![]() ![]() Ivy has received a major overhaul as well, giving her three base stances depending whether her sword is in solid, whip, or coiled state not to mention completely reworking her command throws. Taki more or less receives tweaks and refinements while Tira, for example, now changes moods mid-fight which affects how her combos pan out. I kinda wish that was still in the game, but it doesn't affect the fighting that much (I used it more for aesthetics when I could get away with it.) And of course, new moves are introduced for old characters some more drastic than others. In SCII Taki had a nice little 8-way run combo, 2,2+A,A,A, that looked cool (kinda useless against veteran players, but served me well against everyone else). Do I miss the deleted moves? The static uppercut from the above example? Nope. In fairness, SCIII tried this and felt like a step back from II however, IV feels far more polished and solid. The static uppercut was axed, and the combo-able uppercut replaces it entirely. For example, in SCII Taki's 3+B* was a static uppercut move, while 1,1+B* could be chained into her possession stance for more options. The aforementioned introspection extended even into the fighting engine where the excessive number of (mostly useless) moves from Soul Calibur II are consolidated into a smaller list. Do the character's outfits look god-awful? Indeedy-do! Now ask me how the game plays. Did Namco skimp on the extra features? Oh, absolutely! Is the story complete and utter nonsensical crap like most other games (especially fighting games) that hit #4 (technically #5) in the series? You bet. I want to play a fighting game that cuts through the crap, cuts through the superficial fluff, cuts through the cheap propaganda I want a fighting game to focus once again on fighting. Especially with how fighting games lately have decided to throw everything at the player (including the kitchen sink) to the point that the core fighting elements feel more and more neglected (Soul Calibur III, MK Armageddon). With a few glaring exceptions (Yoda, Vader, Apprentice, Bonus Characters I'm looking at you), Soul Calibur IV is what I've been waiting for from a fighting game for some time now. The Tutorial would have been nice to keep for newcomers, and an adjustable difficulty would be just dandy in case players get bored of fighting the ridiculously easy AI (I guess this is a step up from SCIII's ridiculously unforgiving AI.) I would trade all the guest and bonus characters for those two features, but whatever. It feels like Soul Calibur did some serious introspection - a line by line audit of all its features - and asked itself, "Do I really need this to be a good fighting game?" A noble, if flawed, effort. Say goodbye to "Versus Team Battle", "Battle Theater" where you could set the computer to fight itself, the Tutorial (?), the extra fighting styles from SCIII's Create a Soul feature, and curiously also missing is the ability to adjust the difficulty in Arcade Mode (?!). ![]() Gone is the pointless (not to mention redundant) "Time Attack" mode. Over and over I found myself asking that same question does it really matter? Gone is the "Soul Arena" and the fancy battles where you collect coins, fight a giant statue. The point of the game is the interactive exchange and not watching pretty cinematics. Then after a moment, I thought does it really matter? This is a fighting game. Namco only featured a sparse handful of characters whereas previous entries have showcased all the characters. When I first popped in SCIV and watched the obligatory opening cinematic, I felt a twinge of disappointment. ![]()
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