Soul Calibur II

Posted Sep 5, 2003 by Doug Buel

Updated Jan 18, 2008 at 04:15 PM

System: Nintendo GameCube

Also available for: Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation 2

Publisher: Namco

Reviewer’s rating: A+

ESRB rating: Teen

Game type: Fighting

Kind of like: “Tekken” or “Virtua Fighter”

Best feature: You can earn scores of new weapons for the characters.

Worst feature: If you don’t select the Japanese voices in the options, prepare to suffer some awful English voice acting.

The bottom line: We feel a little guilty. It was just recently that we were telling fighting game fans that they need to run out and get “Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution.” And here we are again, singing the praises of another fighting game.

We can’t help it. If “Evolution” is Pepsi, then “Soul Calibur II” is Coca-Cola.

Which you’ll prefer is a matter of personal taste.

Between the two, “Soul Calibur II” is the one with the weapons. And fighting with weapons doesn’t get any better than this.

“Soul Calibur II” has magnificent weapons, great characters and terrific fighting. Obviously, the objective is to take your katana, battle-ax, bladed chain or other such deadly implement and bash the opponent. As you do this, try to stay within the bounds of the platform or else you’ll fall to your doom.

As the characters in any modern fighting game should, the personalities in “Soul Calibur II” have a ton of moves. The variation between fighters is amazing and was one of the things that made the first game great. “Soul Calibur II” doesn’t have the statistical detail of “Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution,” but it makes up for it with the sheer “coolness factor” of exotic weaponry.

One rather unusual innovation in the sequel is that each version of the game has a character not included in the others. The GameCube version has Link from the “Zelda” series. The Xbox version has Spawn, the comic book character, while the PlayStation 2 version has Heihachi of “Tekken.”

The game’s weapon master mode is much like the mission mode of the first game, in which you roam a landscape and complete a number of missions with unusual twists. But the stakes are more interesting in the sequel: Completing missions earns money you can use to buy new weapons for the characters.