Soul Calibur through the times has always been successful in delivering fast paced action packed game play with a lot of stunning moves and complex combos to perform. Soul Calibur IV brings you this and more with a whole new character customization feature that brings the familiar weapon choices from the previous Soul Caliber. Though this time around characters from the world of Star Wars make an appearance to aid in battle both on the side of good and evil.

Soul Calibur IV offers some of the same game play style that have been seen in previous Soulcalibur games such as Arcade Mode, Story Mode, and Training. But this time around the folks from Bandai Namco bring you the Tower of Souls, a sixty level tower which allows players to ascend the tower and challenge your skills with each fight. Every floor in Tower of Souls offers a different situation and set up for battle with extra objectives to complete at each floor for extra unlockables that can be used in character customization.

Once reaching the top of the tower there’s the ability to descend the tower as well. Tower of Souls is a nice new game play style that moves players away from the basic story mode and arcade mode giving advanced players more a challenge. Tower of Souls ends up being the main focus of Soul Calibur IV after finishing up arcade and story mode because it offers more game play capabilities and different situations through each floor also factoring in the ability to descend the tower after reaching the top.

Staying true to previous Soul Calibur games there’s still Story Mode which consists of a short prologue to whichever character you choose and a set five stages to go through which may consist of a tougher "boss" like character or two through four fights in a row. After completion of Story Mode with a character a Soul Calibur type weapon will be available to purchase and equip to the character or custom character through character customization. The other familiar game play mode is Arcade which involves eight stages of two fights against one opponent and with each stage the difficulty increases. Throughout the eight stages of arcade mode you’re ranked according to the complexity of your moves, life remaining, time remaining, ring outs, knock outs, and damaged armor. A nice feature which links in with story mode is the theater where players can view the beginning and ending cut scenes to characters from story mode also players can view a beginning cut scene involving their customized character.

The newest edition to game play in Soul Calibur IV is the Xbox Live multiplayer mode that pits players across the world against each other using either standard or custom characters. Online Multiplayer is equipped with a leveling process where after each victory over a fight nets a certain amount of points while at a certain point losing a fight causes a deduction although there are small bonuses that award experience points such as fight strikes, K.O.’s, and more. The only unfortunate part of the multiplayer game play is that lag can cost you the fight when your attack comes a second or two after the button push or if you end up going against the inevitable cheap player that uses the same one to three attacks the entire fight which can quickly make online play something to avoid after occurring enough times. But other sections of online multiplayer offers Ranked and Player match games with either Special Versus, weapon and equipment effects come into play, or Standard versus, equipment and weapon effects do not come into player, to suit your style of gaming.

Unfortunately I feel as though the online multiplayer option ends up falling short and disappoints due to several issues. First to progress a level during multiplayer you are forced to win two consecutive fights because once you attain the required experience (400/400) you have you fight another match to level up. An issue which can prevent a player from leveling as well as an issue in itself is running into people online who do no more than spam two to three attacks the entire fight, all three rounds. Sometimes this is countered but more often it isn’t easily done. So in conclusion to these issues leveling becomes more complicated than just winning a fight since experience doesn’t over flow into the next level and running into people that make playing the game online frustrating causes the online feature to be a lot less exciting.

The control layout in Soul Calibur IV is fairly simple and still similar to previous Soul Calibur games where high, mid, and low vertical and horizontal strikes are involved. The game allows other levels of complexity by linking together devastating combos or simply throwing your opponents off by striking mid then low and back. Two new capabilities in Soul Calibur IV which can prove useful would be the Soul Crush and Critical Finish moves. Soul Crush is an attack that leaves you opponent stunned and open to attack and is done by getting your opponents soul gauge to a cracked flashing red state then landing an unblock able attack. Critical Finish comes in use in the Tower of Souls to speed through swarms of enemies or if you would like to humiliate someone online because it is an instant finish for the round and is preformed by hitting your opponent when their soul gauge is cracked and flashing red as soon as a piece of their armor breaks with a

Character customization offers a plethora of detail allowing players to create a unique character almost ever character created from scratch will not be the same. Players will have the ability to change basic things like hair style and color along with other options such as physique and masculinity. Even attention to the character appearance itself is notable such as veins sticking out when masculinity is set to high. Other features in character customization would include being able to set different skills and abilities based on what type of armor and accessories are equipped. Some pieces of armor may add or subtract maximum skill points which initially allow players to add an ability to their character such as on occasion landing an unblock able attack or stealing life with each hit. Not only can armor and accessories add skill points but it can also add or subtract points in attack, defense, and health. Fortunately there’s no one all powerful character that can be made through customization because there’s the constant challenge of balancing stat points and skill points while equipping items.

Overall Soul Calibur IV grants players the ability to make their own original character then taking them through story mode, arcade mode, and then online. There’s a lot of old familiar faces to the roster with a few new ones and the same goes for the game modes. A higher level of detail to both game play and graphics/animation has been added but while some new options are nice others are disappointing.