Soul Calibur Broken Destiny Review

Firstly let me start off by saying I love Soul Calibur like I said its the only series that I am truly good enough at to compete online. Also along with Mortal Kombat the only fighter I’ve stuck with through different iterations. I own SC, SC2, SCIV. Less said about Legends the better lets be honest as far as fighting spin offs go it on a par with Mortal Kombat: Mythologies.

If you have played any of the other games in the series you will know what to expect. However the main single player mode Gauntlet lacks in many ways. SCIV was disappointing with the towers system. Why can’t we have a return of SCII’s map based adventure mode is baffling. Even the originals single player was great. The Quick Match system is rather different from past versions. Rather than just matching two random characters together and jumping straight into a fight it replicates an online lobby and lets you pick players with bizzare ID’s and then fight it tracks all your records as if they were online stats. Oddly there is no normal arcade mode instead the other game mode is trials which works in a similar way. The major difference is rather than a set number of fights you just keep fighting until you lose and get a score based on that. There are a variety of options difficulty wise. Something that will annoy Soul Calibur stalwarts is having to replay through all tutorials of how to pull off various moves etc…

Kratos is great and really good fit within the game. All his moves from the GoW series are present and correct and his banter before each fighter is keeping in with his mood and demeanor from the popular Sony franchise. He is easy to use and made fluid combos can be unleashed with relative ease. If anything is the Link of this game with great close range as well as ranged attacks and a simple hard hitting move set that makes him an ideal choice for beginners. However this does cause slight balancing issues as like Link some of his moves can be spammed.

It looks fantastic for a handheld and if this is a sign of things to come from this new emphasis on big hitters coming to the PSP then fantastic we have a lot to look forward to with the likes of Motorstorm, LBP etc…coming in the near future. For the sheer brilliance of how Namco have handled it conversion to the PSP and made a full 3D Soul Calibur with all the movesets present and correct it deserves to be noticed. It obviously lacks that HD sheen to it though and it is telling, but your not going to be expecting that kind of experience. If you are then pick it up on one of the HD consoles instead.

I’m not completely sure if its a worthwhile purchase if you own other games in the series. I mean I play most of my gaming at home so I could just as easily pop my PS3 and play IV on there. If however you play more gaming on the move I can’t recommend it high enough. Likewise if you are new to the series or a new PSP owner SC:BD is certainly an excellent starting point to the joys of Soul Calibur.

7/10

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