I enjoyed sc3 casually, although sc2 was most certainly the better game in my opinion. I play SF and GG series as well as some “off-brand” fighters that have some sort of redeeming quality to them, and I consider sc3 as one of the most tedious, frustating, and mind numbing fighting games. It was fun for a few days of very casual, brief play, but its lasting power was minimal.
Don’t get this the wrong way but you’re wrong.
His SC3 version was the best character in the game in AE. His double uppercut move as you said was the finishing part of a 50% combo in AE and the combo was scrubby as hell to start it up. Coming from a scrubby character like Mitsurugi, that was just plain too much.
He was mid tier in SC1, top tier in SC2 with his kB2, insta-throws setups along with his 2K scrubby mixups and the best in AE. He needed a nerf big time.
Hell, before the patch, he had an infinite. Glad Namco finally toned him down. He’s still competitive.
Soul Calibur lost its Soul!
SC1 and especially SC2 were amazing games, but it’s so sad that the series went down the toilet!
It’s also sad that companies like Namco are deciding to appeal more to the Casual Gamer Button Mashers than the hardcore gamers, they will make more money, but the fighters won’t feel the same anymore.
I find it weird that you want to treat SC4 like its own game, when they fucking DESTROYED Talim prior to SC2. Most people want things the way they were and now its just getting a bit ridiculous. Granted SC4 is its own game, but it sucks so much that we cant help to compare it to the previous, BETTER installments. Theres just no way around that.
Mina and Talim have no strengths, they are the two characters below Zasalamel on the tier listing, and Zas is at the bottom. Talim is horribly unsafe, shit distance, and shes not particularly fast to be so little. Slow to be exact. Mina just fucking sucks, nothing but pokes, shes OKAY at zoning, but Kilik does it WAAAAAY better.
I guess its a moot point saying step doesnt do them much good, when they pretty much suck overall. I dont think you can say they have strengths in other areas when they lack the fundamentals where it really counts. Because ultimately there are characters in the cast that do what they do much better, I think you have to solely rank their strengths based on the system of the game and not the other other characters, because then you lose.
I think anyone would sacrifice Minas pokes if she could actually lock down and decent mixup, and I think anyone would sacrifice Talims mixups if she actually had some real speed or damage because some characters eat her wind leaps and negate any attempt of mixing up.
Talim, Maxi, Rock, Mina, Zasalamel and Tira have it pretty hard in SC4. Kilik, Mitsu, Ivy, Hilde, Voldo, Setsuka and Astaroth are the cream of the crop. Everyone else has just enough to compete at high level but by no means bottom tier.
SC2 nats was awesome, but sorta early in the game’s lifespan - I think Chi hid certain tech (like g-step? someone confirm/deny plz :p) and G2 hadn’t even been discovered yet, plus a lot of the players who ended up being among the best hadn’t reached their peak yet (including but not limited to Aris, X_SC2, XCTU/heartnana, RTD, and Mick).
Kilik is like holy shit beastly in SC4 after the patch. Being a Kilik player since SC, I almost didn’t know what to do with the fact that they finally made a top-tier version of him. 
I say treat it as it’s own game because almost every character now plays completely different from what they did in 1/2. The only exception I can think off the top of my head might be Soph.
I maybe should have mentioned that I also play Cass. So I don’t sound like I’m trying to be some low-tier hero.
The two I mentioned are the two most commonly considered bottom tiered characters that don’t get enough credit because people don’t know how to play them.
Mina is bottom tier. No doubt. But she’s mostly able to compete. In fact there seems to be some untapped potential left for her. Her strengths lie in being able to relatively easily interrupt an opponents flow with either her retreating moves or her auto-gis and in forcing situations where the opponent either has to block and eat massive soul gauge damage or take damage from staying passive. That and she has a solid spacing game. But if this were any other SC game I’d say she would be trash.
As for Talim. Her strengths lie in fast and damaging mixups from stance. Granted you have to guess right each time but you’ll usually end up on top in terms of damage if you do. I’d consider her at worst low-mid tier. I think she probably falls around mid. Most people make the mistake of not training the opponent to block before attempting to mixup from stance. Then they write her off as gimmicks and then wonder “how the hell does OOFMATIC manage to win tournaments with her?” SC3 Talim. Now she was trash.
Both characters require quite a bit more thought and effort to play than other, more basic characters but both are more viable than people give them credit for.
It does depend on the matchup though. Both characters have some very bad matchups.
Touche. Omega won SC3 nationals and he won the Dominican Republic NATS qualifier this year with Zasalamel. So it CAN happen, it just takes a lot of work.
Mina really is good at defending against attackers, but see thats not really my playstyle. I toyed around with her for 5 minutes, and she has some stupid pokes. But I like my game a bit more meaty. And her good shit is kinda linear, but if you can make them lock up with Mina youre golden. If Mina had something that caused stun AND evaded like Kiliks 1B I might look at her differently. Poor Mina.
I think Talim flat out sucks. Sometimes you have to guess between mid and low with her forward roll, but her backwards leap is hot shit. To Zasalamel anyway, Im assuming all long range BBs kill all her options after 6B+K? Ive seen Oofmatic do shit like 6B+K A+B~G wind leap A+B. That spaces out a lot more but its a bit risky, I thought that shit was pointless.
Talim players have to be witty. Because aint nobody falling for 1A offline. She really have to spam BB, 8WR, 6B mixups etc.
Its really a shame that some people cant really enjoy the game as much because their main characters suck so much. Its either quit or switch your main.
I can vouch for this. Back when SC2 was still competitive, one of the top japanese players, BLT-Tsubojiru came to SA for a year for a university sister school program.
When he went back to Japan, he tested stuff for SC3 and i would post some stuff @ SC.com when it was still around, mainly about Xianghua. Then about a week before its release, he said that some stuff didnt make it in the final game in the changes that he told me about. In the end, i truly feel that SC3 was a beta for the arcade release (the US version anyway) because of glitches (G22) and severe balance issues. (Asta, Xianghua, Sophie)
To me though, SC3 was the most fun to play. Yeah it was broke but fun to play. It was sped up for SC2 and so it felt more dynamic since slower moves from the previous game actually had some use because it was sped up. SC2 while the most balanced, was a little too slow IMO.
Now SC4 changed the game completely. The one thing i personally didnt like was the move lists made smaller. My fav poke, Mitsus 6B8? Gone. I dont really have to say anything about SC4 since most of it was said here.
i agree for the most part. Unless I’m trying to play against someone else. Then it’s glitch-city. I don’t understand how Namco could put so much money and time into a game like this and not bother to fix the glitches that occur in the gameplay or even the memory card erase glitch (and this wasn’t the first Namco game to have this “feature.”) SC3 is an awesome game to play if you’re playing alone. The CotS mode is fun and the mission modes are a good time too when they’re not maddeningly difficult.
I love SC3 but spending more time with SC2 made me really aware of its flaws, especially in how they really messed up some of my favorite characters in 3. Raph, Ivy, and Nightmare are SO much better and more efficient in SC2 than they are in 3. :sad:
I think I may have asked this in another thread, but WTF didn’t they use the PAL version for the American GH version of SC3, especially in light of the fact that it could have given the game a whole new life?
It’s a good question and one that Namco should answer, because they’re piss poor when it comes to beta testing. :arazz:
stepping in sc4 is good i’ll give you that.
however i was talking about 8wr, which was when i last played sc4 still pathetic.
if i wanted to step shit i’d play tekken.
and agreed that step was a bit too good in sc2… still it wasnt THAT hard to play against. and i mained yunsung for chrissake.
8wr was PERFECT in sc2.
2G blew monkey cock. and when it was discovered was the beginning of the end for mainstream sc2.
-dime
Okay, we all need to accept that SCIV has always had a completely screwed over story-line. It always has, and that will probably never change. But to address what you said about Astaroth. If you think astaroth is any type of a “joke character” then you obviously haven’t played enough or haven’t gone deep enough into the game to really understand the type of character he is. Astaroth is a deadly character with reasonable mix-up ability and plenty of chain grabs that do a lot of damage to anyone unlucky enough to get hit with one. He has one of the longest, most effective tech-trap I have seen on this game to this very day and i’ve owned all the soul calibur games since the day they released on consoles.
I’m a Soul Calibur IV player at my core, before Street Fighter and before K.O.F. and Blazblue. I’m a tournament goer, with 10 won Soul Calibur IV tournaments under my belt, so even I have to admit that my opinion is a little biased. But ultimately, you have to play Soul Calibur IV the way its meant to be played. Which is NOT like SCI, SCII, or SCIII. This is a new game, it has new aspects, some for the worst and some for the better. This goes especially for the critical finishes. It takes a lot to get critical finished. I’m rarely ever CF’d online or offline, you’re safe of it as long as you’re not blocking moves that can be stepped or ducked and not Guard impacting things when you have the opprotunity to. And as for Hilde? Lol, she’s easily delt with. The most she can do at a time is three charges and they’re all high attacks and steppable. All you need to do is be patient, wait for them to happen, react accordingly and punish accurately.
Long post made short? Soul Calibur hasn’t lost any of its grace. People just need to take it as it is and stop obsessing over what was in the previous installments. If you want to play Soul Calibur III then you probably SHOULDN’T buy Soul Calibur IV
Isn’t SC on the XBLA?
sc2 is probably my fav, it’s what made me get 3 despite how lackluster it was.
sc4 is fun offline.
Thats my fault I didnt mean guard break I meant the armor break and that critical finish. i just think the game would better off without it. And yes I own all 4 soul calibur games, 3 happens to be my favorite, then 2.
Almost forgot:
-Took away WL moves
-No more soul charge
-Adding finishing moves…which is a whole nother dynamic. Now some characters are much easier at breaking guard than others, its difficult to play a turtle style because your aggressive opponent could easily get your meter flashing.
Rotfl. I just dont end.
Im so switching to MvC2. Broken-ness, but not without knowing what the fuck is going on. :encore:
That’s actually another thing I liked about SC4. I feel that SC, like Tekken, suffers from “feature creep” regarding movelists. Every sequel adds more and more moves, and by the latter sequels, characters now have these massive movelists with too many redundant or completely worthless moves.
I don’t like that the smaller movelists took away a few good key moves or reduced playstyle versatility, but I definitely agree with it in principle.
Last time I checked weren’t guard impacts meant to recharge your soul guage and depleate the enemies?
And before you mention it being much harder to do that online, remember that you couldn’t do anything online on the other SCs on account of them having no online modes.
Kind of a long post. This is just one man’s opinion.
SC4 is just an okay game at best. I think that Namco, as has been mentioned before in this thread, in an effort to make the game more commercial Namco has decided to add some things, Star Wars to try to bolster support. I’ve been a fan of the series since Soul Edge, I played the import version, and I think the series has come a long way since then.
Although Soul Edge has a pretty good story, decent graphics, great soundtrack (best of the series IMO) and was fun Soul Caliber should probably be considered the best of the series because the work put into that game was astounding. It changed the nature of 3d fighting games at that point, it completely changed the gameplay of the series, it had oodles of unlockables and extras (which admittedly probably was a lay over of the soul edge era) and had a pretty compelling story for all characters. Overall, I think SC1 had the highest hurdle to jump and it did so, seemingly, effortlessly. Really, all SC2, 3 and 4 had to do was build on an already great product and they all didn?t do that.
I think SC2 is the second best of the series. It didn?t stray too far from the winning formula of SC1 but the multiplatform release characters and necrid were extremely bad ideas (although I did like Spawn). Most notoriously, this iteration unfortunately introduced things like bombs, arrows, boomerangs invisible firey lines that explode upward from the ground and other long range non SC1 fighting moves. The story mode started to falter a little bit in this one but overall it was passable.
SC3
Is the worst of the franchise. In it?s benefit column it did have tons of unlockables and huge roster but really those custom characters (thief) are pretty bad and mostly unplayable. The graphics didn?t seem to have that huge of a jump, understandably since it was on the same platform as SC2, but it was still pretty decent. The single player mode was tedious and not much fun, that terrible thought out RTS game was horrendous and a chore. Certain characters (IVY) were completely nerfed but new additions, Shaq, Tira and Set, were welcomed additions but some were a little too good. Too many of the hidden characters starting using moves from Links play list so now they throw fire, and bombs and boomerangs and have Goku?s powerpole (no homo) and other dumb shit.
Then SC4 really seems like it builds on SCIII?s losing formula. Graphics and sound are, at this point, expected to be good so saying that it is the best graphically? well we?d very well expect it to look and sound the best of the series since it is the most recent and on the next gen platforms. The game itself is solid and definitely SC4>SC3 but that?s it. CF, although I understand the premise behind it, seems oddly out of place. I don?t think the transition from fighting to CF movie is smooth enough to make it work. SW chars are completely out of place, although fun to use. Hilde is a nice addition but she is a broke character, Aldol is terrible, why the hell are we bringing Thanos bubbles into SC?. The magic that was SC1 is not there. The story line and endings are the worst of the series, this matters little to those that play this competitively but as a fan of the series I was greatly disappointed in this fact. Even the FMV?s seem? stupid.
It does. But now youre theory fighting. Its a lot harder to get your edge back once youre already flashing.