New characters, several game modes, and good graphics, SC3 is an amazing fighting game--it's a must buy.
To me, Soul Calibur III is just as good and doesn't let us down. In my opinion, it's the best Soul Calibur game.
The Good: the graphics are colourful and well done, there's many different game modes to play, several characters with interesting personalities and storylines, lots of different combos and attacks the fighters can do, a weapon and a character to suit everyone's style.
The Not So Good: some of the gameplay isn't so smooth, some combos are extremely difficult to pull off, the loading screens take a while and you do a lot of waiting around in Chronicles of the Sword mode, some of the extra missions are difficult or awkward.
3 new characters are introducted to the Soul Calibur series: Tira, Zasalamel, and Setsuka, each with their own new, unique weapons and personalities. They seem to fit in well with the rest of the Soul Calibur cast. This makes the amount of controllable characters add up to around 30, a spendid variety to choose from. It suits everyone's style this way.
There are many modes within SC3. First is Tales of Souls mode, the main story mode for each character. It contains a lot of reading and waiting, and for the most part all of the characters cutscenes and battles are similar or the same, however, it is still very enjoyable to play. It gets you a lot of money once you complete it, and you can do it over and over again. Also, for people who are obsessed with certain characters, they won't mind reading the long paragraphs are redoing this several times to get every cutscene and such.
Next is Chronicles of the Sword mode, a real time strategy mode mixed with the Soul Calibur fighting system set in a war torn age. You control one of your created characters and stratigize your team to attack your opponents bases, or defend your own. This requires a lot of waiting and can be confusing at times, but to some people who like these kind of things, they will enjoy this very much and may get captured into the story.
Then the World Competition mode. You can enter fake tournaments and battle against computer charactes that have nicknames to have them appear to be actual players. Because the PS2 cannot do online play, this mode was created as an illusion to make people believe and get the feeling they are fighting against people online. I think that was a good idea to do, cause well, everyone enjoys playing online.
The Soul Arena mode is the mode I probably go on the most besides Tales of Souls. In this there is the Quick Play mode--the classic arcade mode where you choose whatever character you want and fight in 8 matches. There's also Mission mode, where you choose a character and play in 12 different missions of 3 difficulty levels, such as Survival.
There's also Practice mode. Very commen and useful for perfecting your skills or getting used to a difficult character.
The Museum mode is where you can look and pictures, videos, and profiles in the art gallery, battle theater, exhibition theater, character profiles, and the event viewer.
The new and most interesting feature to SCIII is the Character Creation mode--where you can make your own original fighter with lots of different clothes, hair, and armor choices, or change the armor colour of the default characters. You can make up to 10 of your own characters with different job classes and different unique weapons, or you can make them fight in the style of one of the default characters.
There's also the Versus mode of course, the mode that's always fun to play with your friends and kick the crap outta them.
There's the shop, where you can buy new weapons, armor/clothes, and features with the money you get from the other modes.
And there's the Options mode where you can change the sound, display, language, etc.
Overall, I love SCIII; it's one of my favourite games. It has good graphics and there's so many different game modes with so many characters to choose from and get addicted to. I've owned this game for a few years now and I have pretty much everything, but I still have a blast kicking ass as my favourite characters.
It has smooth control for the most part and interesting game modes. It is a great fighting game and an excellant video game in general with some of the greatest game characters. I recommend EVERYONE who's a fan of Soul Calibur games or fighting games to get it. Actually, EVERYONE who likes videogames should get it. Go on, if you don't have it, go get it. C'mon... go buy it. Right now. Go!! XD You won't be disappointed.