MAF's Official Soul Calibur II Impressions!

Games
1

This is for you Dirt!

Yup, official. So anyway I know I swore I wouldn’t get it. But after hearing Assassin and the other Dungeon characters were now playable, and seeing the special edition strat guide. I gathered together all the pc games and motion picture dvds I could find and made a ‘bottom of the barrel’ trade in trip to EB Games. I managed to get 80 bucks credit thanks to all the freaming GMR bonuses and the SCII trade in bonuses. So I grabbed the special edition guide and the XDude version of SC2.

First off. Spawn rocks. I was worried he’d be a complete Rock copy, but he isn’t. He’s animated very well, modelled well, and his moves don’t make him a total cheesefest. Spawn > Necrid in every way possible. The levitation move just looks awesome, and opens up so many new attacks. Good players and harder AI can still evade and parry (or whatever its called) these moves but they look awesome. All of his axes rock too, especially the later one. Anyone know if he has a third costume, and if so what it looks like?

It was with even more joy that I discovered how many levels of difficulty the game had. The original SC seemed far too easy against AI back in the days I used hwang, and this is what I feared would happen in SCII. I played SC2 import on the cube back in WA against people, so my ideas about the AI strength was still off speculation. I cranked the AI smarts last night and was happy to find the AI loves to move around and use ALL of its defensive options to work into a good offense. This is what I like. Plus all the junk to unlock in Weapon Master mode is a lot of fun too. I ended up trading in DoA3 as part of the credit for this game and I think it was the right move ;)

So anyway I also noticed that returning characters’ moves also fit their individual style better. Taki feels more like a ninja, Mitsu feels more like a samurai.

The visuals and music rule. Im playing on a Samsung 27 inch flat with a seperate sub/sat setup for sound and wow. The music rules. Im glad I got the special edition guide since it comes with all 28 tracks on a cd. Of course I have them on mp3 but hey, its nice to listen to in the car! Im undecided on the voicing tho. Some characters fit some dont, but even if they do fit, hearing the same samples in english is far harder to take. The female screams have some pitch too, ouch.

Oh, and the intro rules. As much as I love butt rock I think this one is even with or surpasses Soul Edge’s intro. A lot of it has to do with the music, just sounds so epic.

Id also like to note that while I got bored of the first SC since it seemed to offer more to the aggressive player, SC2 has renewed my interest because playing defensively is just as important now; guessing at an opponents moves, and planning your own ahead of time seems much more important.

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I picked up the Xbox version, too, since I’m getting a good arcade stick for it. Spawn isn’t as stupid as feared; in fact, I think I like playing as him better than that effete fop Link. Man, the game sure looks good.

3

I was disappointed at first with the English voices, as some are on par with badly dubbed anime. However, I discovered that you can turn Japanese on in the audio menu, and I’m much happier with the game that way :)

4

Oh hell yes it’s essential playing the game this way. That’s almost the first thing I look for in the Options menus of games anymore.

On a semi-related note, why do I no longer play Dynasty Warriors 4? No Japanese audio. The horrendous English voicework seriously gets on one’s nerves after a while. Hopefully the DW4 expansion pack will address that, since the first poll Koei put up on their site was asking what language options people would prefer (oh sweet Jesus PLEASE let them notice that almost nobody picked “English only”).

5

Id also like to note that while I got bored of the first SC since it seemed to offer more to the aggressive player, SC2 has renewed my interest because playing defensively is just as important now; guessing at an opponents moves, and planning your own ahead of time seems much more important.

Methinks you may be misjudging SC1 through your hazed memories of mashfests with Hwang? If you are only now discovering Guard impacts, 8-way run, and block counters, then by all means SC2 will appear as an improvement as such. The reality is, maybe you’ve becaome a more capable player over these 4 years?

Nevertheless it’s good to see a post that doesn’t paint such a depressing air about the series ‘stagnation’.

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Too bad you had to taint the thread with your stuck up fighter snob attitude.

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Oh hell yes it’s essential playing the game this way. That’s almost the first thing I look for in the Options menus of games anymore.

On a semi-related note, why do I no longer play Dynasty Warriors 4? No Japanese audio. The horrendous English voicework seriously gets on one’s nerves after a while. Hopefully the DW4 expansion pack will address that, since the first poll Koei put up on their site was asking what language options people would prefer (oh sweet Jesus PLEASE let them notice that almost nobody picked “English only”).[/quote]

God, I agree, Curst. I loved the japanese audio track for Dynasty Warriors 3, because, as in DW4, the english dubbing is SO FUCKING BAD. Note to Koei: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give us japanese language options forever. Your localization sucks.

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How come none of the Japanese companies can translate/localize for shit? Is US stuff that gets localized in other countries as bad?

Playing FFX now and some of the stuff the NPCs say makes me cringe.

olaf

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Mitsirugi: “Don’t cry.”

Kilik: “Is there any other way?”

That was the classic opening comments when I played my first match of the game!

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Too bad you had to taint the thread with your stuck up fighter snob attitude.

You took offense to what I wrote? Forgive me or my wording because that was NOT my intent. I didn’t expect you to live up to your namesake so belligerently. :?

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What? He’s being entirely honest. All of that stuff was important in SC1. I think the difference is that the AI is much better in SC2. In SC1, the AI on super hard difficulty was a total pushover, but in SC2 it actually poses a threat, and forces you to learn the more advanced stuff. I have yet to find any repetitive techniques that work all the time against AI in SC2, whereas in SC1 it took all of two minutes to figure out a foolproof repetition in order to beat the AI.

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The game definitely seems really good - I have no problems admitting that. I guess my disappointment (and this is admittedly somewhat unfair of me) stems from the fact that when SC1 came out, it delivered a solid KO punch to every other fighting game around. Yet here comes SC2, and instead of dethroning VF4, it can just barely hang with it. I guess that means I shouldn’t be so much down on SC2 as I should be all the more appreciative of how badass VF4 is. I do honestly think VF4 is a better game, but I can certainly appreciate how much harder it is to get into.

I say “seems” because I really need to start playing against other humans. The weekend just can’t come quickly enough. This is because (Brian, you’d better recalculate those cursing stats of yours because I’m about to somersault-leap my way up the list) GREAT CUNTY FUCKMUGLETING FUCK, the AI has been downright awful. The game hasn’t offered even a minor challenge, and I don’t think you can adjust the difficulty settings in Weapon Master mode, which to me seems to be the meat and potatoes of the single player game and thusfar has been the only thing I’ve played. Either that, or I immediately became REALLY GOOD at using Xiang-whasherface after a brief glance at the Commands menu despite never having used or played against her before. Which I somehow doubt.

On the plus side, its stupidity is good for a chuckle at times. My favorite example yet is when I had to battle Yoshimitsu, as he was the boss in the mines. Yoshi’s the realest of thugz in Tekken, so I’m naturally thinking “watch out for those spin kicks and that bizarre seppuku move and all the other crazy stuff he can do”. What I did NOT anticipate was the “power” move he used (I think that’s what these moves are called… the ones where the character is briefly shrouded in a fiery aura). He hovered in the air for a few seconds while lighting himself ablaze, and flew away from me for a couple of seconds. I start thinking “oh hell run back, no wait dash to the side, no wait prepare to jump at the last second, oh crap I’m screwed I don’t know what this crazy mafucka’s gonna do I’ve never seen him do this in Tekken”. Then to confirm my fears, he… uh… ??? He dropped right down to the ground even though at this point he had flown well past the boundaries of the ring, thus earning me the easiest Ring Out victory imaginable.

I understand that I’m still in the very easy part of the Weapon Master mode, but I can’t help but think that maybe they should have given me the option to demand the forfeiture of my first 500 opponents so that I can just get to the worthy opponents already. At least I can take comfort in the great probability that it’ll take me all of one hour of solid play to blast my way through the all the 1/2/3-star battles in WM mode.

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What? He’s being entirely honest. All of that stuff was important in SC1. I think the difference is that the AI is much better in SC2. In SC1, the AI on super hard difficulty was a total pushover, but in SC2 it actually poses a threat, and forces you to learn the more advanced stuff. I have yet to find any repetitive techniques that work all the time against AI in SC2, whereas in SC1 it took all of two minutes to figure out a foolproof repetition in order to beat the AI.[/quote]

To put my long rambling post another way, I hope you’re really serious about this and that Weapon Master is just pathetically easy for the first several matches.

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I am partially misguided as well in this thread. See I never really spent much time performing against the AI outside of unlocking stuff in SC1. At the time of its release I was living with several roomates that shared the same love for gaming as myself and thus a steady flow of versus and team matches were the norm. I really don’t have the experience or knowledge behind the AI routines considering the game mostly was played socially. One roomate got really into Survival mode however, but I barely gave it a glance.

Still offense, defense and all the mindgames therein were a major part of the SC1 experience. It’s good to hear the AI is improved in SC2 though considering I’ll likely be spending more time with it these days myself.

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