I had played some fighting games in random arcades, Smash 64 and Soul Edge on my friend's Dreamcast before this. When Soul Calibur 2 released though, it hit differently than all of those. This was the first fighting game my friends and I truly grinded to get good, to the point where now decades later I'm still able to pick up this game and keep pace with players who competed in tournaments for it once upon a time. This game was the start of my competitive fighting game drive.
Personal backstory aside, let me start by saying this game was a masterpiece and beloved for a reason. Not only did this game have strong core system mechanics and cool characters, including some crazy guest characters, this was one of the most accessible fighting games of that whole era. It did all of the things most fighting games do with versus, practice, arcade, etc. The mode that really made the game for me though and helped my friends and I transition from casual to competitive was the weapon master mode.
Weapon Master Mode is a RPG style mode where you take your character through these dungeons fighting battles with special modifications to gain exp and unlock new weapons. The battles get increasingly harder and help reinforce basic game mechanics and strategies, slowly forcing you to learn to play the game. This mode also unlocked weapons we could use in a special kind of versus match too, which made us want to progress farther to unlock more weapons to play with, which in turn meant we had to get better as players to progress in the weapon master mode. This mode did such a good job of subtly reinforcing the fighting game gameplay loop and making us want to improve. In a lot of ways, this was the precursor to SF6's World Tour mode. This was genius and helped turn my friends and I from button mashers to competitive players who then turned to each other to try out our new skills.
Of course this led us to want to become better to beat each other's growing skills, which led us to labbing more optimal combos, and pretty soon we were really good at this game. It's a shame we never knew about tournaments but honestly we got so much enjoyment out of this game's basic gameplay loop that I have no regrets. Pretty soon we were having incredibly intense battles on varied stages with a pretty decently balanced cast. We also had all 3 consoles in our friend group, so we got to use all of the guest characters as well who were all a blast.
Honestly the only downside I can give this game is that since guest characters were console exclusive, I never got to test my Link against my friends' Spawn or Heihachi. Otherwise 10/10 game. It's crazy that Soul Calibur never reached this height again.
Personal backstory aside, let me start by saying this game was a masterpiece and beloved for a reason. Not only did this game have strong core system mechanics and cool characters, including some crazy guest characters, this was one of the most accessible fighting games of that whole era. It did all of the things most fighting games do with versus, practice, arcade, etc. The mode that really made the game for me though and helped my friends and I transition from casual to competitive was the weapon master mode.
Weapon Master Mode is a RPG style mode where you take your character through these dungeons fighting battles with special modifications to gain exp and unlock new weapons. The battles get increasingly harder and help reinforce basic game mechanics and strategies, slowly forcing you to learn to play the game. This mode also unlocked weapons we could use in a special kind of versus match too, which made us want to progress farther to unlock more weapons to play with, which in turn meant we had to get better as players to progress in the weapon master mode. This mode did such a good job of subtly reinforcing the fighting game gameplay loop and making us want to improve. In a lot of ways, this was the precursor to SF6's World Tour mode. This was genius and helped turn my friends and I from button mashers to competitive players who then turned to each other to try out our new skills.
Of course this led us to want to become better to beat each other's growing skills, which led us to labbing more optimal combos, and pretty soon we were really good at this game. It's a shame we never knew about tournaments but honestly we got so much enjoyment out of this game's basic gameplay loop that I have no regrets. Pretty soon we were having incredibly intense battles on varied stages with a pretty decently balanced cast. We also had all 3 consoles in our friend group, so we got to use all of the guest characters as well who were all a blast.
Honestly the only downside I can give this game is that since guest characters were console exclusive, I never got to test my Link against my friends' Spawn or Heihachi. Otherwise 10/10 game. It's crazy that Soul Calibur never reached this height again.