Xbox Review
Soul Calibur II

Graphics
Sharp Graphics, Crisp Details, Great Animations. Most of the backgrounds look breathtaking. However, weapons and some clothing/armor/etc. have almost no hit detection and sometimes seem to go through the floor or wall. And while most backgrounds of stages look impressive some look like they needed more work. But I'm a perfectionist, so I doubt most will notice.

Gameplay
Easy to learn, hard to master. It is fairly difficult to achieve some moves without some degree of experimentation, however once you got the idea of what you're doing you can do it fairly well without much work. Game responded well to controller commands, however using the black and white buttons as attack buttons was odd on the Controller S.

Sound
Good music and great voices, however sometimes the music and sound effects are louder than the voices. By adjusting the sound controls this could be fixed however, and it is generally not that much of an annoyance.

Fun Factor/Replay Value
Fighting games are usually repetitive by nature however Soul Calibur II has plenty of stuff to come and see each and every time you play it. If you are a Soul Calibur fan, buy this game. If you are a fighting game fan, buy this game. If you are a Spawn fan, buy this game. It is worth it.

Overall Impressions
I like this game. I'm not much on the Soul Calibur mythos, and after learning some of the back story I think the storyline could use some work, but overall it sets the stage for a good fighting game. Beating the game with every person to learn their endings is a good point to the game, however I had hoped that the endings would have been more in depth (ala Mortal Kombat). And being able to play as Spawn made my day. I am a huge Spawn fan, and I use him most of all.

Liked
Being able to play as Spawn, playing the mission mode, and earning more kick butt weapons.

Disliked
There is not much that I disliked about the game. But if I had to pick one major thing it would be the way the weapons went through the floor sometimes. That bothered me a bit but I quickly learned to ignore it.

By: Trav