Soulcalibur III (Sony PlayStation 2, 2005)

SoulCalibur 3 is a bit of a disappointment. Having played SC1 And SC2 for innumerable hours, I had the highest hopes for this third installment. Even after playing a few rounds, after soaking in the admittedly gorgeous visuals, I knew something was amiss. While the game blazes brave new trails in the fighting genre, its mechanics fall short.

You can't blame Project Soul for trying some unique ideas. The strategy-based single-player adventure is surprisingly deep, and creating your own fighters is a blast. New items are unlocked through completing various in-game objectives, adding hundreds of pieces for your customizable heroes (or abominations). The extended play and replay value is immense.

But will you really want to persevere SC3's trials for all that extra booty? The game mechanics, when compared to the superb SC2, feel...well...off. Veterans will notice significant changes to their favorite fighters, as move lists and combos have been altered. The spectacular graphics--the particle effects and interactive arenas are top-notch--result in brief seconds of slowdown, which can be disorienting. These may be minor annoyances to newcomers, but returning players will need hours of practice before SC3 feels natural.

Then there are the new game modes. As this wasn't an arcade release, the Arcade mode is gone, replaced by a tedious story mode laden with boring cut-scenes and infuriating load-screens. The tournament mode works well, as does the highly technical training mode. The new strategy game kinda sucks. It's more than a bit boring, an incredibly shallow overworld game with a smattering of anticlimactic SC fights. It's confusing. It's lame.

But who really cares about all that? You get to create your own fighters from thousands of unlockable pieces. You get to fight against your friends using your homemade souls. You get to play a solid, albeit pretentious, fighting game. For less than twenty bucks, that's not so bad.

Soul Calibur, one of the best fighting games, returns!

Many people I've knowwn and talked to, even if they do not like fighting games in general, they still like Soul Calibur. Soul calibur has always had something special to it. Story is rich and intriguing, characters and weapons are very interesting. Soul Calibur 3 returns with most of the old characters we knew, and some new ones.

You can get to know the history of the characters better by going through the "Tales of souls" single player mode, which will let you choose paths and determine where you go to and who you fight.

The Versus mode allows you to challenge your friend for some fun competition. This is a good game to play hanging out with your friends. And the combat system is excellent- Lots of combos and strategy involved, can't really be a good player just by button mashing.

The "Chonicle of Souls" mode is a combination of RTS and Soul Calibur fights. I found that mode a bit boring, but you basically have to play it to unlock some of the unlockables.

One of the best features of this game is the character creation mode. Finally you can make your own character for Soul Calibur! And the costume options are vast! (Albeit, it takes time to unlock them).

This is a game I would recommend to everyone, Old and New Soul Calibur fans, and even those who have not heard of Soul Calibur yet want to try a really good fighting game.

I bought this game because I found out you could customize your own character. There are plenty of customizable items to choose from for your character or Characters.
Tales of the Soul are pretty cool because you get to choose the path of the character, and it's usually different each time.
The World Competition gets harder as you go, I swept my first tourney, but I got lost in my second tourney only 3 fights from the championship. It's definitely challenging.
My Favorite part of the game is the Chronicles of the Sword. It's like a Strategy game with original stage fighting. It's easy for the first 5-6 chapters or so, but then it gets more challenging. I always try to defeat the Soulcalibur characters to up levels quicker, but they are challenging especially if they are in their towers that contain special situations. Plus you unlock more customizable items and special weapons by playing Chronicles of the Sword.
Overall it's a great game that I can play for hours. I recommend it for all video games lovers!

Soul Calibur III is a good game. It may not be leaps and bounds better (or really all that different) from Soul Calibur II, but it's still great. Fighting games don't get much better than this, so...
WHY didn't they put it online? There's really no excuse for that at this point. Tekken 5 was fairly bashed for not including online support, but by now it should be considered standard; especially from Namco, arguably the best company in this genre.

The game Mortal Kombat Deception was online ready, and even though it is nowhere NEAR as good, I've found I've played it more (and enjoyed it more) simply because I can play people on the internet.

All of that aside, Soul Calibur III doesn't really bring all that much to the table this time around. There's a few new characters, plus a very restricted "make your own character" mode (which is quite cool nonetheless). The graphics are, as always, incredible. The gamplay is still solid, even if they did do some unnecessary tweaks to the parrying system.
Another major gripe would be the fact that it would seem the game was not tested enough. Certain characters have noticable advantages over others in general mechanics this time around - especially with the "make your own" characters. There's also a glitch that allows one of the new characters to throw you repeatedly that you cannot defend against.
All of this, and the fact that the vital aspect of online support is missing completely, do not make this game worth purchasing. If you already have Soul Calibur 2, you're not getting much more with this one. The game was obviously rushed, and Namco needs to know that the inclusion of online support is NECESSARY for fighting games at this point. Their decision to exclude it is baffling.

It's not much different from Soul Calibur II with character attacks and overall battle system, but it as some enjoyable new features.

The Tales of Souls selection works similar to the story mode in Soul Calibur II except this time each character has his or her own story. You can make different decisions during that will lead the story in different directions. The cut scenes can have different outcomes depending on whether you input the command (ie during a cut scene where a character sneaks up on you, the screen shows a command to press the guard button, input the command successfully you don't take damage).

The character creation feature is pretty cool, being able to create a custom character and all. Custom characters can be played in the Soul Arena and VS modes. Still, I prefer playing the different main characters of Soul Calibur.

Chronicles of the Sword is a one-player mode with objective is to make a character using the custom character creation system and play it through a story. It begins with the player starting out as a rookie commander for the Grandall Empire. The basis is the player's troops are minimized and they move like board game pieces, so it's more of a strategy mode vs the typical fighter mode. I don't care for that style of game play myself.

It's still a fun game in the Soul series and has plenty to offer for players new and familiar with the series.