A friend of mine recently threw a party where we had the Dreamcast on in the living room. Most people politely tolerated the console's presence; they would come in, watch 5 minutes of a game, ask how old it was, and then leave.

But as soon as we switched to SoulCalibur, something changed. Everyone's passing curiosity turned into WWE arena levels of emotional investment. We passed the controllers around to would-be champions. We yelled. We cried. Complete strangers complimented my Lizardman's blocking ability. It was beautiful.

While I'd annoyingly argue that SoulCalibur II is the peak of the series, SoulCalibur (1?) remains one of the most transportive games on the Dreamcast. Sega's pitch of having the arcade at home feels fully crystalized when choosing your champion over the iconic orchestral character select theme.

While it's hard to remember the days when 3D fighters were being pitched as the next big thing, when you're playing SoulCalibur, that nostalgic excitement for a prospective future remains.

compared to most fighting games of the era this includes an insane amount of single-player content, so much so that I managed to put about 10 hours into casually playing through it all. the mission mode stretches the roster and stage count tremendously with all sorts of different objectives and difficulties, including hidden missions I didn't even delve into. it was fun to put some music or a podcast on in the background and grind these out.

the graphics in this game are also absolutely gorgeous, and possibly the best indicator of what the dreamcast was capable of early on. this was the first game I played after buying a VGA cable and it is an absolute beauty, with detailed character models, excellent lighting, and varied stages. other than certain background elements being very obviously part of the skybox, it really looks like a game that would have been good looking even into the early 2000s.

the gameplay itself is easy to pick up, with none of the tomes of command moves and links required as in tekken. there's still a lot of depth to it between all the different weapon styles and different stances, special moves, etc. but you can pull off easy launchers and juggles without much effort at all. the ring out feature also makes the CPU easier to cheese when need be for certain difficult missions. while the different stage layouts don't make much of a difference, it's still nice to have multiple size and shape options.

without question one of the most classic dreamcast titles and an all-time fighting game great.

I'd played fighting games in the 90s on Super Nintendo and in arcades, and while I enjoyed many of them, I never cared enough to devote the required time and effort to develop a mastery. That all changed when I played Soul Calibur at a kiosk in Circuit City and my goddamn brain melted. I immediately sold my N64 and all my games to a close friend, which got me a little over 50% of the required funds to get a Dreamcast (with Soul Calibur and a VMU obviously). The rest of the funds were sourced from a loan with quite unreasonable terms and condition from my brother. I didn't care. Booting this thing up at home was one of the formative experiences of my childhood. It didn't take long before I'd mastered every fighter in the game to the point where I had a hard time convincing anyone to play against me. I had a carrying case with my DC and I'd bring it with me to every friend's house on the off chance that someone would be up to the challenge. No one ever was. I was the SoulCalibur king of that one particular Colorado neighborhood during a glorious run at the turn of the century.

You can't fucking review this game (or any game) in a vacuum. Games don't work that way. 5/5.

Game still holds up today and has some surprisingly really fun singleplayer content. Mission Mode is pretty cool altho not as interesting as it was in Soul Edge/Soul Blade, but the challenges are at least a lot less annoying than the "execute all critical arts" missions from Soul Edge. Arcade mode runs are also generally short and take around 5-mins ish for each character so do give each one a go. This game has probably made me wanna get super into the whole series and it's shaping up to possibly be my future fav FG series. Definitely give it a go.

Uma nota bem pessoal pois, não tenho paciencia para me aprimorar nos jogos de luta, liberar tudo etc, acredito que se jogasse mais, ou se tivesse o game na epoca seria uma nota melhor, peguei para jogar pois nunca tinha jogado nada do dreamcast, terminei a história com um personagem e devo dizer, uou, esse game envelheceu muito bem, é maravilhoso, imagino como foi em 1998 ver esse jogo rodando num console caseiro, a gameplay tmb é divertida, um bom jogo de luta, diria quem um dos melhores 3d pré anos 2000, talvez o ponto negativo fica para os personagens, visto que não achei tão carismaticos e a historia tmb não é grande coisas ( e tudo bem, é um jogo de luta). Recomendo muito para quem curte o genero ou queira jogar um bom jogo de luta.

Man, I genuinely don't think this game will ever stop being fun! I've had this game on dreamcast ever since I remember. It's honestly is amongst the first games I ever played and if I wasn't lucky enough we also had the arcade machine at the theater only 3 blocks away!!! Gameplay is still every bit as kinetic and intuitive as ever. I love how cheesy the whole package is and as far as I'm concerned it still looks great even to this day. I'm completely biased here, the rose tinted glasses are THICK when it comes to this game but I don't care, it's SoulCalibur! As far as I'm concerned everyone should play this game at least once in their life!