I use to waited with baited breath for every sequel I could get my hands on. Sure, the triple A titles and franchises I loved were always first and foremost, but my taste in games is vast, so any variety in another game’s namesake was always welcome. Certain aspects of gaming took their toll, though, and as I got older and grew accustomed to how massively destructive some of the largest games’ hype really were, my expectations would take a backseat, and I would just catch the games when they rolled out amidst my busy gaming schedule.

I’ve drifted in and out of the Soul Calibur series, as a big fan of Soul Calibur I, and an avid lover of Soul Calibur II. However, Soul Calibur III fell through the cracks a bit, and it kind of dropped from my radar. Soul Calibur IV marks the next-gen leap for the series, and as I sit down with a controller in hand, browsing through the character select screen, I have all but a slew of questions. How much did they capitalize on the engine? How many modes can I expect? Are Darth Vader and The Apprentice really going to be that cheap?

The answers turn out to be not very, only a few, balanced and horribly overpowered. That sentence doesn’t give the game near the credit it deserves, as there are a few different aspects one has to consider. Fighting games have it a little easier in the improvement department, as the layout will remain intact for the most part, and the campaigns usually consist of very old-school arcade progression through a host of enemies. Soul Calibur happens to be one of my favorite 3D fighters and has excelled in being an excellent weapons-based versus game. The combos are more fluid than found in other fighters, and the ability to use a large variety of weapons depending on who you were using has always been a draw. This fourth game in the series keeps the fluidly marvelous engine intact and drives toward the point of creating a detailed universe in which to fight.

The first thing that really stood out for me with this game was how detailed everything was. Soul Calibur has always been known to deliver great looking experiences to any system it comes out on, and this game persists as another benchmark in beautiful aesthetic craftsmanship all around. Each fighter is more than fairly fleshed out and a marvel to look out. Whether it’s the clothing, the hair or the realistic gleam of a fighter’s weapon, while you fight, you’ll have plenty of splendor to gaze upon while you enjoy bashing the hell out of your opponent.

With each character having such detailed backstories — unlike other fighters on the market — the further enjoyment of getting to know your fighter also will allow you to better appreciate what history and attention to detail that goes into any number of their outfits and how impressive it stands to have all of these confident stories challenge each other without one looming over everyone else. Once you see an example of the texture quality, whether it be Nightmare’s otherworldly effects, Voldo’s interesting choice in wardrobe or the array of colors with Setsuka’s outfits, you’ll realize that the only downfall to such sharp visual quality is how far they take the game in terms of T&A.

I’m no stranger to how much sex sells and how fighters can go hand in hand with a boob fest, but Soul Calibur IV takes the cake when it comes to extraneous amounts of ridiculousness buckled with the female starlets. I’m pretty sure any number of civil wars could easily break out in the Middle East with only a glimpse at a 30 second match with Ivy in full swing. I have to stand by the fact that any body part able to take focus off a weapon impressive enough to be a sword-extending whip has to be a crime against humanity somewhere. All in all, the fan service is overbearing and gratuitous in nature to the point of hilarity. A small price to pay for such a gorgeous roster of characters with a great selection of alternative costumes.

The players and what they wear aren’t the only things that stand to impress, as the levels were given the same kind of dedication. It is quite evident from some of the arenas and areas you’ll get to visit in your quest for the legendary sword. While you will only have about a dozen arenas to fight in, everything — from the atmosphere, lighting and water effects — will be impressively explicit. You’ll want to give a better sense of appreciation to everyone you fight in any said arena by launching them into any of the gorgeous backdrops, whether it be off a bridge in a Star Destroyer, outside of a gigantic castle or off a moving raft. After all is said and done, Soul Calibur IV is exactly what you would want a next-gen fighter to look like, from the people you play with to the places you play with them. Everything is comprehensively detailed to the nth degree, and then some.

I don’t usually go on about visuals as much as I did with Soul Calibur, but I was really taken back by how solid the earlier entries looked and how much of an improvement with which Soul Calibur IV leaps forward. The universe trying to be painted for the player is marvelous and leads the game in a great direction. I wish the direction was followed more adamantly, however, as the visuals seem to be one of the only facets the game tries to convey in that sense. The time and distance that is suppose to exist and have passed for all is vast and never ending, but the game never explores past the small corners of this universe and hurts the experience because of it. My complaint is served by the complete lack of task the game has on hand and how you’ll be more than finished with the core content of this game in no time at all.

Soul Calibur IV offers a story mode, complementary with some cinematics and text screens to try to dictate each character’s story. While I am under the impression investigating each individuals journey to the sacred blade is very compelling, the story does little to suffice the urge to know more. The purpose in mind is to create a believable environment to storm through on an epic quest, but the mode overall feels like an alternative version of arcade mode, which is the traditional eight-round romp right through to the end boss. Once again, another admirable attempt averted and only at the cost of lesser options. The game content just doesn’t exist to merit a full blown honor of story mode, as they didn’t go the extra mile to give the player more. More control, more reasons, more tasks, more playgrounds. A definite miss when one considers how much they had to explore and what fun was viable because of this.

The other single-player mode is Tower of Lost Souls, which is a series of escalating challenges to the top of a 20-floor battleground. This mode lets players utilize the weapons and equipment effects that one wouldn’t find in arcade mode, giving you the edge in any number of ways for offense, defense or a special power. You unlock the bulk of the extras in Tower of Lost Souls and will probably be the place you spend most of your time battling and accruing style levels (which will help your character) and completing challenges.

The tower is fun, as you ascend and descend the entire thing to the best of your ability, making it ripe for replay value. This is only offset by the fact that weapon master mode from the old Soul Calibur is quite absent here, which is like substituting prime rib with a fast food hamburger. The contrast of quality is too great to ignore, and it will be impossible for it to ever satisfy you in the same way, especially given what options they had and what kind of variety they could have included.

Soul Calibur IV has an online multiplayer component this time around in case you get bored with the games single-player outings and want some new kind of competition. There are ranked and player matches, online leaderboards and all of the standard online fare you would come to expect. The options for the game are all present, but some of the execution is muddled. For starters, only player matches are a good bet for smooth online matches, as most of the peak day ranked bout in which I participated presented the issue of lag.

The lobby for each game also is a bit confusing as you wait in a virtual line for your chance to oust the winner. The process is confusing on the implication that the other players can’t watch the two combatants duke it out, which I find out having played a host of other online games that let you at least view how the match is progressing. For whatever reason, though, you’re forced to sit at a dull screen waiting for your chance to fight. This was a rather unattractive fact, considering the online was slow to begin with. Fighters always have greater latency issue when dealing with an online arena, but with all of these odd calamities coming together, the network feature all but leaves a bad taste in your mouth and does little to offer incentive to keep playing.

The character creator available does a disservice to the Soul Calibur brand as well, due to the fact that so many of the options have to be unlocked or acquired throughout the game. The incentive to change the characters is not potent enough to off balance how much money will be spent trying to acquire what you want for the two dozen characters available. I don’t much agree with the interface, as it appears sloppy and imposes itself as confusing from first glance. The process of changing your character isn’t exactly user-friendly, due to the slow loading nature and poor outline. Modifying your character is more of an effort in patience than it is an activity in customization. The choices offered aren’t varied enough, and the satisfaction from doing so is next to nothing when you realize how much better the character creator has been done by other companies earlier and with smaller budgets. The mandatory slate of only being able to use each characters palette and weapon also is a major turn off and really displays the lack of creativity that went into the visuals and not the modifying and creating process itself.

All in all, the experience has a lot of pros, but these existed as a staple to the brand before the entry. The roster is big and very balanced, offering a great spark between any two combatants and the styles in which they may be used. The difficulty curb is confident in itself and will help any player with any number of skill gaps they’ll have to get across.

While still smooth and with a vast number of moves for each player, the game fails to offer enough beyond the pale. The single-player experience is a far cry from the content ratio to what was offered in previous titles, and the character creation and online have been done much better by other fighting franchises before it. While there are plenty of unlockables, I doubt many players will find reason enough to seek them out in the game’s ever blatant mode monotony. The main problem I had with the game was that it marked too much of a regression for a great series and has no reason to rest on its laurels as much as it had in delivering a quality gameplay experience with so little to do.

With so many little annoyances present (exclusion of weapon master mode and team battle, sorely lacking character creator, laggy online) and the slap-dash job of providing a constant experience to come back to, the greatest flaw of Soul Calibur IV is the mandatory bar reached and how casually the developers failed to go any further. The package here is barebones, and the content is no way vindictive of how vast the series roots are and what kind of detail is hidden in backstory. It saddens me to see such a poor entry, but the creators seem to focus on what looked pretty rather then how you could play it. The engine may be solid, but it remains to be one of the only ways that game begs that compliment. Go into this expecting a cool fighter — but not one that will hold your interest for very long. The game serves to remind us that creating an epic has more to do with public opinion than anything and that forcing such definitions can only go as far as the effort you put into it.

Afterthought: On the topic of little annoyances, I praise the game for avoiding the age-old fighting game pitfall of having an overpowered jackass serving as the last boss wall to victory, but curse LucasArts and whoever else is responsible for the balancing issues evident with The Apprentice. Darth Vader is out of place, sure, but he does well to fit in with the rest of the fighters to serve a purpose of cool cameo within the means of balance.

The Apprentice breaks this rule forthright and provides an aggravating menace on your way to arcade completion (and multiplayer issues). I spent five minutes getting to The Apprentice, and then 10 minutes losing to him given his ridiculous long-range attacks and powerfully juggling grapples. I have two words of advice as far as these special guests are concerned.

First, when the most powerful being in your universe (Algol in this case) has pure power coursing through his body and is an easier foe to tackle than a man with a definite grammatical article for a first name (THE Apprentice), you might want to go back to that drawing board when considering who’s a bigger badass in the grand scheme of things.

Second, when your fighting game serves as a commercial vehicle to advertise an upcoming title with the appearance of a really badass character, do so tastefully as best you can, as the inclusion of any character under this pretense has a nasty way of showing the gamer’s true colors. When you have the excitement created around the inclusion of a character from another franchise, be wary that when tens of thousands of people are playing with the special guest, the initial few dozen characters you included could use a dab of refined creativity to balance that hype gap. Though when it all comes down to it, Jedi are usually so effing cool; the only real problem that The apprentice had was they kept him too true to form in the first place, which is an obvious delicate problem when one considers balance versus cannon storytelling. Alas, the irony.