Soul Calibur gave me a lot of pleasure, as I'd had the chance to play Soul Blade on the
Playstation, and I wanted a fighting game that had a little more meat to it than
Dead or Alive 2. DoA2 is a good game, believe you me, but there were limited amounts of moves for each character, or it felt like it, and I could only fall out of my chair drunk so many times while playing that game before I got tired of it. It's
kung fu theatre would be brought back some other day, in rental form.
Anyway, I guess it's been over a year (at the time of this write up) since this game originally came out, and it's still a good game. The control is fairly solid, there are 19 characters to take hold of (9 of them have to be unlocked), and they're all very good looking, for being 3D and all.
My favorite time honored technique, however, and this stands from my Soul Blade days, is to pick Cervantes, the pirate wielding two swords, the rightful master of the Soul Edge. Grrrr.... The point isn't how powerful the character is (although I do think Cervantes is a very good character, compared to some of the others), the point is to yell his name in a loud Spanish accent whenever you do anything. I mean, I'd start just jamming on the button going "Sairvahntays!!!" as loud as I could, not even paying attention to what was going on, and winning! If you're paying attention, and not button jamming, this technique works even better! Try it sometime!
Of particularly wacky (or not wacky at all) note:
There's a character in this game named Yoshimitsu. He... looks like the Yoshimitsu from Tekken, only more bony and less metallic. He's got moves that are similar, and the game was made by Namco, the same company that brought us Tekken. I only wish that they could've put Paul Phoenix in as a secret character instead, sigh. No, wait, that would've been silly.