Product Description

The world's premier weapon based fighting game franchise returns to deliver a true next generation fighting experience. Set to finally reveal the origins of the Soulcalibur saga, Soulcalibur IV features both new and familiar faces from across the galaxy, seeking the rival swords for vengeance, honor and salvation. In a monumental alliance, legendary Star Wars icons, Darth Vader and Yoda invade the Soulcalibur IV continues the series' tradition of reinventing, enhancing and breaking new boundaries. Now the world's favorite fighting game redefines the entire genre for the next generation of both new, and fiercely loyal Soulcalibur fans.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #753 in Video Games
• Brand: Namco
• Model: 21005
• Published on: 2008-07
• Released on: 2008-07-29
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .57" h x 5.42" w x 7.54" l, .33 pounds

Features

• Unleash the Force: Iconic Star Wars characters, Sith Lord Darth Vader and Jedi Master Yoda challenge the Soulcalibur fighters for the future of the powerful swords. Experience the legendary Soulcalibur level of graphics now in 720p HD resolution for the fi
• Take the Fight Online: For the first time ever, fight opponents around the world online in multiple versus modes.
• The Ultimate Roster: Battle with classic Soulcalibur character, exciting newcomers or customize your own unique fighter.
• New Fighting System Elements: Exciting new fighting game elements including the Active Matching Battle System and the ability to execute devastating critical strikes.
• Multiple Gameplay Modes: Experience Soulcalibur with Story, Arcade, Tower of Reminiscence, Training Practice, Character Creation, and Museum View modes.

Amazon.com

The Classic Fighter Returns

Return to witness the epic struggle between the spirit sword, Soul Calibur, and the cursed sword, Soul Edge, in Soul Calibur IV. Warriors from far reaches of the galaxy battle to control the powerful swords and use them for their own goals. Should these fighters succeed, they will face the ultimate judgment. The ongoing story continues with new revelations, exciting new gameplay features and stunning visuals. And perhaps most exciting of all, a character from the Star Wars universe will also make an appearance.

Key Features Newest addition to the Soul Calibur series features thrilling next-gen graphics brimming with intensity Continues the struggle between the spirit sword, Soul Calibur, and the cursed sword, Soul Edge Features the legendary Yoda as a guest character Expanded customization options let you give your character a personalized look and specific abilities Take both customized characters and original favorites online for the first time Exclusive Special Characters Beloved Star Wars legend Jedi Master Yoda appears as a guest character in the Xbox 360 version of Soul Calibur IV. In addition to that thrilling fact, you'll also discover expanded customization options that let you bestow your character with a personalized look and specific abilities. And, for the first time, you'll be able to take both customized characters and original favorites online to challenge an entire world of fans. Completely reinvented but with the same intensity you've come to know, Soul Calibur IV provides an adventure that never disappoints.

Thrilling Next-Gen Graphics View Image Online Challenges! View Image

Customer Reviews

Solid release from IMHO, the best fighting game series out there, but not worth $60
If you've played any of the other Soul Calibur games, this game plays pretty much the same way. The reason this series is so much better than the other series out there I feel is the ability to, blow-to-blow, attack your opponent with series of attacks that do not involve memorizing a long string of commands like in the Tekken series. That said, this game is basically Soul Calibur III plus some small enhancements (outside of HD graphics) that I personally don't notice that much.

This is a really simple fighting game to pick up for first-timers, and there is almost always a character and a fighting style to suit your desire. Really, the only two very similar characters in the game are Siegfried and Nightmare, apparently for a good reason if you know a bit about the forgettable story.

Some specific notes:

Gameplay: Single player - A- ; Multiplayer (local + online) - A
First off, I don't believe games like these aren't really meant to be bought for single player. Clearly, you'd expect to practice your game in your time so that you can lay down the law against your friends on multiplayer modes.

AI is reasonably intelligent in this game, outside of being very simple in the earlier levels on the Normal difficulty setting. Higher up in difficulty, the AI plays defense very well, and this can get really frustrating, sometimes even forcing you to abandon normal attacks and to go for grapples, which for some reason the AI is pretty bad at countering.

Otherwise, when playing your friends, this is not exactly one of those fighting games that you can button-mash and expect to win. Definitely some skill and practice is involved, and the smoothness of the fights and the transitions from blow to blow make this THE fighting game to get.

Online gameplay is smooth and overall as good as the local multiplayer experience. I have not experienced any issues with lag or skippy gameplay. My only complaint here is how selecting "Quick Match" in ranked has the tendency to just match you with someone who has an open game. As a game creator, you can select the level of players you intend to play against. As a level 1 trying out the online game, I got put into too many matches against level 60+ and got slaughtered.

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Story: C
This is the the only reason I am giving this game four stars. For a game that seems to promote its story about the struggle between an evil sword and a cleansing sword (assuming I even understand it right), especially from the moment the trailers hit TV screens nationwide, this game does a terrible job of incorporating the story into the game. This said, most fighting games that even have storylines do terrible jobs at integrating the story into the game as well.

If you are looking for a fighting game with a pretty nicely integrated storyline, the best that I can think of are the WWE Smackdown series. In this game, the story consists of short cutscenes between fights that hint at the location of the next fight, and maybe short snide remarks that the characters say at each other right as the fight is about to begin (that in most cases don't even seem to make any logical sense together).

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Overall, this is a great fighting game to have. It's purely that and nothing more. Expect to play single player mode quite a bit in order to unlock characters and items. The real fun of this game really comes from multiplayer modes. I think that fronting $60 may be a stretch for this game unless you're really into this series.

What's Within Your Soul?
What's within your soul? Do you have what it takes to defeat the deadliest warriors in the universe in order to possess the awesome power of the Soul Calibur? Are your mental and physical skills up to the challenge of facing other warrior-wannabes in online play?

If so, then I highly recommend that you purchase this game. One play-through and your soul will be changed forever. Complete the missions, and you will be on your way to becoming a TRUE WARRIOR!

Ok, enough of the corny stuff. Soul Calibur IV is an awesome game. For solitary players, it offers the following adventures. Story, Tower of Lost Souls, and Arcade. The Story mode is similar to what we've known over the years. Each fighter goes through his or her unique story, fight battles, and then reach their own unique story ending. Arcade should also be familiar to most soul calibur veterans. Basically, you pick your fighter and fight through stages until you battle The Apprentice. Upon beating The Apprentice, which is easier said than done, you get to fight this strange guy (strange, even by SC standards!) called Algol. Algol reminds me of Necrid from SC2. Tower of Lost Souls is an advanced stage. Basically, you want to be very comfortable with your chosen characters' move sets before you set out for the Tower. I suggest that you play through Story and Arcade modes with your favorite/created characters before going to the Tower. You want to be able to use helpful skills, as well as the best weapons, in order to play through the Tower. The weapons can be expensive to purchase. Hence, the need to play for cash first. Tower of Lost Souls is somewhat similar to Weapon Master from SC2. Basically, you play against the CPU.

Character Creation is back! This time, your model will look like one of the main characters in the game. You can outfit your model with armors, head gear, etc. You can even strip Sophitia and the other ladies down to their bikini, if you want! Bear in mind though that although that's eye candy, leaving your character without armor will lower their stats. In SC4, the armor affects the character stats.

Are the characters "balanced", in terms of fighting effectiveness in versus play? From what I have seen so far, they seem to be. My experience in Versus play is limited though. Does the CPU play fair in single player mode? Ofcourse not, this is Soul Calibur! Fight The Apprentice in Arcade and you will see how this works against you. Even a good Soul fighter will find themselves repeatedly off-axis. A lot of your moves, especially vertical ones, will miss. However, The Apprentice will usually be on-axis. And he can pull together a long string of moves that is very, very hard to interrupt. I found that a character like Amy, with her 4B is much better against this guy than say, Sophitia. But that's just my style of play, perhaps. Using a player with hard to pull combos, like Ivy, required me to use a lot of throws just to beat The Apprentice. But I lost many, many more battles against this guy than I won.

I have always been a fan of Namco-Bandai. They seem to release games that appeal to me. From Xenosaga, Baten Katos, Eternal Sonata, Tekken, and all the way to the Soul Calibur series. They have a way of making even the characters in a fighting game very endearing.

Yoda or Darth Vader? I have the XBox version of the game, so I get Yoda with my edition. Yoda is fun to play, however, I have read other reviews from people who have both PS3 and XB360 versions of the game that say they prefer Darth Vader on the PS3. I do not have the PS3 version, but let me just say that for fighting games, I prefer the playstation controller to the 360 controller. I have SC2 in PS2 and Xbox versions. I much prefer playing the PS2 version due to the design of the PS controller. But that's just a personal preferrence on my part.

To sum up, this is a great game. SC4 is more technical, and the move sets are a lot deeper than in previous versions of the game. I believe you could play this game for a year, and still find ways to improve your game during the second year. And maybe beyond. The replay value is endless. And if you are very technical and enjoy complication, you will just simply love Ivy. If you thought her move list was extensive in SC3, think again. Learning how to pull off Summon Suffering is a major hobby unto itself! Yeah, I love Soul Calibur! I believe you will also.

Good, but lacking compared to SC2
I thought this game was marvelous at first. The fighting is fun, and if you memorize just a few simple button combos you can play well with any character! The character customization is also top-notch and really does a good job of allowing players to create the character of their dreams... or nightmares. However, I do wish the customization had more face and voice options, that would have made it much better. Darth Vader is also an awesome character and I highly recommend downloading him, though Yoda is a completely useless character as any battle with him ends with either cheapness from Yoda or cheapness from the opponent.

The big problem I had is that, compared to Soul Calibur 2, this game was severely lacking in the game modes department. It has the normal VS battles, an average survival mode, and a bare-bones arcade mode. But in SC2 there were many, many modes for versus, survival, and not to mention an amazingly fun story mode where you actually picked your fights off a map screen. The inclusion of many of the vs and surv modes went unused by myself or perhaps used very rarely, but I really enjoyed the fact that the developers added as much as they could fight onto a little dvd.

As a final note, I would like to say that the online VS mode does add hours of fun competing against random opponents, but the inclusion of those extra VS modes would have made online battling much more fun as well. So if this game had a better story mode(right now you go through an arcade mode-style run), more VS battle modes, and more survival modes, it would have definitely gotten a 5/5 from me... too bad...