I’m a big PlayStation 2 fan, and I still play games on it quite a lot to this day. I wanted to do a little series where I can talk about what games I’m playing, and this is that. This is the first entry in my PS2 Diaries - Soulcalibur III.
Soulcalibur III was released in 2005 initially on the PlayStation 2, and a year later a touched up version was released in the arcade. This fact alone disappointed a lot of people, as the previous entry in the series, Soulcalibur II, was released multi-platform featuring bespoke versions for the Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2.
Unfortunately at the time this was quite a standard story. The next generation of consoles was expected to be released in the next year, and publishers were gearing up development for those platforms. Therefore they had to be a bit more picky about the resources they allocated to the current gen, and most of them chose to stick with the console that usually provided the best sales numbers, which was the PlayStation 2. Not to mention, support for the original Xbox had basically dried up.
Soulcalibur III is a fighting game that unlike most at the time, clearly targeted a home console release first and thought about arcades later. This means it is absolutely packed with content.
First off, the game gives you around 24 main characters, with a bunch of additional bonus and secret characters. In addition, you can create your own character (which we’ll talk more about later) and select a random character, or a character randomly created. It’s a great selection to pick from, and every main character really feels unique. Not only in how they look, but in how they play.
Like all Soulcalibur titles, Soulcalibur III is a weapons based fighting game. Each character has their own weapon, and that dictates their fighting style. Maxi uses nun chucks, and therefore is based around quick attacks and fast combos. Rock uses a big axe, and is slower and more powerful. You’ve got your mix of swords and spears, and some things more ridiculous, like Ivy’s infamous whip sword, and Tira’s big sharp circle things.
The fighting is so much fun. It’s one of those games that’s easy to pick up, but very difficult to master. You keep finding new depths with the gameplay. You can attack in different directions, chain together combos, repel enemy attacks, throw, and so much more. It’s really difficult to explain exactly what makes the Soulcalibur games feel so good to play, but I think it’s because they just feel a little more strategic than some of their contemporaries. You really have to think about how you attack and defend, and be prepared to switch up your gameplay to react quickly. You can pick apart enemies by being precise, and look for weaknesses in how they play.
Of course, most of that is fun with another person. The AI in Soulcalibur III can be a little bit uneven. By uneven, I mean that at it’s worst it will just stand around and be knocked out the ring immediately, and at it’s best it will destroy you within seconds. It’s probably the major weakness of this game, that the AI struggles to find a middle ground - it just seems to swing between super easy and really hard.
I’ve played Soulcalibur III on and off for years, ever since I first got it on the PlayStation 2 when it came out. A big part of that reason is all the modes it offers. The standard arcade style mode, is called Tales of Souls.
In Tales of Souls, you pick a character and play through their personal story in hunting down either Soulcalibur or Soul Edge, the good and evil swords in this series mythos respectively. Most of the story is told through text interludes, with you battling in between. What gives it some replayability is that there are choices in the story, diverging paths you can go down. If you meet certain conditions, you can also face tough optional enemies. These can be really difficult - and unlike the regular battles, you only get one chance. If you fail, you carry on to the next part of the story. If you succeed, you usually unlock something good.
Tales always ends up with you battling either Siegfried or Nightmare in the temple, before fighting the final boss Abyss. Abyss is a bit odd in that although he’s the final boss, he’s actually much easier than the optional ones. It can give you a bit of whiplash absolutely decimating regular enemies, only to come up against a ridiculous optional enemy that wipes the floor with you. A bit more of a curve would have been nice.
Apart from unlocking new characters, you can also unlock modes, weapons, armour and items. You can buy a lot of this too in the shop, which just looks ridiculously packed when you scroll through it. All of this stuff can be used to create your own character. When creating a character, you pick a class which dictates what kind of weapon they use and their fighting style, and then go on to equip all those pieces of armour you’ve got. It really does have a massive amount of customisability options for a game released on a DVD, and puts a lot of modern character creation tools to shame. I would spend hours in there as a kid, coming up with stories for the characters I was making to go with their outfits. I loved it, and still do.
There are a range of other smaller modes, some more fun than others. There’s a world competition mode which takes the format of a tournament, Soul Arena which offers different challenges, a practice mode, and finally, Chronicles of the Sword.
Chronicles of the Sword is perhaps the most interesting addition to the series, in which you take control of a custom character, and progress through a story in a strategy style game. You move your characters around a map, taking down and defending fortifications, getting into fights and levelling up. I find it to be a fair bit of fun, but it is a little bit infamous because of a famous glitch to do with Chronicles save data, which could cause corruption on memory cards. Ah, the time before software could be patched. Good memories.
I just love playing Soulcalibur III. Soulcalibur II is more famous generally, and because it focuses just on the fighting, it’s perhaps a more purer form of the Soulcalibur style. But for me, I’ll always come back to Soulcalibur III. There’s just so much more to do, I can never get bored of it. It feels like a proper release that you can enjoy on your own as much as with other people. The graphics, sound and gameplay are all top tier. For me, It’s a real PlayStation 2 classic, and is a worthy first entry into my PS2 Diaries.
If you prefer watching content, you can check out my video based on this article, here.