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This game series has withstood beatings over the past few years. From it's first release it didn't get much of a crowd to enjoy it. Then it came onto the Dreamcast. In fact... The only time I played the Dreamcast was when I was playing Soul Calibur. The third installment in this great fighting game series has put Namco back a bit in their own game. Though the graphics recieved a MUCH needed overhaul (I'm sorry, but two looked just too close to one in the graphics department). Everything jiggles nicely in battle, if ya know what I mean, and the enviroments are semi-destructible making for some cool looking scenes. With scores of music that represent each new arena that you enter they blend in very nicely as if meant to be there. The gameplay this time around has been speeded up and some of the characters that were too fast before (Taki and Voldo I'm looking at you) were finally given some extra weight to make them not as cheap. The multiplayer is super fun to be had and is enjoyed by button mashers and master strategists all at the same time. Then we get into the single player where things take a turn for the worse. There are two modes one where you get to make your own customizable character and take them to battle. As fun as that may sound it isn't very fun at all. Instead of going straight from battle to battle with a couple of different challenges, like in Sword Master mode from the last game. They set you up with a story that doesn't matter and give you an RTS like feel to the game. To make matters even worse you have to "Level Up" your character to even be able to get anywhere in the game. These RTS parts consume too much time and most of it isn't even spent battling. It's spent moving your people into position so that they get a chance to battle. The other story mode isn't as bad. It's the story of each of the main characters in the game and fairs well in the action. The difficulty I can't seem to stand though, as it moves from easy to "Throw Your Controller as Hard as You Can at Ted" difficulty within seconds. I find this especially true when fighting the Japanese characters (Mitsurugi and Setsuka). Overall it's still the fighting game that is easily picked up and is never fully mastered, not like it's a bad thing.

Graphics: Very snazzy, but still pretty average and expected of a good game from this day and age.

Sound: Some of the best soundtracks in a fighting game. Better than those heard in some SNK fighters that I won't mention.

Gameplay: Major fun to last years while playing multiplayer. Too bad the same can't be said about the single player experience.

Overall: Very decent game gets a very decent score.

GlassGothX gives Soul Calibur III a 7.5/10

This is recently all I've been playing on my PS2. Coming off of SC2 for GC, the controls were hard for me to get used to, and I'm still not the greatest at it. Even if Cassandra's stayed pretty much the same since 2.

On the difficulty I can't agree with you more there. I coasted through the first couple of stages, then got royally owned with little effort by the CPU. I don't get much of a chance to play it multiplayer though so I just mess around in the modes. Still need to buy everything. sad