Reply With QuoteActually the guy who got me into SC years and years ago lives somewhere near you over in Portland. He used to post around these parts as "Cad". I'm not sure if he still is up for any Calibur though.Originally Posted by Jasper
No one have any love for nightmare or Sigfried.
Sad Panda here.
Actually the guy who got me into SC years and years ago lives somewhere near you over in Portland. He used to post around these parts as "Cad". I'm not sure if he still is up for any Calibur though.
I don't have any particular love or hate toward any SC characters really, and have found them all to be quite useful in the right hands. Some are more exploitable, but nobody seems to have a win button, which I like.
Yah, we PM'd a bit back a couple years ago, but the short is that while I do travel to Portland on a regular basis, when I do I'm not much interested in playing fighting games. Gone are the days when I blew $5 a day playing Street Fighter in the arcade. ;-)
In other news, I caved in and got SC4. If I'm going to spend so much time talking about it, I may as well play the damn thing!
They've always been some of my favorite characters actually.
I can't believe it but I have to say after playing through most of the storylines:
The english voice acting is pretty good! Cassandra in particular stands out.
I never used him much before, but the CPU is an absolute sucker for his down-back+A+B move.
I came very, VERY close to throwing my controller through the tv last night. Came across a particularly cheap player who insisted on fighting near the ledge so he could rely on ring outs. I don't usually complain about ring outs but that guy seemed like a douche to me.
You just need to learn how to deal with that. Such players set themselves up for ring out. Alternately, just poke them once, then back off and wait.
SC1 and VF4 had this training mode where it would automatically progress through the move list as you performed them correctly. This doesn't seem to be there with the move list being accessed on a non-interactive screen. Pity.
I have to say, I've been pleasantly surprised by this. I was really expecting it to suck, since I haven't enjoyed any of their output since the original SC. A lot of that may come down to controller issues though--I loathe the Playstation controller for pretty much any application, and the GC controller was pretty wretched for fighting games. I just never bothered with the Xbox version because we didn't have one in our hangout apartment.
Anyway, I'm liking this a lot more than I expected, both for single and multiplayer. I've also had quite a lot of fun with character creation, both with new outfits for existing characters (giving Sophitia an armored skin that doesn't look like crap, for example) and making custom characters (Altair as a Taki-style fighter, Colonel Gentleman as Setsuka).
I just picked it up, and have been pleasantly surprised as well. It's definitely better than SC3, and although I can't quite put my finger on why I feel so, better than SC2. I don't much care for the increased number of "Just Frame" moves, although on the upside their timing seems more forgiving.
I've only played about 30 vs. matches so far though, but here are my initial thoughts anyway:
- Raphael sucks. He seems substantially slower, and perhaps even less reach? Maybe he's got better combo potential somewhere and thus more damage to make up for it? On the plus side, at least holding down B by accident isn't quite as fatal as before. Don't much care for his new teleport move.
- Amy I don't much care for. At first glance she seems close to Raphael, but that's deceptive, as she's much more in the mold of your stereotypical "fast" female character.
- I've only had a chance to play Mitsurgi against the CPU, but he seems much improved -- some nice new moves, and especially better reach.
- Xianghua seems to kick as much ass as always, although damn she is annoying ("Tricked Yah!").
- I've only just gone through the training with Hilde, but she seems really good, maybe bordering on broken unless I'm missing something. Seriously, what's up with the fast hold+release unblockables? I do like her character design though, and the balrog moves are a nice change of pace.
- I'm liking Nightmare more than Siegfried this time around, to my surprise. Strangely, many Siegefried's moves felt short on reach.
I kind of like hilde's hold and release moves, it's faster than a normal unblockable, only problem is I can't get the timing down on different level of charge.
Faster? They're as fast as most normal attacks!
Also the length of charge isn't so much the issue, as you can just keep the A and B buttons held down whenever you're not using them (Balrog style); you can have them charged when the match starts, and can charge them while blocking or using the other attack button.
It's the Just Frame timing you need to tack on the Unblockable hits that takes a bit of practice. This seems pretty easy to do though, considerably easier than most other Just Frames.
I like the Upper cut with the flag, and impale the enemy on it combo..
I think I'm just too old and slow now. I remember having being fascinated with the original SC on the Dreamcast and so picked this up to visit with some "old friends." It was quite a learning curve for me the first time around as the only fighting game I ever really enjoyed - and primarily in single-player mode at that.
Man, though, I've just hit a wall, after a few hours of fairly rewarding if too easy good times with storymode, where I need to decide if I'm going to keep banging my head and trying to sort out all the cryptic gibberish and timing and moves lists. I go into training and I see lists of moves, odd explanations for what things are/do without much context or meaning, and some of it I can suss from watching the examples but alot of it is just..huh?
The story mode goes from too easy to punishing. The tower is highly repetative and the difficulty ramps just too fast. Don't even get me started on arcade. No way I'm getting past five or six fights in there unless I decide to dedicate my life to learning all the ins and outs and even then I don't know if I have the reflexes to pull it off. I certainly am feeling like I don't have the patience.
Was it just that the original Soul Caliber was such a novelty I was more willing to push myself and invest the time to master a character? Is it that I'm slower and more easily distracted/frustrated? Is this SC less casual player friendly? I missed II and III so can't compare there.
I've bought all the items that are currently available, bought all the art, there's really nothing left that I can do that's not setting my teeth on edge.
Edit: Breaking down and buying a strategy guide to get started. No way I'm going to make any sense of most of this without it. Which doesn't precisely please me.
Last edited by Brian Rucker; 08-02-2008 at 10:04 PM.
so I finally got online and had like 20+ matches today.
got about rank 5, 50% winning ratio with Sigfried.
psn:idris_z if anyone want to play.
my experience so far have been very good, other than 2 matches where it was laggy as hell, but rest of them was very smooth, my ps3 is on wireless too, but we have a gaming router so.
I get cheesed alot by fast characters, most time I push them away with kick and shoulder charge(not sure what else I can do, not so good with GI, need more practice), so far if I can maintain medium to long distance I usually win. it's so fun to steamroll opponent in a fight with sigfried because most of the time your opponent can't even get up.
oh yeah normal match > special match.
So the training mode where they show you the button presses, show you what the move looks like and lets you set up the fight anyway you want isn't enough strategy guide for you? Maybe Soul Calibur 5 will have an option to let a real gamer come and play the game for you while you call out commands.
Not all of us play alot of fighting games. It's not very clear how, for example, stances work or what alot of the terms mean. It's just plain not well explained or demonstrated. Even the examples sometimes just fizzle out because the stance you're supposed to be in, or an attack that needs to be reacted to trigger the response doesn't happen. There's just a little jerky motion but nothing else.
Just as long as he triggers the fireworks.
I recommend playing with friends. Assuming they're not experienced with the series, you should all be able to learn at roughly the same rate and discover this stuff organically, rather than studying for it like a chemistry final.
friends or just play someone who is really good on network, I got my ass kicked over and over again in arcade with soul calibur 2. You start pick up certain tricks just watch others do it on you.
got to rank 9 now, very fun and some of the players are extremely good.
They didn't change the controls to make them more Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat-esque, did they? One thing I liked in Soul Calibur was that all the fighters had the same "Core" set of moves. Attack+block was always a grab, fast fast slow usually was something, etc. Made getting decent with all the characters fairly easy once you got the hang of it, then you could go for more in-depth moves if you were so inclined.
Also,
Damn. I want to see those.
This is definitely the way to do it. I've played a ridiculous amount of Soulcalibur, and it's so much better when there's someone there that's pushing you *just enough*.
Even if you're not the same skill level, it's better playing against someone whose style you know (or can pick up after a few matches) than jumping into random ranked bouts. Those things have no rematch option and you don't know anything about your opponent's style (which is half the battle I'd say), so it's over one way or the other before anyone feels like they earned a victory.
Once you know the basics of guard impacts, etc. and a few moves with a favorite character, the rest of it is just playing the game against other people until things clilck.
After posting last night, and I admit it was after a bout of frustration, I got back into it. Managed to get through arcade with an easier to play character and decided to spar against the original character my main/custom character was based on. I set the AI to edgemaster and just tried to figure out what it was doing.
Sadly, I don't have friends here that play many computer or videogames. Unlike myself most of them have grown up. It's nature's way so I hear.
I did try and get online but for some reason I was being told all the matches were occupied both in the ranked and unranked systems. Set up my own but nobody showed up. I'm using a PS3. Could have been I was doing something wrong of course.
my only disappointment with the game is that there is no edge master/charade/olcadan character :(
and also that my new found love for cervantes is hindered by the fact that he's obviously an abused character online... so many of my matches online are against cervantes/shura.
I made a custom avatar as a joke but ended up sticking with him because he's fun to play (even if I lack the skills to make the most of him). VonBeck based on Ivy. Seemed appropriate to name him after a Moorcock character seeing as one of his weapons options is, no lie, the Magic Sausage.
Edit: Don't know how good a newbie guide this is but it's somewhere for me to start: http://www.mycheats.com/view/supergu..._calibur_4/ps3
Edit 2: Two sore thumbs later I'm starting to think fighting games are the flight sims of the console world.
Last edited by Brian Rucker; 08-03-2008 at 09:07 AM.
THANK YOU, after much faffing around I've finally managed to pull off a crit finish. The manual really should do a better job of explaining this.
It's a bit unclear on it. A bit more than what Wholly said, you have to perform a soul crush. That gets a flashing points award, plus a big effect. When they're flashing read and you hit with a guard break or just particularly strong attack, they should stagger and get stunned, that's when you smash the face buttons.
I picked this up yesterday for my girlfriend. She's a huge SC fan and was having a particularly bad day. I admit to knowing not much about SC games, though I have played my fair share of #2. It's nice to read impressions from people who know more about it. Interestingly, I thought mitsurugi got worse, while raphael got better. So far I'm enjoying Ashlotte a lot, but I don't even know the game's basic systems.
Posting Permissions