Soulcalibur III

Soulcalibur III (ソウルキャリバーIII Souru Kyaribā Surī?) is the sequel to Soulcalibur II and is the fourth overall installment in the Soul series of fighting games. It was released exclusively for the PlayStation 2, unlike its predecessor Soulcalibur II, which was also released for both the Nintendo GameCube and the Xbox, with a single different guest character featuring in each version.

Soul Calibur is the name of the holy sword, created to battle the evil sword Soul Edge, around which the game's story-lines revolve.

The game includes new modes such as Tales of Souls, an interactive story-driven mode comparable to Soul Edge's Edge Master Mode; Create-A-Soul Mode, in which players can create custom characters from thirteen total occupations, with multiple weapons and fighting styles; and Chronicles of the Sword, a real-time-play mode that allows players to take their created souls through adventures of their own. The game also has the largest character roster – 24 characters playable in Tales of Souls mode and an additional 18 playable in all other modes – and largest battle stage selection in the Soul series history.

Although recent generations of fighting games have supported online play, Soulcalibur III does not. The game's producer, Hiroaki Yotoriyama, has said that, "At the current time, the online infrastructure is extremely different between countries, and there's people that can not enjoy network gaming. We've decided to concentrate on improving the game's offline content and its characters so that people all over the world will be able to have fun."

## Features

### Create-A-Soul

Create-A-Soul allows players to construct their very own characters by donning them with an assortment of clothing parts such as armor or robes. The player may also change the character's hairstyle color, eye color, skin color and facial features, ranging from young to old as well as voices. As the player completes tasks through the game, more parts can be unlocked for availability. Depending on the parts chosen, the character's alignment (good or evil) and personality (loud and brash or quiet and reserved) will change, which influences their dialogue in battle as well as their Destined Battle in Quick Play. Character construction first starts with the creation's gender, followed by their fighting style and weapon. At the start, only three are available, though seven more can be unlocked as well. 9 of the styles also contain Soul styles, which allows the character to use the same weapons and fighting style as the playable characters, save for Olcadan and Abyss. The Swordmaster style allows the creation to select all but the Soul styles.

### Soul Arena

Contains two modes; Quick Play mode, in which the player fights through a gauntlet of opponents ending with Abyss, in the vein of the Arcade Mode of previous games; and Mission mode, in which the player chooses from a list of battles which feature unusual circumstances to overcome.

### Tales of Souls

Choose one of the characters and lead them on a journey around the world, searching the Soul Edge. The player is given the option to choose what path the character takes, and depending on the choices made, and whether the player has lost a match, either Abyss or Night Terror will be fought as the final boss. There are also optional battles entitled 'Prepare to Defend Yourself' in which either a bonus character or unplayable character is faced; these battles may not be retried if lost, but the story progresses regardless.

### Chronicles of the Sword

A separate storyline from the main Soul series. Players create a protagonist through the Create-A-Soul feature and goes through a series of battles in the vein of strategy RPGs such as the Fire Emblem series, with battles being resolved as traditional Soulcalibur-style matches. The characters can level up, which increases their effectiveness in these battles.

### World Competition

Play against various pre-rendered opponents from around the world, similar to Tekken 5's Arcade Mode

Most Extra Weapons make a return from Soulcalibur II. In this installment, however, the number of extra weapons is reduced to 8 different weapons, including the two defaults for 1P and 2P, the Ultimate Weapon, Joke Weapon, and The Ancient. The system is once again changed, this time based solely on abilities; normally 2 per weapon, 4 per Ultimate, and 3 occasionally. Icons are displayed telling every effect in detail for each weapon.

There are no third character costumes presented in this installment, but to compensate there's a Color Edit mode, where the player can edit the colors out of 3, or in some cases 4, sections of a character's costume and make their own personal version of it. The parts that can be changed range from clothing to skin to hair color.

## Characters

Nearly all characters who have been featured in a Soul series title in the past return, except for Inferno, Necrid, Seong Han-myeong, Edge Master, and the console-exclusive guest characters Heihachi, Link, and Spawn. Soulcalibur II's mimic character Charade does return, but only as an non-playable enemy character appearing on certain paths for some characters' Tales of Souls. Other unlockable characters include personnel in the Chronicles of the Sword quest, opponents from the Tales of Souls mode, and the weapon, armor, and item shop owners. Characters in bold are unlockable. The styles of all playable characters except for Olcadan and Abyss can be used in custom characters; the classes that can use these styles are listed below.

### Returning Characters

Astaroth - Barbarian

Cassandra - Sage

Cervantes (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 625 times) - Pirate

Ivy - Pirate

Kilik - Monk

Lizardman (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 675 times) - Assassin

Maxi - Monk

Mitsurugi - Samurai

Nightmare - Knight, but appears as a Barbarian, maybe because of his fighting style

Raphael - Knight

Rock (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 475 times) - Gladiator

Seong Mi-na - Gladiator

Siegfried - Knight

Sophitia (can be unlocked by defeating her in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 525 times) - Sage

Taki - Ninja

Talim - Saint

Voldo - Dancer

Xianghua - Dancer

Yoshimitsu (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 425 times) - Samurai

Yun-seong - Thief

===New Characters===

Abyss (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode after unlocking Cervantes, Lizardman, Olcadan, Rock, Sophitia, and Yoshimitsu or fighting 725 times)

Night Terror (unplayable)

Olcadan (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 575 times)

Setsuka - Ninja

Tira - Assassin, Thief

Zasalamel - Saint

### Custom disciplines/Bonus characters

Custom Disciplines are available to custom characters. They tend to be plainer than disciplines of main characters, mostly not involving taunts and side throws. Several weapon designs of disciplines are based upon characters that use similar weapons, usually unused weapons from Soulcalibur II. Each class also has a character representing the class. These characters must be unlocked, either by playing through Tales of Souls and Chronicles of the Sword, or by playing a certain number of matches.

A custom character with the Swordmaster job can use any of these disciplines.

Chinese Blade / Luna (can be unlocked by clearing Chronicle 11 of Chronicles of the Sword Mode or fighting 650 times) - Sage

Chinese Sword / Hwang Seong-gyeong (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 600 times) - Assassin, Pirate

Dagger (paired with a small bomb) / Chester (can be unlocked by clearing Chronicle 19 of Chronicles of the Sword Mode or fighting 950 times) - Saint, Thief

Grieve Edge (bladed shoes) / Valeria (can be unlocked by defeating her in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 700 times) - Barbarian, Dancer, Gladiator, Monk

Iron Sword (Zweihänder) / Strife Astlar (can be unlocked by clearing Chronicle 20 of Chronicles of the Sword Mode or fighting 1,000 times) - Barbarian, Knight, Pirate

Katana / Arthur (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 550 times) - Samurai

Katana and Shuriken / Miser (can be unlocked by defeating her in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 450 times) - Ninja, Samurai

Dual Kunai / Greed (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 500 times) - Assassin, Ninja

Lance / Girardot Argezas (can be unlocked by clearing Chronicle 15 of Chronicles of the Sword Mode or fighting 800 times) - Knight

Dual Nunchaku / Li Long (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 1,150 times) - Monk

Rapier / Amy (can be unlocked by defeating her in Tales of Souls Mode and then clearing the Soul Arena mission "Beloved" or fighting 1,250 times) - Knight, Pirate

Steel Fan / Demuth Beel Zebus (can be unlocked by clearing Chronicle 10 of Chronicles of the Sword Mode or fighting 850 times) - Dancer, Saint

Extendable Staff / Hualin (can be unlocked by defeating her in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 750 times) - Monk, Sage, Saint

Segmented Sickle / Aurelia Dichala Dolce (can be unlocked by clearing Chronicle 12 of Chronicles of the Sword Mode or fighting 900 times) - Ninja, Samurai, Thief

Sword and Shield / Abelia Schillfelt (can be unlocked by clearing Chronicle 18 of Chronicles of the Sword Mode or fighting 1,050 times) - Gladiator,

Sage
Dual Tambourines / Lynette (can be unlocked by defeating her in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 1,100 times) - Dancer
Dual

Wave Sword (Curved blades) / Revenant (can be unlocked by defeating him in Tales of Souls Mode or fighting 1,200 times) - Assassin, Barbarian, Gladiator, Thief

===Guest Character===

KOS-MOS - Can be created in Create-A-Soul after gaining all Type-X Armor parts.

Dante - He was originally going to be added to the playable roster, but was dropped for unknown reasons. Possibly due to character select space constraints.

### Unplayable Characters

Throughout the Tales of Souls story mode, the player will come across certain characters after a battle when the character feels like he/she is "being watched". If choosing Stop, they will fight either a bonus character (which can be unlocked after winning) or an unplayable character. Some characters can be created through Create-A-Soul such as Assassin while others like Charade cannot. New characters are marked as bold.

Assassin

Berserker

Charade

Colossus

Unknown Soul

Will O' The Wisp

Shadow Master

Keres

Night Terror

## Trivia

Soulcalibur III is the first and only game in the Soul series to be presented in THX surround sound.

On the back of the North American Version of Soulcalibur III, on the character creation picture, it shows that the custom character's name is NAMCO, which is the name of the company that produces the Soul Series.

There is quite a few songs in this game that was carried over from previous games. For example, the destined battle music is the same as Soulcalibur II destined battle music.

It is one of the few games to not be ported to another system other than the Playstation 2.

Soulcalibur III is set in the year 1591, four years after the events of Soulcalibur and seven years after the events of Soul Edge.
It shares this date with Soulcalibur II and Soulcalibur IV.

Soulcalibur III is the final game to feature the long-used Soul Edge design first featured in the original Soulcalibur.

Despite being used in the game's logo, Nightmare never appears in his Soulcalibur II incarnation in the game, having changed to a design similar to the design featured in Soulcalibur.

The game was famous for being shipped with a bug that would potentially corrupt a PS2 memory card if any save is copied, deleted or overwritten before overwriting a Soulcalibur III save file.