Collection essentials #466: SoulCalibur (DC)

Namco was one of the great early arcade video game developers, most notably for creating Pac-Man in 1980. In the 1990s, they remained strong. They were, however, not one of the companies that jumped on the train of creating 2D fighting games when Capcom’s Street Fighter II burst onto the scene in 1991. It took them a few years to take a stab at a fighting game, and rather than do one similar to Street Fighter, they instead opted to make a 3D fighting game called Tekken to compete with Sega’s popular Virtua Fighter. Tekken wound up being a series that received substantial critical and commercial success. Tekken was all about hand-to-hand martial arts, and Namco saw fit to also make another fighting game that was a little different. That game was called Soul Edge, one where all the combatants wielded some kind of weapon. Soul Edge received a PlayStation port which was known in Western territories as “Soul Blade”.

As a side note, you may notice a complete lack of Tekken games in this blog…and that’s because, I have to confess, I’ve barely ever put any time into Tekken! When I was younger, other fighting games with extra flair such as weapons and/or fanciful special moves appealed to me more. I do own a few Tekken games and thought about putting at least one of them on the list, but it just doesn’t feel right talking about a game that I just have very little personal familiarity with. Maybe someday I will spend more time with a Tekken game and see it fit to “essentialize” it.

Soul Blade was a very solid game in its own right, garnering favorable reviews and sales. However, Soul Blade did not make my list, and you probably won’t find a ton of people in the retro gaming community talking about it and playing it in modern times. Why is that? Well, it’s not that Soul Blade isn’t fun to play. I think it’s largely because its sequel, the subject of today’s post, SoulCalibur, came along and completely blew it out of the water, setting a new bar. SoulCalibur basically takes every good idea from Soul Edge/Blade and brings it to near perfection. 

The game features a diverse cast of characters, many of whom return from Soul Edge/Blade, and they are all fully-voiced (though only in Japanese). Every character has their own unique weapon, providing for a wide variety of fighting styles available to players. These weapons range from a variety of swords, to huge axes, to nunchaku, to staffs, and more. 

You have four main buttons during gameplay. One is for horizontal strikes, one for vertical strikes, one for kicks (which are generally weak but fast), and a button for guarding. Pressing two buttons together can unleash a special move, a grab (which gets around blocking) or a “soul charge” which will power up your next attack if the opponent doesn’t disrupt it. Players can block when either standing or crouching. A standing block will stop “high” or “mid” attacks, but not “low attacks”. Blocking while crouching stops “low” attacks and will completely evade “high” attacks, but not “mid” attacks. And thus, a big part of gameplay involves mixing up your attacks well when on offense, and trying to properly react to what moves your opponent uses and reacting accordingly while on defense. This helps make gameplay more dynamic and interesting.

A huge innovation that SoulCalibur brings to the genre is the “8-way run”. 2D fighting games, of course, are (with some rare exceptions) restricted to moving only left or right. Early 3D fighting games did allow for some sidestepping options, but they felt rather limited, and most fighter movement in practice is still to the left or right. SoulCalibur introduces a much greater ability to simply move in eight different directions, making it “feel” much more like a 3D experience. This greatly affects gameplay, and as I stated before, you have a whole button dedicated to horizontal attacks which become much more significant with 3D movement because they can catch opponents who are trying to sidestep all the time. 

The home console version of SoulCalibur introduces a significant amount of modes and content, featuring a single-player mode with many mission-based objectives that get progressively more difficult. There are plenty of unlockables to serve as rewards, such as playable characters and easter eggs such as the ability to customize which characters appear in the cinematic opening of the game. The power of the Dreamcast was really shown off with this game, as this version was straight-up better than the arcade version, not only because of new modes, but because the graphics were not only equalled but even surpassed. 

SoulCalibur was an important launch title for the Dreamcast in the West and a major part of the console’s initial success. It released to near-perfect critical acclaim, and in fact it is currently tied for the second-highest Metacritic score of all-time, only behind The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I believe it was just the second game (after OoT) to receive a perfect 10 out of 10 score from the popular web site GameSpot, whose review was headlined with “Think state of the art.”

Is SoulCalibur still such a jaw-dropping incredible game? Well, it’s still very good and highly enjoyable, but perhaps not quite as awe-inspiring as when it was first released. That’s simply because many other 3D fighting games, such as its own sequels, have had their chance to shine since then. There’s still plenty of merit to playing SoulCalibur nowadays, but I can’t think of too much that it would be a real shame to miss out on if you pass on it in favor of other games in the series.

As for my own experience, I did get to see SoulCalibur back in the day here and there, but not a whole lot. It was actually its sequel that became especially popular in my social circle, which is a story for another day. After playing that game, I went back and revisited this one, and found that it did hold up very well and was worth my time.

SoulCalibur is a game I look back on very fondly, and it’s still fun to pick up and play whenever I choose to do so. It represents a huge step forward in the genre, and pretty much anyone who was into arcade games or Dreamcast games back in the day ought to be familiar with it. Even though I have more of a history with and fondness for the sequel, this Dreamcast original is still a definite essential in my book.