The real stinger comes in the form of Soulcalibur IV's online multiplayer, which is a first for the franchise. I'm always thankful when a fighting game includes this option, as it's nice to get a quick couple of matches without having to start up an entire Arcade game. Soulcalibur IV also has your standard Versus options to consider, which means you can jump into a quick match with either a friend or an AI opponent. And the more you play the game, the more equipment you can unlock, which gives you more options for character customization. If you use Ivy a bunch, for example, her Style Level goes up and gives you access to more skills. Acquisition of these skills is governed by your Style Level, which increases as you use a character. You can opt to equip the Auto Grapple Break A skill, which has a high chance of automatically repelling a throw if an opponent gets too close. Say you have 70 available points in the Special category and 40 points under Impact. Being able to set up different skills works nicely, because the equipment and weapons you have set dictates how many points you can spend in certain skill categories. Not only can you customize existing characters, including their equipment, weapons, skills and hair style (you can't change "permanent" features like body build and skin color), you can also create new characters from the ground up, though they'll act as copies of pre-existing fighters when it comes to gameplay. A good deal of the unlocking you'll be doing in Soulcalibur IV opens up items to the Character Creation mode. Regardless, having this avenue for unlocking content is nice and will add many more hours to the experience. This mode is a great feature of Soulcalibur IV, though I feel as if it could've been deeper with a more fleshed-out, contextual narrative and a wider variety of specialty matches. This is only possible because the character you aren't using slowly regains health until they're tagged in, so if you keep one fighter alive long enough, the other can come in with swords blazing. Each floor brings a new set of enemies that you must defeat and you receive items and goodies after clearing a certain increment of floors, like passing the 5th, 10th and 15th markers. You can select two characters at the start (they'll fight tag-team style) and then you stick with those fighters through the entire affair. Descending the Tower of Lost Souls is an entirely different matter. Fulfilling certain conditions rewards you with equipment unlocks for the fairly robust Character Creation mode and allow you to advance further up the tower. If you ascend the tower, you'll be able to select a "stage" or set of floors to fight through, which usually involve heavily weighted battles where you're pitted against several overpowered opponents. The Tower of Lost Souls is the other single-player option that gives you the chance to either ascend or descend the tower, facing challenges along the way. What's there, however, is solid and works to give at least a marginal backdrop to the cast. There aren't really any cinematics except one towards the end, and many of those are repeated. I was actually surprised that virtually every character in the game has a "story" to play through, but I was disappointed that Story mode only lasts about five rounds and you can get through a character in ten minutes or less. Soulcalibur IV boasts the standard Arcade and Story modes that will be familiar to fighting game fans. As you might expect, Soulcalibur IV also has a healthy number of modes and unlockables that will keep you thoroughly engaged, along with a new online mode that lets you challenge other Soulcalibur fanatics through the magical power of the Internet. There are over 30 characters to try out (granted, some of them are clones of each other), several gorgeous stages to battle in and enough special moves to keep you memorizing commands for months. Soulcalibur IV is a great game - especially if you've been following and enjoying the series for the past few years. I'm pleased to say that this game is an excellent addition to the series - despite its problems - and should find a welcome spot in your collection. I was particularly excited to play Soulcalibur IV, especially in light of my fondness for the first Soulcalibur title. Making its debut on the current generation of platforms, Soulcalibur IV once again offers fantastical, weapons-based combat and an inspired cast of characters, which should be appetizing to fighting game enthusiasts and casual players alike. Quite a number of gamers have been eagerly anticipating the next installment of the Soulcalibur series, considering the notable quality of past iterations of the franchise.
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