Alright, a new Soulcalibur game! I can’t wait to jump in, pick a favorite character, and learn the ropes of the character inside and out, master them, and then really pound some opponents. Oh wait, this isn’t a Soulcalibur fighter, but rather a hack and slash adventure game? Well, it could still be good couldn’t it, what with all the fan favorite characters being involved…right? Right? Sadly, no.

THE STORY SO FAR
You play as Siegfried, a young fighter searching for one of the mythical blades of the series. After discovering the sword onboard a pirate ship and activating it, the wicked and evil blade comes to life, opening up a portal of darkness, and unleashing a wave of evil all across the world. You soon wake up to find yourself in a world changed, and at the request of an empire’s king, you reluctantly agree to search the world for the splintered pieces of your blade in hopes of restoring it to its full power to thwart the empire’s enemy and to bestow power upon yourself as well in the process.

The story of Soulcalibur: Legends is told through a mixture of stlyish hand-drawn looking cinematics, mixed with in-game cinematics, and then topped off with static scenes of characters looking at each other while chat boxes appear at the bottom of the screen. Can you guess which one you experience the most? Sadly the game’s story is mostly told through these static moments, featuring (admittedly) attractive and handsomely drawn characters speaking about what is going on and where they are headed next, but the other cinematics are better, though you experience them less and less.

If you’ve played the Soulcalibur games you probably know the story of Siegfried and Nightmare enough by now, but if not, you’ll get your fill here (though that isn’t exactly a good thing). If you’ve played the games you’ll appreciate the story more than anyone else, and enjoy running across other characters from the games. If you’re completely new to the franchise, however, the story isn’t anything spectacular and just kind of exists as a placeholder as it isn’t that interesting or all that fulfilling of a narrative.

SINGLE-PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
The bulk of the game is the single-player adventure, which has you playing as Siegfried (among other characters) as you search the world in hopes of finding the missing pieces of your sword.

Though you start out alone, soon you’re gathering your first party member – Ivy. Once you have a member in your group you can then select two members per mission and then switch out between them during the level, substituting them out whenever you simply feel like changing things up a bit, or calling for them to come in to gather a weapon enhancement, get a little experience, or raise their health if they’ve taken damage. Most levels you can get through with only one character, and you’ll usually only switch them out when you want the air of something different going on, or you decide to level up their weapon by grabbing an item. The only time we really used both members was during the boss fights, because they do so much damage we were forced to use our second party member.

Soulcalibur: Legends is a hack and slash adventure, and if it had to be for any system, at least it was for the Wii where the movement based controls make the game something more than these games are normally…or at least it would be if the controls weren’t so unresponsive. The basic control fundamentals are that you use the nunchuk’s thumbstick to move your character around, while you attack by swinging your remote in different directions. You can slash left and right by flicking the remote in those directions, you thrust forward by jabbing straight, and you can slash up and down by doing those movements too. In theory you can also make combos by slashing over and over and mixing things up, but the problem is that more often than not the game won’t register your correct moments, and instead will simply throw out some slash attack since it at least registers movements. If the game worked flawlessly and read each and every movement, then the game would be at least partially average, but as it is it’s just not fun to sling the remote and have random things happening.

The game’s lock-on system works to a degree, but once it’s locked on it’s usually better to go with whomever it’s attached to instead of manually switching off to whoever you want to fight yourself. The problems with the lock-on, however, come from the fact that once you are locked on it’s hard to correctly judge the distance between you and the enemy (often missing attacks because of the terrible depth perception), and that once that enemy is destroyed, the camera system is so slow in its panning to your next target that it will often lead you into getting attacked unnecessarily.
The enemies aren’t that hard or smart, but they will get some hits on you because of the slow controls and the fact that there are so many gameplay issues you’re bound to get hit once or twice because of them; thankfully the enemies don’t do too much damage, and it’s usually not too hard to find some healing items by doing some environmental damage. The only real challenges come from the bosses, mainly because each hit does so for some tremendous damage.

MULTIPLAYER: GAMEPLAY
Besides the single-player story, you can also go through the quest cooperatively with a buddy in either a competitive or non-competitive mode, either simply trying to work your way through each level and beat it, or working through each level and trying to be the best of the two players each stage. Besides the questing, you can also compete in a Versus mode, which plays like a mixture between Soulcalibur: Legends trying to be the current game it is, and yet trying to appeal to the regular fighting game fans that have loved the series probably up until now. If you like the controls, you might like the fighting, but otherwise you’ll be better off waiting for the next true Soulcalibur game.

GRAPHICS
The graphics of the hand-drawn characters during the dialogue cutscenes look great, but when it comes to the characters and enemies and environments actually in the game when you are playing…jeez are they ugly. We’re talking about large, open bland areas with no life going on, repeating level patterns, thin and ugly looking characters, and enemies that look more like sticks and blobs than anything else. Really, a truly ugly game on almost all fronts.

AUDIO
The music sounds good, so we can at least give the game some credit in that regards, and not all of the voice acting is beyond terrible. For the most part, however, the audio work in Soulcalibur: Legends is average at best, though often dipping below that on more than one occasion.

IN CONCLUSION
There have been other fighting games out there to take a quick diversion a time or two, and rarely, if ever, have these fighting games ever produced a hack and slash adventure game worth anything. Soulcalibur: Legends is just another in a series of fighting games to hack and slash genre failures, and it’s hard to even recommend the game to the diehard Soulcalibur fans out there. Take our advice and wait for the next true Soulcalibur game.

Rating:
Our Scoring System