Soulcalibur is a weapon-based 3D fighting game developed by Project Soul and produced by Namco. It is the second game in the Soulcalibur series, preceded by Soul Edge in December 1995.
One of the biggest innovations introduced by Soulcalibur to the gameplay system of its predecessor, Soul Edge, is the eight-way run. Previous 3D fighters had only limited movement along the third axis, with sidesteps and rolls providing useful but unsustained lateral movement. In Soulcalibur, simply holding down a joystick direction causes the character to move in that direction, giving the player a sense of freedom and deepening the strategy of the game.
Soulcalibur also features "forgiving buffering", allowing players to enter an input for one move before their characters have finished recovering from their previous move, which makes executing a quick succession of moves easier (other fighting games such as the Tekken and Virtua Fighter series have relatively strict buffering requirements, meaning expert timing is required to pull off many combinations, but Soulcalibur features much more lenient timing to successfully execute a buffer). Finally, the Guard Impact offensive blocking maneuver shown in Soul Edge has been given a deeper range of techniques, allowing players to push back or redirect attacks past themselves as well as swatting away an opponent's weapon to stun them.
Three years after those events, Soul Edge uses Siegfried as its host, and now Siegfried is Nightmare, a knight wearing azure armor and sporting a hideously deformed right arm. Europe plunges into a vortex of slaughters as he and his followers claim souls to strengthen the blade in its weakened state. Unknown to them a group of warriors met on their journey to stop Soul Edge and with them three sacred weapons join once again.
Soulcalibur is abandonware and no longer sold or supported by its publishers. Files are archived here for these platforms:
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