I played Soul Blade but apparently it's the same game, it was just renamed. I'm not a huge fan of fighting game so probably lots of nostalgia is mixed into this game. I liked the imaginative battle areas, and the very unique character rooster. Voldo still scares the heck out of me. Plus the adventure aspect is so clever, you're like in a book and that's where you traverse from battle to battle. And each character has their own unique storylines. Clunky and dated graphics by today's standards but it is still a great game.

Bem maneiro! Os controles simples, lutas curtas e lutadores que usam lâminas me faz lembrar bastante de SamSho, o que me agrada bastante. Claro, a apresentação é bem diferente do clássico da SNK, e é um dos pontos fortes do jogo. A versão de PlayStation é um dos picos gráficos do console e a de Arcade não perdeu seu lustre mesmo quase duas décadas depois. O modo Edge Master, exclusivo da versão de console, adiciona condições ou desvantagens em algumas lutas e é bem divertido. Essa versão também vem com as três versões da excelente soundtrack, tornando-a a melhor, mesmo com o downgrade gráfico (apesar de que pode-se dizer que o visual do PS não é mais feio, é apenas mais "charmoso").

There are so many great writers on Backloggd. Well-crafted pieces by an incredible group of some of the most passionate people I’ve ever seen anywhere. They make amazing, thoughtful, and profound analysis for games I’ve never even heard of and give them the justice I didn’t know they needed. They are an inspiring group of people, and I feel privileged to interact with them on the Backloggd discord almost every day. I had a passion for writing once, I even went to college for it because it felt like one of the few things I was capable of doing. Since that moment in time though it feels like that passion and others have been wrung out of me. College made me hate writing and I dropped my major, after which I coasted through school like a lost balloon, no care for where the wind was taking me and just hoping that if I landed it would be somewhere safe that I could live from. I’ve been on solid ground again for some time now, but at this point in my life I’m in the middle of a job search that isn’t going so well and that’s giving me a lot of time to myself. Most of it I’ve used to think about passion, some that I’ve lost and some that I’ve been desperately clinging to.

This week I’ve been spending time with Soul Blade, the direct source of perhaps my one and only enduring passion. Soul Blade was my first fighting game, the one that means the most to me, and the reason why fighting games have outlasted anything that could have drained the joy out of the only thing in my life I’ve always loved besides my friends and my brother. I’ve been playing Soul Blade since before I was in school and despite not doing more than mashing buttons when properly playing, it never mattered. I was restarting my PS1 just to watch the intro over and over again, I was lucking my way through the arcade mode just to see the stages, hear the music, to see the characters and mimic their voices and moves because I thought it was all the coolest thing in the world. The adoration only deepened as I got older. I was getting better, I was using training mode, I was acting with intention, beating arcade modes, getting the endings, playing Edge Master mode and reading the journey of each character in it while unlocking all their weapons, all while excitedly showing it to anyone who would give me the time to do it.

Over time, since my love was so obvious for it, family was gifting me other fighting games on birthdays, Christmas, or just to see me smile at the mall. I was exposed to Tekken, King of Fighters, Street Fighter, Capcom vs SNK, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Guilty Gear, and of course Soul Calibur. I was obsessed with them all, each had the elements of Soul Blade I loved in their own flavors. Friends often lived quite a bit of time away from each other where I grew up so outside of school most of my time was to myself. I loved plenty of games I played during that time but I always cherished the time I spent in fighting games the most of them all. There was a moment though where I sacrificed some of that time to be a part of the Call of Duty boom, fighting games just weren’t a thing people cared about around me and I was failing to use them as a way to build connections. I realized eventually that there was never any enthusiasm in me when I was playing, it was just the only means I could find to make friends with but I was a damn lucky kid because I underestimated my friends. One day I was tired of forcing myself to play multiplayer FPS games and sold every single one I had played in that three-year period for Persona 4 Arena, ready to face whatever I heard from my group when I gave them the story. Imagine the feelings I had when I realized not a single one of those lovable idiots was ever gonna abandon me and from that moment on they listened to me gush about these games that had made me into who I was.

Fighting games, Soul Blade, and my friends taught me about passion and gave me the tools I needed to use passion to mold me. Even if the world has beat me down, taken some of my joy on its way back, and left me with only what I could hold as tight as possible to my chest this genre specifically has always given me a tool I can use to prove I love something, to remind me I am capable of passion. I don’t know if my passion for writing is back yet, it feels like I might have to build it back up from zero but I know I have to thank Soul Blade again because it taught me another lesson all these years later. That my passions could return and that I’m still capable of what I was before.

Envelheceu MUITO bem, ainda é um jogo extremamente divertido e viciante, vale super a pena experimentar essa primeira versão de soul callibur

A única coisa que reparei é que o framerate fica oscilando entre 25/30 mas isso apenas no port para PS1 claro a versão de arcade roda lisinha

Os cenários são bem bonitos, soundtrack muito boa, intro hype épica e a gameplay é MUITO divertida e fácil de se entender, além de ser muito variada, com cada personagem tendo várias armas que você vai desbloqueando enquanto joga com eles

Recomendo demais, é graficamente mais bonito que muito jogo que saiu depoiskk souberam usar muito bem as limitações dos polígonos

Take any of my ratings of non-Smash fighting games with a grain of salt, as they're usually based off a single run or two through the arcade ladder and general surface impressions.

More modest compared to what SoulCalibur would become. That of course goes for costumes (though between Voldo and Taki, the series was horny right out the gate), but also in terms of the game's scope and speed. This feels a lot more in line with Virtua Fighter between the characters representing different martial forms, the slower pace, and everyone jumping like 10 feet into the air (and I know the more correct comparison is probably Tekken 2; I'm speaking with what I'm more familiar with. Anyway, Tekken doesn't have a block button). I do think that even at this point, you could easily see the potential to SoulCalibur - it just didn't quite have its hook, at least beyond the novelty of 3D swordplay.

Music's quite strong, which I feel is worth note because that's so rarely my takeaway for fighting games of this era. "Heavenly Engage" and "Bravely Folk Song" stand out to me in particular, though at least part of that has to be from how thoroughly Sophitia and Cervantes walled me. Still, I couldn't recall Lion Rafale's or Jeffry McWild's music the way I could these two, so hey.