I remember the first time I played the first Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast back in 1999. I remember playing it as a friend’s house quite a lot being I didn’t have a Dreamcast. Being I was only about 7-8 years old I wasn’t really the best at the game, but I loved it all the same.  It was fast paced and fun to play. I was excited to get my hands on Soul Calibur 2 for the Xbox in late 2002. I was one of the first games I received for my Xbox, so I played it a ton. Again I was still pretty young, so I didn’t really know very much about the mechanics of the game.  I have to say though that I still have my same copy that I had back in 2002, and I do pop it in every once in a while to bring back the memories. Now on to the game…

Released in 2002, Soul Calibur II is the third installment in the soul series that was developed by Project Soul.  They have brought back characters from the previous games along with bringing in some new contenders. Project Soul also did something a little different with this addiction. Soul Calibur was released on the Xbox, PS2, and the Gamecube, and each version had its own special character. The Xbox version (the version that I had) had the comic book character Spawn as a playable character, Heihachi Mishima from Tekken on the PS2 version, and Link from The Legend of Zelda on gamecube.  This brings the roster up to a whole 23 character.

Let’s talk game play shall we? Soul Calibur is a very fast paced game but with very basic controls. Each character has vertical attacks and horizontal attacks, kicks, and a guard.  Each character is a master at a specific weapon, so everyone is very unique with their fighting style. Other then that the objective is very simple (as is in most fighting games…) defeat your opponent.

The design is smooth and looks great. The soundtrack is very intense and really adds to the matches. As expected the later games in the soul series has improved dramatically. I have played the new ones and I do enjoy them. The reason I put Soul Calibur II on my list instead of the later one is mostly because of the nostalgic value it has to me. I love this list game so if you have never played a game in the Soul Calibur series, I highly recommend them. You may notice that, on some of the other games higher on my list, they may be an older game in a series of games. I have picked these games because they are the games I remember playing for hours and hours as a kid with friends and family. That is one of the things that makes a game great to me is the nostalgic factor. Come back next time to see what number 4 on my list of my top five favorite fighting games.