The Soul Flickers
Soul Calibur 4 is a darn decent game. I still had a lot of fun with it, but for whatever reason, it just doesn't have the same 'soul' as previous entries.
Although most fans cite SCII as their favorite in the series, mine is III. SCIV is very close to its direct predecessor in many terms, but enough has changed to dip the quality a bit.
Let's start with the two things I liked most about SCIII - lack of random guest characters, and the Create-A-Soul mode. Although I think random crossovers on the whole are kind of cool, SCIV completely whores this out by putting Star Wars characters in. For the love of God, STAR WARS! All of the other third party characters - Link, Spawn, Kratos, Hell, even to an extent, Heihachi, have made some sort of sense. But sticking Yoda, Darth Vader, and Vader's apprentice in the game just seemed like some desperate attempt of pimping Force Unleashed or something. Namco-Bandai should have just made an agreement with LucasArts to make a Star Wars fighting game with the SCIV engine. Lord knows we need a decent Star Wars fighter.
The other major thing that bugged me that I loved previously, as noted above, was Create-A-Soul mode. I felt that instead of allowing more freedom, as a sequel should, my options were severely limited in scope. I found that I couldn't recreate many costumes that I had made in SCIII, or even really come close to them. Random fighting styles that were unavailable to the regular crew, such as the Grieve Edge, are gone. Skills and statistics are way too tied to attire. You can't even unlock the story mode characters that are similar to Create-A-Soul characters, even ones that have plotline reasons for existing, such as Revenant.
Gameplay, however, has suffered very little. There are very few times when I feel the CPU is being overly punishing, unlike previous entries. However, it seems a wee bit easier to be forced into a Ring Out by the computer.
New to the game are breakable armor and finishing moves. The breakable armor is mostly aesthetic, but depending on what is destroyed, may actually impact the fight. The Critical Finish moves can be used to end the match quicker, but are notoriously hard to pull off. I've completed story mode as every character and played a lot of the various other single player games, and I've never been able to pull off a single Critical Finish against the CPU. It's still kind of tough to pull off against a live opponent, although not as impossible.
The roster additions are kind of lame, unfortunately, and the only new standard character is Hilde, who I'm still on the fence about. The other new characters are all guest and bonus characters, and the boss, Algol. Some of the bonus characters have neat designs, but I rather would have them not been carbon copies of existing players in terms of attacks.
Overall, it actually feels more like SCIV, other than the graphics, should have been released before SCIII. It's not terrible, but after playing the previous game, it's just a wee bit disappointing.
