The Shrine

And for what console?

Hopefully I'll be getting the 360 version, pending I get some employment/money.

that's a negative good buddy. Street Fighter is the only multi-installment fighting franchise I will sink money into.

Not me, but then again I've never been a fan of fighting games. I bought Soul Calibur II for PS2 and played it maybe 2x. The only fighting game I ever loved was an old DOS game where you fought mechs in an arena. 2D fighter for sure, but you could use your earnings from matches to upgrade parts on your robot, or training for yourself, or buying a new robot... oh it was so much fun. They remade it maybe 5 years back but it wasn't nearly as good... wish I could remember its name...

awww phooey[/url]

Tessian wrote:The only fighting game I ever loved was an old DOS game where you fought mechs in an arena. 2D fighter for sure, but you could use your earnings from matches to upgrade parts on your robot, or training for yourself, or buying a new robot... oh it was so much fun. They remade it maybe 5 years back but it wasn't nearly as good... wish I could remember its name...

I remember that game. Didn't it have an RPG sidequest? I think it was called Xenogears.

Nah, in XG, you got to do combos. COMBOS!

He's talking about Mechwarrior 2, or similar.

The problem with Soul Calibur is that they really messed with perfection when they made the future installments. The first one was a fantastic title, one of the best games ever made.

Kupek wrote:

Tessian wrote:The only fighting game I ever loved was an old DOS game where you fought mechs in an arena. 2D fighter for sure, but you could use your earnings from matches to upgrade parts on your robot, or training for yourself, or buying a new robot... oh it was so much fun. They remade it maybe 5 years back but it wasn't nearly as good... wish I could remember its name...

I remember that game. Didn't it have an RPG sidequest? I think it was called Xenogears.

I found it!! One Must Fall 2097. It's freeware now these days too, sweet.

Got the Limited 360 already pre-paid. Can't wait

I don't think the bar set by Soul Calibur 1 can ever be met, which is why all the subsequent sequel sucks because they don't come close to perfection like SC1 was. If I eventually pick up a next gen system, I'll probably buy it but I'm not planning on buying a new system just for it.

I agree that the original Soul Calibur set a really high bar for itself. With it's visuals, gameplay, and variety, it took a dump on every 3D fighter that came before it. While I'll always remember it with more fondness than SC2, I still consider SC2 the better game. Never played more than an hour of SC3, but it wasn't catching my interest.

Even though Soul Calibur 2 featured Link, I really only played it a couple of months before going back to Soul Calibur.... It really was a game that should have been left alone, Soul Calibur 2 was a mistake, they should have ported over the first one with extras and a few graphical enhancements. Soul Calibur 3's randomizer/customizer was a nice addition, but the novelty wears.

SC2 was the best one, IMO. SC3 was a better game than it originally appeared to be. Fighting-wise, it was the equivalent of SC2 but the extra stuff they added just didn't work. The main problem with it was its INSANELY convoluted paths in the arcade mode. And the RTS-like game was dumb. In the end it wasn't any better than the second.

I really have a hard time taking Soul Calibur seriously as a serious fighting game, so whatever refinements they made in the battle system itself is pretty meaningless to me. Therefore I judge the game solely on how fun it is to mash button and bash stuff around, and SC1 beats SC2 if only because of the SC2 mega endurance rounds where you fight everyone with their Soul Calibur/Soul Edge weapons totally sucked. The only thing that came close to that in SC1 was the last Edgemaster mission but I think it's supposed to be that hard (fight 6 guys in a row?).

Really all the games after SC1 is defined by what they screwed up, not what they did right, because SC1 mostly did everything right. SC3 had the stupid RTS game that takes forever to beat and how you need a flowchart to know which way to go in the arcade mode. SC2 didn't do anything particular bad aside from the mega endurance rounds which is needed to complete the sidequest mode, and it didn't have as good a gallery to unlock if I recall.

SC2 felt better as a fighting game, more fluid and, I thought, more balanced. SC1 re-invented the weapon-based genre, SC2 refined it.