Previews: Soul Calibur Legends
A first look at Wii's Soul Calibur spin-off.
Soul Calibur Legends is not Soul Calibur IV. There's nothing resembling a fighter, it's not online, and you can't even use a joystick! This is a game for Soul Calibur fans first, and fighting game fans second, which means it's a traditional action game focused on story and characters rather than move lists. And on Wii, it promises to be more than just a simple beat-'em-up.
In the jump between the original Soul Edge and the first Soul Calibur, we saw German knight Siegfried Schtauffen had obtained the Soul Edge and become Nightmare -- though exactly how this happened is somewhat of a grey area outside of in-game ending screens, and Soul Calibur pushed on without much backstory. Legends' story focuses on Siegfried's personal quest to find the Soul Edge, which will inevitably lead him to the dark side. Needless to say, for the SC fans interested in the series' lore on top of its intense fighting, Legends will probably be quite a boon.
Legends looks like a "Soul Calibur all-stars" action game, but not every fighter from the series will be playable -- this is a prequel, after all. For the record, the characters that have been shown so far are Siegfried, Ivy, Mitsurugi, Taki and a new character, Isuka -- a teenage boy who travels with Siegfried in a "Lone Wolf and Cub" sort of set-up. You choose two heroes to play with, and because of everyone's different weapons and fighting styles, you can go with whoever you feel comfortable with and instantly "tag out" between them during the game.
With the Wii Remote, Namco hopes you'll be more engaged in the Soul Calibur universe; the "vibe" of the series, if you will. Legends retains the horizontal and vertical slashing of the traditional games, which you control according to how you swing the remote. The game's director, Jin Okubo explains further: "Our focus in creating this game was mainly on the sword-swinging aspect. Since it's on the Wii and uses the Wii Remote, we're really focusing on swinging the remote like a sword and the player developing his or her skills as a swordsman." In other words, while you won't be able to kick like in the fighting games, you will be able to perform some flashy-yet-powerful techniques to keep enemies at bay, including action game-standard "charge moves." Guard breaks, another SC element, will factor into Legends as well.
At a press event recently, Namco showed us one level of an early version -- a mazelike Egyptian tomb -- without any allusions to the rest of the game's progression. Could there be towns with NPCs, or could it be a simple level-to-level progression like Chronicles of the Sword?
As for the level we saw, the tomb was a rather typical run-and-slash affair, with a minimum of puzzles; in fact, puzzles are not meant to be minutes-long deterrents to your progress. Instead, the action itself is meant to jog your brain. "Players will really have to think about how they are going to approach their enemies and in what order, and what attacks work best, so in that respect we feel that it earns the 'adventure' part of 'action-adventure,'" says Okubo. "Although there will be puzzles and the player will have to use his or her head, that's not specifically what we wanted to focus on. We don't anticipate the players coming across any particular areas where they'll get hung up for any period of time."
The level ended in a boss fight against Ammon: a floating, fire-breathing mummy casket that didn't seem to pose too much of a threat. The tomb level must be one of the first ones. Namco promises larger bosses with more impressive fights -- including a giant Astaroth seen in the a recent Famitsu screenshot (eighth gameplay screenshot on the page).
So, Legends is mostly a single-player adventure, but there are options if you have a friend around. "Party" mode is a two-player cooperative game, with two players slashing away in what appear to be selectable levels rather than a predetermined quest. We didn't see much of this mode, but it does run in vertical split-screen with a slightly reduced framerate (so far). The co-op level we saw was different than the tomb one; it's an outdoor scene with a vaguely feudal "Onimusha" look to it.
Namco isn't set on co-op-only multiplayer, but the competitive parts still won't be any closer to the game's arcade brethren. "When we say 'competitive,' it's not necessarily one-on-one all the time," says Okubo. "Sometimes it's two players competing at the same time to reach a certain goal and seeing who, for example, can defeat the most enemies in a certain amount of time, or who can defeat a certain boss within a time limit."
But if you're a Soul Calibur pro and know the nuances of the fighting games, you may have some useful knowledge. "One of the aspects of the previous Soul Calibur titles that was very important was being aware of the stage you were fighting on, what the shape of it was, and what was in the environment and using that to your advantage," Okubo says. "Players who are very good at that may find they have an advantage in Soul Calibur Legends' competitive play, because the stages do come in different shapes and sizes."
There is one area that Legends definitely needs some work on though: the eye candy. While the game runs at 60 frames per second, the graphical detail seems to be far from pushing the Wii's capabilities to the limit. And the tomb level looked pretty sparse; enemies weren't exactly crawling all over and dropping from ceiling doors or anything. They just... appeared. You defeat them all, run a little bit more through the level, and fight another small group. Rinse and repeat until the boss. Hopefully Namco will have some time to spice up those interiors before the game's release.
It's clear SCL is not exactly a glorified Edge Master mode or Chronicles of the Sword. It's much closer to being a Soul Calibur version of Tekken's Devil Within: a straightforward action game with a story based on one of the series' central characters. We have a hunch that it may last longer than anything in Tekken, though.
