Collection essentials #566, #567 & #568: SoulCalibur II (PS2, GC & Xbox)

The previous SoulCalibur had made a huge splash in the late ‘90s, first hitting arcades in 1998 and then being one of the most notable Dreamcast games in 1999. The weapons-based fighter from Namco was easy to pick up and play, difficult to master, and had tons of polish, and the Dreamcast release was one of the most critically-acclaimed games of all time. You can read more about that game in my blog post about it. https://samsessentials.blogspot.com/2025/05/collection-essentials-466-soulcalibur-dc.html

Namco was, of course, going to make a sequel. And they were smart enough not to seriously mess with the very strong foundation of SoulCalibur 1. Those familiar with the gameplay of SoulCalibur 1 will feel right at home, as the basic buttons are the same. Tweaks were made to the gameplay as certain mechanics were refined, but I don’t need to go into detail about that here. What they did do is give the game a fresh coat of paint to make it feel (what was at the time) “next-gen”. The graphics are much improved. The orchestral soundtrack is out of this world. The sound quality of the voice acting is higher, and now the characters are all voiced in English rather than Japanese, giving their personalities an extra bit of flair for Western gamers. And of course, there are more new characters and modes to play around with.

You of course have your standard “arcade mode” as you’d see in any fighting game of this era. But the feature single-player mode here is the “Weapon Master” mode, a campaign that has players navigate a map with their cursor doing a series of arranged fights, trying to find hidden ones and unlock content. It takes quite a while to get through it, and some of the more difficult stages can be pretty frustrating to be honest. Weapon Master mode is fine, but it’s not really the main reason why you play this game. The stuff you unlock for OTHER modes in Weapon Master is pretty nice, though. Most notably, there are variations of each character’s weapon with different strengths and weaknesses that you can use in certain other modes, which can add a lot of spice to the action.

SoulCalibur II first hit arcades in 2002, and was planned for a home console release the following year. Namco made a very interesting announcement, that the three major home consoles would each get a version of the game with their own exclusive special guest character from another series. The PS2 version would get Heihachi from Namco’s own popular Tekken series. The Xbox would get the comic book character Spawn. The GameCube perhaps benefited the most from this arrangement, as Nintendo’s Link from The Legend of Zelda was its guest character and proved to be a huge draw. The guest characters were a very fun addition, even if it’s a little unfortunate that they can never fight each other.

As for my personal memories, I remember when SoulCalibur II was a new arcade game. In my little social circle of friends and family, it was THE hottest arcade game that people I knew loved to play. I didn’t get many opportunities to play the arcade version, but I knew that I needed to get this game when the console version came out, ESPECIALLY when I found out that Link was joining the fray. And sure enough, I managed to secure a copy at launch, foregoing F-Zero GX which was also a highly anticipated game for me releasing at the same tim (I think releasing so close to SCII really hurt GX’s sales). The GameCube version in the photo is my original copy from back then, and my old save data still exists.

I had friends or family that had the other two versions as well, so I got to try all of them. And, to no surprise, I played SCII to death and loved it. I fixated on Nightmare as my main as soon as I played as him in the demo, but I enjoyed playing as everybody. It became one of my most-played games with my cousins Kevin and Peter, and when I get together with them to this day it’s one of the top old nostalgic games that we like to fire up for a good time. I got the other two versions of the game quite a few years later when they were dirt cheap.

SoulCalibur did get an “HD Online” rerelease, but it was quite a while back. The cool thing about that version is that it had two of the guest characters, Heihachi and Spawn, so those two could fight each other for the first time ever. Sadly, we have never had a rerelease with all three of them, which surprises me a little. Nowadays on modern platforms, you can play the GameCube version on the Switch 2 Online service. But the original releases of the game are still rather affordable if you have the hardware to play them on.

While there have been more SoulCaliburs, I think most fans agree that this is the pinnacle of the series. It’s a nearly-perfect 3D fighter, a timeless classic with appeal for players of all skill levels. Considering that, plus the large amount of nostalgia it has for me, it’s an absolute quintessential essential in my collection. If you like fighting games and somehow have never played it, go right that wrong by any means necessary.