Soul Calibur 3: Chronicles of the Sword (PS2)

Soul Calibur 3. One of a handful of demos sampled on my holiday demo disc from PSU. Up to this point, Soul Blade and SC2 were the only installments played.

Despite being a demo the gameplay was fairly intriguing plus the sneak peek of game features made it even more exciting. The game itself was captivating but my attention was quickly whisked away with the RTS side game -- Chronicles of the Sword.

A New Legend Begins

One of the major draws of this side game was the ability to create a custom character to be the focal point of the story line. All you had to do was choose a gender, select their discipline and dress them up as you choose. With this installment, your discipline involved two standard fight styles and two main character fight styles.

Take my custom character Onishi for example whose discipline is Ninja. Standard fight styles include the Kunai and Katana. After certain milestones were achieved, the fight styles of Taki and Setsuka were obtained.

The gameplay itself was highly immersive especially for someone looking to catch a breather from school work. After a while I started to grasp which characters were best for certain fight situations. Each environment was different and the storyline was quite compelling.

You start off with a certain mindset, but as time went on your character started to take note of things that were off putting. Next thing you know, you are confronted with information that leads to some second guessing; especially when the person you are working for makes a sudden appearance on the battlefield. 

As time went on, you and some of your loyal companions break away and form an alliance with a group you once thought were your enemy. After many a battle, you're able to recruit old allies to engage with the final boss; The Emperor. The time clocked for this side game alone was compatible with the amount of time clocked in LoD from the early 2000s.

Why the Fanfare?

The SC3 installment in itself is a favorite and it has created a bit of a soft spot. You could create custom characters, change their personality by changing their attire along with give them a unique fight style. Later on, I was introduced to MKA (Mortal Kombat Armageddon) which also had a character creation mode with one key difference.

Customizing the fighting style move-for-move was available in MKA which made it an addicting feature with that game alone. Even though SC3 didn't have this function, it still offered countless other features including bonus characters created with the Custom Character feature.