The weapon master's answer to Tekken Tag!
User Rating: 10 | SoulCalibur III PS2
Soul Calibur 3 is the most amazing fighting game to ever grace the PS2 with it's billions of modes and challenges this game almost never gets old. The amuont of challenge on offer here is good if you're the casual SC player and you can't do all of the fancy moves there are alternate difficulties for each and every challenge in Soul Arena. Soul Arena contains challenges some range from the level where the clock tower keeps twisting so you have to be careful not to slip to the absolute insane but creative level where you fight a stone statue of Sophitia's god. You don't get an Arcade mode here but what you do get in return is even better the Tales of Souls mode is in place of your standard arcade mode but it's not just like a set of 1 on 1 contests. You can choose your path some paths lead to special battles where you may have to defeat more than one enemy to go further or other conditions. There are plenty of secrets to be found in the mode becuase certain paths take you to certain areas like the labyrinth and when only special conditions are met (like not losing a battle and choosing the right path) the game's TRUE final boss reveals itself. But before you can do all that it's off the practice arena to learn some valuable skills. There are 3 types of training one allows Olcadan to teach you various aspects of the game a place where any newcomer should start. The glossary allows you to read and understand all th terms used in the game an essential skill. Free Training allows you to do whatever moves you like on a training dummy you can also st the training dummy to do stuff such as fight you back. The roster of warriors here is absolutely HUGE from lots and lots of characters to pick from with the bonus unlcokable characters. The best part here is that characters that have been missing from previous SC instalments return as bonus characters such as Li Long form Soul Blade and Hwang. A unique feature of SC3 is the create a fighter mode here you can dress your own warrior and give them fighting stle with othere fighting styles availble for purchase. The shop is where all the goodies are stashed save up some gold through battles and spend all the loot on weapons, creation pieces, bonus modes, character styles and lots of other things. The chronicles of the sword mode here is good it is sort of like a table top strategy game you oder your custom warriors to move along and break down enemy forces and buildings and eventually take over their main stronghold. What's unique to that mode is that you an level up your characters the more battles your warrior wins the more EXP he/she gets when you level up you can get faster, stronger and can take more damage. The later levels of any mode can be a real struggle for anyone below pro skill so you need to practice alot before you can take on the really evil baddies. If you don't practice it'll have you chucking your pad across your room. All things considered SC3 is a top notch game with the character models so fluid to a truckfull of bonus modes any fighting game fan should consider this an essential purchase. 
