Soulcalibur Legends Review

[MirandaMW87]

Originally Posted by gamespy.com

Remember the magic of your first tale of souls and swords? Regardless of where you jumped into the Soulcalibur series, it's always been something special. Not perfect, not even necessarily the best, but it has a special place in many gamers' hearts. With Legends, that legacy is cast aside in order to cash in on the Wii's success. Combat is hobbled by its motion controls, the graphics are unimpressive for the Wii, let alone the series, and gameplay is a nightmare of dull and repetitive enemies and level design.

In This Corner, The Ottoman Empire!

Set in the 16th century, Soulcalibur Legends follows the series' iconic Siegfried as he attempts to resurrect the cursed blade, Soul Edge. The Ottoman Empire, led by its towering, flame-headed giant emperor is pressing the attack against the Holy Roman Empire. As Siegfried, you'll lead a group of hunters to reclaim the missing parts of Soul Edge. With its power unlocked and recovered, Siegfried has promised to push back the Ottomans.

The shards are guarded by boss monsters of various types, and the missions to investigate the shards and then defeat the boss monsters guarding them are bookended with bad, bad dialogue. It's charming, in an embarrassing way, to hear a snippy Siegfried defend his need for power, to hear an overwrought Ivy make fun of Siegfried, and so on. Charming, but not particularly bearable. A mere handful of Soulcalibur characters can be unlocked to form your team (as well as one cool unlockable from another Namco Bandai series).



The game's big gimmick is the ability to wield weapons with Wii's motion controls. Sensibly, a side slash with the Remote translates to a horizontal attack; a vertical slash to a vertical one. A thrust is a thrust, and various buttons map to your charge, block and jump. The nunchuk's stick controls movement, and flicking the nunchuk sends your character dashing. Unfortunately, all you really need to know is to slam the vertical attack over and over, and you'll go through the game like a wheat thresher through gummi bears.

Although selecting which enemy to be locked onto can be a bit of an art -- tapping the A button cycles through potential targets, and its important to take out ranged attackers first -- that's the extent of the strategy you'll find. Enemies, limited to a selection of maybe, almost a dozen models through the game, litter the game's numerous long, identical corridors and square, identical rooms. Interesting textures do get thrown on some rooms, with the stages set in Egypt getting cool pictograms of what appear to be Soulcalibur and Soul Edge dusting it up in the ancient past. But for the most part, you can look forward to little more than drudgery in the form of fights against monotonous, stupid enemies for the length of the game.

Each mission sends you out with your choice of two of your warriors, and each warrior has four weapons available to them. You can swap between warriors mid-mission easily; you can also play through missions in split-screen co-op with a friend. That's all moot, however, because even on Hard mode you can thrash the game by doing virtually nothing but wanging the Wii Remote up and down as quickly as you can.

Don't Fear the Eject Button

Legends also features a split-screen versus mode. (Since the controls are all right/left sensitive, a more traditional single-view presentation wouldn't work.) Like the majority of the game, the versus mode is bearable but little more. Fighting against another human forces you to think a bit more carefully about your play style, but since unlocking versus arenas requires playing through the single-player game, it comes out as a wash.

[Momma Bear]

I don't know if this is a good review or not But the Soulcaliber name may bring it success.