Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny (PSP)

Soul Calibur is a series that I’ve never been totally sure about – I’m quite picky when it comes to fighting games, and generally I’m more of a Street Fighter fan. However, I do own a copy of Soul Calibur IV, and when I got it I enjoyed playing it for a while. The combat is easy to pick up, yet it does feel as though there’s an element of mastery that the player can pick up, with blocks, reversals and counters and the like. I also quite enjoy the weapon aspect to the game – giving the creators more room for varied characters such as Ivy with her whip-sword, and Taki with her dual ninja blades.

Tomorrow, we will see the release of Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny on PSP (whether or not its release on the same day as Square-Enix’s Dissidia fighter release is a coincidence I am uncertain). The game will feature over 30 characters, including all of the main characters included in Soul Calibur IV(excluding Star Wars/Bonus characters), and in true Soul Calibur fashion includes a new game cameo character – God of War’s Kratos. There is also a brand new character, Dampierre, who looks a little like a cartoon villain with an overly large moustache and top hat.

The gameplay itself looks as fluid as the console counterpart – obviously the game’s graphics have been toned down but it seems they have managed to recreate the game on the handheld platform without losing much in fluidity or quality. It seems the game is faithful to Soul Calibur 4 in terms of its combos and special moves, and it looks as though there are still plenty of attacks for each character.

Kratos himself looks like a very nicely made character – Namco have managed to keep his attitude and attacks true to the God of Wargames, while keeping him suitable for the Soul Calibur gameplay. He looks to have a wide range of moves, and also uses abilities and alternate weapons seen from the series. Although I somewhat feel that Soul Calibur’s use of cameo characters shows an obvious marketing ploy, I am a fan of God of War, and it seems they’ve done Kratos justice.

The character creation mode from the more recent Soul Calibur titles returns in this title, which was personally one of my favourite features. Although some aspects, such as changing muscularity and physical attributes have sadly been left out of this title, the game will allow you to have some control over the size, position and rotation of certain clothing and accessories which could be a very nice addition. With 16 custom character slots, there should be a fair amount of room for creativity – assuming there’s a decent selection of unlockable clothes. With the PSP’s Playstation Network connectivity, I wouldnt be surprised if we might see some DLC to expand upon the wardrobe at a later date.

The game offers a few different modes, but there seems to be one major flaw – the game lacks a standard Arcade mode, which is generally the ‘main’ core of solo gameplay in fighting games. The game offers Quick Match mode, which allows players to choose from a lobby of random virtual opponents, however they are all Custom characters, rather than the standard game characters. The second mode of the game is the Gauntlet, which is like a giant Tutorial mode, consisting of various stages that require you to perform certain actions or techniques. Next we have Trials mode, which consists of Attack and Defence stages that score you depending on your use of combo chains or defensive skills respectively, and also Endless Trial which is somewhat like Survival Mode, perhaps the closest thing to Arcade that the game offers. Lastly we have Training mode, although this seems a bit superfluous with the long Gauntlet mode.

The game does have Versus mode, although sadly there is currently no online capability or 1P vs CPU play. Therefore it is solely for Ad-Hoc – which means you’ll need to know someone else who has the game to use this feature.

The game is also one of the first PSP titles to include the “Data Install” option which allows you to install data from the UMD to your memory stick in order to drastically reduce loading times –  a nice addition.

All in all, the gameplay is looking good – rather than a ‘watered down’ Soul Calibur title, Broken Destinylooks to offer real Soul Calibur gameplay. However, the lack of a basic Arcade mode seems to be such an unnecessary flaw that the title looks to be incomplete – the game has more Tutorial modes than actual gameplay modes. And with all that training, there’s no online play so human competition will be hard to come by unless they release an update at a later time, or you have a lot of friends who happen to love Soul Calibur.

Broken Destiny seems to be a great fighter, yet is let down by its flawed selection of basic game modes. If you’re a big fan of Soul Calibur, I’d recommend you give this a shot – but personally I’ll be opting for Dissidia: Final Fantasy tomorrow.