A versão definitiva pra um clássico da sexta geração, os gráficos são EXAGERADAMENTE LINDOS caso goste muito do 2 é inevitável não gostar desse
gaming nights <3
No audio track in Japanese. 3/10
Outside of joking, I don't know how the online functioned in its day.
It was a blessing to have Heihachi and Spawn available on a single platform too bad my hero of time (Link) is still stuck on the gamecube version, I hope the recent rumors about Namco Bandai working on a remaster of either this game or an entire collection of the saga are real.
Outside of joking, I don't know how the online functioned in its day.
It was a blessing to have Heihachi and Spawn available on a single platform too bad my hero of time (Link) is still stuck on the gamecube version, I hope the recent rumors about Namco Bandai working on a remaster of either this game or an entire collection of the saga are real.
The online sucks
It's such a pity Link couldn't be included in this one. Nintendo, I still love you, but god damn you suck at times.
I don't think I've ever Platniumed a game this big this fast just on principle. (4 days).
By no means is that a slight against this version, that was a matter a pride involved. The ONLY downside to this version was the obvious lack of both Link from Gamecube (for obvious reasons) and Conquest Mode from the Arcade version. Playing SC2HD is like playing baseball with your best worn glove. Playing just comes natural.
By no means is that a slight against this version, that was a matter a pride involved. The ONLY downside to this version was the obvious lack of both Link from Gamecube (for obvious reasons) and Conquest Mode from the Arcade version. Playing SC2HD is like playing baseball with your best worn glove. Playing just comes natural.
Fun game, excellent remaster, went for All Stories except Link (obviously) and the unlockable characters
So the game got a remaster. It's good for the same reasons as the original. It's bad for the same reason but this time has multiplayer. Unfortunately, the multiplayer isn't active enough to warrant bumping it up further because of it, and the improvements are I'm gonna be honest, also not warranting of bumping it up any either. it's cool to be able to play it later on but not deserving of any praise other than that.
Gameplay mechanics are solid, but single player modes are lacking. This is definetly geared towards competitive multiplayer which isn't a bad thing, but if you're just looking to play for fun there are plenty of fighting games with better single player content. If you want to play against other people I'm sure theres a Netplay community out there if you look for it.
Classic retro port. playing as spawn was pretty cool but,
they really didnt do anything to better the graphics. but it
was still fun and challenging.
they really didnt do anything to better the graphics. but it
was still fun and challenging.
i wish i could talk about things i loved concisely, because it's oh so tempting to just put "this game cums and if you haven't played it that's pretty sadge" and call it a day. if you value brevity, stop reading here and take that as the review.
in many ways, this is a "you had to be there" type of game, because a lot of what is groundbreaking and inspired comes off very standard now. this game has not aged poorly by any means, but for 2002, this game was outstanding and a landmark for fighting games that pushed the boundaries of what we could get in several facets. i think one of the simplest things to admire here is the character animations. every single weapon style has very dedicated and unique poses and stances for it. i am not a 3D programmer and most likely never will be in my life, but knowing even the very cursory amount that i do know about it, the amount of time, effort, and love that went into these animations and models is remarkable. it's a visual treat just to watch the things a character can do, especially knowing that all of this was cross-referenced to be as realistic and true to life as possible (barring some exceptions like Yoshimitsu and Cervantes).
if anything, this is like my third or fourth full playthrough of the game, and i'm surprised at how... poorly weapon master mode holds up. which is a shame, because it's one of the first things i think about when i remember this game. for 2002, this was pretty good. for 2013? or 2021? not so much. i would put an estimate of roughly 65% of the missions in weapon master being good or bare minimum decent, and the rest being bad to awful. it feels like so so so often you get pitted against 4-7 enemies in a row with some disadvantage like them being able to stun you instantly or your life draining or having limited time and it just all becomes so monotonous.
another issue with weapon master mode is that it's just god damn unfair sometimes. if the last paragraph didn't indicate it, wm loves to throw you into the meat grinder when it comes to missions and expects you to slam your head against a wall until you finally come through it. i'm not against unfair situations in games. in fact, i think games should be willing to be more unfair in specific and carefully designed ways (i.e. capra demon in dark souls, or rival 2 in rby). i do not think consistently making your player do a tedious thing with a significant disadvantage with little to no bearing on the narrative being told or without enhancing the gameplay dramatically is fun or worth having in a game. between that, the eternity that it feels like dungeons take, and the lack of an ability to retry missions without having to reselect them from the map screen, weapon master is rife with padding; that's a shame, because i still think its inclusion is worth it in the end.
going to invoke a very strange comparison here so bear with me, but i think soul calibur ii is similar to legend of zelda: majora's mask in that both elevated their premises with limited resources. it's a well-known fact that majora's mask was under a huge time crunch to make the release window, and, as a result, the dev team reused multiple characters from ocarina of time with little to no explanation beyond the excuse of "it's a parallel universe", which has to be inferred rather than directly stated. many praise that decision as something that makes the setting unnerving yet familiar in a way that complements the game and the themes it approaches regarding death and despair.
with weapon master mode, you have that same limitation of reusing character models, but this time with the SCII cast. who is edgar? why he's this noble and helpful guy who trains you, but he's actually mitsurugi. who is lanbardy? he's this evil and murderous servant of veral who has killed several people and intends to kill you too, but he's actually astaroth. by giving these personalities an associated character, it makes them more memorable for me. it also gives them a life in a way that i think was lost when you look at soul calibur III, which elected to create new character models to associate with their characters and immediately became generic and token as a result (hey pop quiz if you're reading this and have played soul calibur III: i dare you to name more than 3 characters from SCIII's singleplayer campaign without looking any names up. if you can, feel free to tell me i'm a big dummy who should be mocked).
all this is to say is that weapon master mode is a very ambitious idea that doesn't pan out as much as i'd like it to, but it definitely elevates the genre for me. having a small little description contextualizing what you were doing in the area and what your character was trying to accomplish really did wonders for the overimaginative 8 year old me playing this for the first time, and even as a 26 year old replaying this, i still found entertainment in the narrative told here, even if it's a bit bare-bones.
as far as the characters themselves go, i greatly appreciate how diverse this cast feels. there's really only one or two characters who do nothing for me (Seong Mi-na, you're being vagued), everyone else has a strong motive and backstory that propels them into the search for soul edge. there's a great variety in not only the weapon types these characters use, but also in the backgrounds of the characters themselves. you go from having a character like talim, a 15 year old girl who uses tonfa, to someone like voldo, a 50 year old man who can't even coherently communicate and uses hand claws as a weapon, to nightmare, a possessed german soldier who got corrupted by soul edge and uses greatswords and has an infected nipple and raphael, some twink who thinks he's about to get caught for being british and then gets indebted to this girl because she doesn't narc on him and thus he owes her a lifedebt that he chooses to pay by finding soul edge and like... do you get what i mean? there's a lot going on here and a lot of originality is shown in this cast. i truly love it.
as a last point, i want to say that this remaster is lovely. the online features are nice and i only wish i had played the game sooner so i could have spent my nights playing against other people. the load times are outstanding too, i never considered the loads to be bad in the original release, but this game loads fucking instantly. i will also always take heihachi and spawn over link, though i'm not particularly passionate about any of them, i just think 2 > 1 on most days.
i'm not sure how much i can defend the soul calibur series after this entry and i still internally debate whether this game was lightning in a bottle or if the series has just been on a gradual decline since. i've yet to touch VI. this game reminded me of how much love i had for the core concept and series as a whole. maybe i'll get on that sometime soon, as a gift to myself.
in many ways, this is a "you had to be there" type of game, because a lot of what is groundbreaking and inspired comes off very standard now. this game has not aged poorly by any means, but for 2002, this game was outstanding and a landmark for fighting games that pushed the boundaries of what we could get in several facets. i think one of the simplest things to admire here is the character animations. every single weapon style has very dedicated and unique poses and stances for it. i am not a 3D programmer and most likely never will be in my life, but knowing even the very cursory amount that i do know about it, the amount of time, effort, and love that went into these animations and models is remarkable. it's a visual treat just to watch the things a character can do, especially knowing that all of this was cross-referenced to be as realistic and true to life as possible (barring some exceptions like Yoshimitsu and Cervantes).
if anything, this is like my third or fourth full playthrough of the game, and i'm surprised at how... poorly weapon master mode holds up. which is a shame, because it's one of the first things i think about when i remember this game. for 2002, this was pretty good. for 2013? or 2021? not so much. i would put an estimate of roughly 65% of the missions in weapon master being good or bare minimum decent, and the rest being bad to awful. it feels like so so so often you get pitted against 4-7 enemies in a row with some disadvantage like them being able to stun you instantly or your life draining or having limited time and it just all becomes so monotonous.
another issue with weapon master mode is that it's just god damn unfair sometimes. if the last paragraph didn't indicate it, wm loves to throw you into the meat grinder when it comes to missions and expects you to slam your head against a wall until you finally come through it. i'm not against unfair situations in games. in fact, i think games should be willing to be more unfair in specific and carefully designed ways (i.e. capra demon in dark souls, or rival 2 in rby). i do not think consistently making your player do a tedious thing with a significant disadvantage with little to no bearing on the narrative being told or without enhancing the gameplay dramatically is fun or worth having in a game. between that, the eternity that it feels like dungeons take, and the lack of an ability to retry missions without having to reselect them from the map screen, weapon master is rife with padding; that's a shame, because i still think its inclusion is worth it in the end.
going to invoke a very strange comparison here so bear with me, but i think soul calibur ii is similar to legend of zelda: majora's mask in that both elevated their premises with limited resources. it's a well-known fact that majora's mask was under a huge time crunch to make the release window, and, as a result, the dev team reused multiple characters from ocarina of time with little to no explanation beyond the excuse of "it's a parallel universe", which has to be inferred rather than directly stated. many praise that decision as something that makes the setting unnerving yet familiar in a way that complements the game and the themes it approaches regarding death and despair.
with weapon master mode, you have that same limitation of reusing character models, but this time with the SCII cast. who is edgar? why he's this noble and helpful guy who trains you, but he's actually mitsurugi. who is lanbardy? he's this evil and murderous servant of veral who has killed several people and intends to kill you too, but he's actually astaroth. by giving these personalities an associated character, it makes them more memorable for me. it also gives them a life in a way that i think was lost when you look at soul calibur III, which elected to create new character models to associate with their characters and immediately became generic and token as a result (hey pop quiz if you're reading this and have played soul calibur III: i dare you to name more than 3 characters from SCIII's singleplayer campaign without looking any names up. if you can, feel free to tell me i'm a big dummy who should be mocked).
all this is to say is that weapon master mode is a very ambitious idea that doesn't pan out as much as i'd like it to, but it definitely elevates the genre for me. having a small little description contextualizing what you were doing in the area and what your character was trying to accomplish really did wonders for the overimaginative 8 year old me playing this for the first time, and even as a 26 year old replaying this, i still found entertainment in the narrative told here, even if it's a bit bare-bones.
as far as the characters themselves go, i greatly appreciate how diverse this cast feels. there's really only one or two characters who do nothing for me (Seong Mi-na, you're being vagued), everyone else has a strong motive and backstory that propels them into the search for soul edge. there's a great variety in not only the weapon types these characters use, but also in the backgrounds of the characters themselves. you go from having a character like talim, a 15 year old girl who uses tonfa, to someone like voldo, a 50 year old man who can't even coherently communicate and uses hand claws as a weapon, to nightmare, a possessed german soldier who got corrupted by soul edge and uses greatswords and has an infected nipple and raphael, some twink who thinks he's about to get caught for being british and then gets indebted to this girl because she doesn't narc on him and thus he owes her a lifedebt that he chooses to pay by finding soul edge and like... do you get what i mean? there's a lot going on here and a lot of originality is shown in this cast. i truly love it.
as a last point, i want to say that this remaster is lovely. the online features are nice and i only wish i had played the game sooner so i could have spent my nights playing against other people. the load times are outstanding too, i never considered the loads to be bad in the original release, but this game loads fucking instantly. i will also always take heihachi and spawn over link, though i'm not particularly passionate about any of them, i just think 2 > 1 on most days.
i'm not sure how much i can defend the soul calibur series after this entry and i still internally debate whether this game was lightning in a bottle or if the series has just been on a gradual decline since. i've yet to touch VI. this game reminded me of how much love i had for the core concept and series as a whole. maybe i'll get on that sometime soon, as a gift to myself.