food to mow down the plethora of townsfolk turned beasties in Soul Fighter. Whack a bad guy, and his soul is put into your magic bottle for safekeeping until you've freed enough souls to pop open the door to the next level.

While on the surface, the game may seem to borrow heavily from the fantasy-action romp Gauntlet Legends, it actually has a lot more in common with old Sega Genesis games such as Streets of Rage. Only instead of a side-scrolling brawler, this game presents the world in stunning 3-D, with a rather fussy camera-angle system that can be detrimental to both gameplay and your full stomach. Still, since the controls are so simplified--with only three main buttons for kick, punch, and jump--it's hard to fault the game for using awkward camera movement to make things more challenging. A rather odd epicurean collection of power-ups uses pig's heads, roasted chickens, and wood-planked fish to boost your strength. Projectile weapons such as crossbows and throwing axes can be uncovered by brashly shattering treasure chests that are strewn about, or by giving some beastly bag of bones a few soul-freeing punts.

Three characters to choose from make the game slightly more deep, but the lack of two- or three-player simultaneous beast-busting is a serious drawback. The level designs are very simple and uninspired, with an odd amount of backtracking required to finish each one. Soul Fighter is by no means original, but it does deliver a limbic system thrill, like a plotless, yet alluringly action-heavy, Jean-Claude Van Damme film. --Jeff Young

Pros:

• Two buttons can unleash a varied and impressive amount of fighting
• Great frame rates and animation
• Easy to pick up, arcade-style gameplay

Cons:

• Motion sickness-inducing camera movement
• Replayability reduced by lack of multiplayer mode
• Tediously drawn-out intro movie

GameSpot Review

Soul Fighter looked like it had a lot going for it. The notion of a Golden Axe-like game in 3D had enormous appeal. Sadly, the 3D component of this seemingly simple concept is what keeps Soul Fighter from being anything more than a mediocre hack-'n'-slash fest. Sporting quite possibly the lamest introductory FMV in the history of gaming, Soul Fighter gets off to a bad start. The intro contains the hammily heartened soliloquy of a poorly rendered, overly gesticulating king. After detailing ad infinitum about a variety of characters and story background that no one will ever care about, he finally gets to the point - you must kill a lot of monsters so you can collect the souls of the former townspeople and return peace to the land of Goma. It's easy to see why people thought Soul Fighter had Golden Axe-like potential, but Soul Fighter doesn't really play anything like the coin-op classic. At its core, Soul Fighter is brawler. Each of the three characters - Altus the fighter, Orion the Wizard, and Sayomi the Assassin - punch and kick their way through each level. As they bash skulls in, their weapons sit idly on their backs as a weapon meter builds. You can draw your weapons at any time, but each strike will reduce your weapon meter. When the weapon meter is drained, the heroes will resheath their weapons once more. For all practical purposes Altus' sword and Sayomi's daggers are the same, dealing lots of close-range damage. Orion's cane is a welcome change, as it hurls spinning waves of flame. Other single-use projectiles, such as throwing knives and axes, can be found as well, along with a variety of other helpful items. Playing Soul Fighter is a chore, thanks to tedious gameplay and even worse control. To start, you cannot complete a level until you've rescued every soul, often requiring you to backtrack quite a bit to find a couple of stragglers. Even with the handy radar/map, this is unnecessary and tedious. To make matters worse, you will fight variously colored variations of the same handful of monsters over and over again, adding to the feeling of tedium and repetition. Many areas of the game's locales are overly dark, making it difficult to navigate and fight, as well. Most notably, however, is the lack of a two-player option. While it was probably omitted due to difficulty implementing a good two-player camera system, the game just screams for multiplayer support and doesn't even deliver an attempt. Soul Fighter's biggest flaw, however, is its control. To start, picking up items or unsheathing your special weapon require an annoying and often difficult-to-pull-off maneuver that combines a direction button and an action button. This is more of a problem when picking up items, as mistiming will cause the your character to move away from the item. What often results is an annoying dance around the desired item, occasionally ending with the item timing out and blinking away. While the punch and kick controls are simple enough, using them within the confines of the game's camera is not. Soul Fighter's camera is best described as "wonky." Constantly wobbling in some fashion, the camera never seems to do what the player wants, and this oftentimes results in cheap hits from surrounding enemies. More often, however, the result is pure frustration. Aesthetically, Soul Fighter is a mixed bag. While the game is crisp and moves smoothly, a lot of this has to do with the low polygon counts of the character models and terrain. While the animation is fluid and realistic, the motions themselves are so ridiculously exaggerated that you will undoubtedly end up laughing in a few instances. Dropped into many of the game's levels are FMV sequences that actually look much worse than the game itself. Aurally, however, Soul Fighter is frightfully bad. The music, when one actually notices it, is stale-to-bad. The sound effects are repetitive and scratchy. Additionally, the game's voices are extremely annoying. You will likely be reaching for the volume control after the fourteenth time you've heard "Oh no!" when you're fighting a boss. Soul Fighter might be worth a rental and nothing more - there's just too much wrong here to justify ownership. While there are definitely worse games out there, Dreamcast owners would be advised to spend their money on something else.--Peter Bartholow--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars SOULESS..save your $$$$, January 12, 2000

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Soul Fighter (Video Game)

i'm sorry but this game is so lame, it makes fighting force 2 look like METAL GEAR. this is what happens when programmers rush a game in time for the holidays. let's see...poor character design, dark & dull graphics, a corny repetitive soundtrack and not to mention the lame ass sean connery impersonation..("GO!")

I HAD WAY MORE FUN PLAYING GAURDIAN HEROES for the defunct SEGA SATURN than this 128 bit mess. if sega releases more crap like SOUL FIGHTER, the DC may die a horrible death, just in time for sony's playstation 2. but luckly that is not the case, cause RE; CODE VERONICA, LEGACY OF KAIN, CARRIER & ZOMBIE REVENGE is on it's way. THANK GOD!

avoid this game at any cost, at least it makes a great coaster or even a mini frisbee..

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No soul or fighting, December 7, 1999

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Soul Fighter (Video Game)

- Confusing camera: in a third person game, the camera is suppose to be directly and above the character. In this game, it's everywhere BUT third person

- Simple fighting combos: punch, punch, kick, taken straight from Dynamite Cop. You can use a sword or axe but only for limited time before it disintegrates. Must have bought them at a garage sale or something.

- Lame graphics: I've never seen a world so shiny and bright. I take it the game designers never heard of atmosphere or mood lighting. Also the characters were taken out of some cheesy 50's horror flick, and move just as badly!

- Sound: Imagine cheesy disco music combined with cheesy pop music. I'd rather listen to that combination from hell then the soundtrack to this game. And the worst part is, you can't shut off the music! What's the point in having an options screen if you can't turn off the music. Plus, if you stay still for 3 seconds, Sean Connery (well someone one sounds somewhat like Sean, maybe his brother Earl) starts yelling "Go!" repeatly and incessantly.

All together you have a game with bad music, bad controls, bad graphics, bad special effects, uh, do you think I used the word "bad" enough?

I thought Dynamite Cop was awful after I finished the entire game in 20 minutes, but I'd rather take 20 minutes of beating up pirates then Earl Connery shouting at me.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Save your money for something better, January 4, 2000

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Soul Fighter (Video Game)

As a fan of both fantasy and video games, I was really looking forward to this title. I had also heard that it was similar to Golden Axe, which was another plus. Within 10 minutes of playing this game I came to regret my purchase.

The game suffers at every level: graphics, sound, and playability. I would say the graphics fall somewhere between the level of Nintendo 64 and the Dreamcast, which while decent are surely not what they should be on the latter. The sound is minimal; I think I remember a few sword clinks and some grunts. What is even worse than the game graphics are the ridiculous cutscenes (not to mention the game's intro, which is nothing short of pathetic), which, graphically, look like they belong on a Playstation. But all this aside, even if I was satisfied with the graphics and sound, the gameplay is the one thing I would not be able to overlook.

Gameplay is not much more than pushing a couple of buttons repeatedly, and so you run around, punch/kick, punch/kick, punch/kick, etc. Once in a while you get to pick up an axe or sword, and then as if by magic you use it a couple of times and it disappears. Also, often you will find yourself backtracking through areas you have already cleared just to find some stupid key/object (this happened to me more than a couple of times). And as is to be expected with this sort of game, here come the same few enemies, over and over and over again.

Conclusion: I would not buy this game ever again, even if it was at half-price.