G-pinions

See, Soul Caliber 2 would be a near-perfect game outside of half the characters being ultra-lame. And their intros. And everything they say. I don't know if it's a terrible translation job or just plain bad writing in the first place, but the amount of time they took in releasing this game here makes me think it's the latter. The gameplay is the most solid in the genre, and the graphics, sound, and controls are all wonderful (at least on PS2, my version of choice; the Gamecube version looks even better but controls like ass, and I assume the X-Box version shares those traits). I know I'm a good six months late in talking about this, but fuck, why fuck up a game template this good with such awful characters and presentation.

Mitsurugi is enough of a badass Samurai to hold his own (he's a SAMURAI, for fuck's sake), and Kilik, Maxi and Yunsung are cool enough thanks to their weapons, but all four of them still sound like douches of the highest degree when they open their mouths before and after every match. And the rest of the characters are just awful. You've got a fruity fencer, a ridiculous-titted freak, some broad who wishes she was that Nazi blade dude from Hellboy, a wussy female Link, some totally inoffensive-but-still-uncool Chinese chick, Drew Barrymore from Poison Ivy, the cool-looking but lame to play as Yoshimitsu from Tekken, a zombie in bondage, some Pirate guy I haven't unlocked yet but is assumable lame, and two giant, slow brutes that aren't fun to play as or against and look like LOTR rejects. And man, putting Heihachi in a weapons-based fighting game is just cock. He's a fucking badass till the end, but he just doesn't belong here. Bah.

I've made such a big deal about art design in games many times before (it's second only to control in importance to me), and this is a perfect example of a game that just gets it wrong, which is really frustrating because it gets everything else so right. I mean, I'll probably be playing it regularly until MK: Deception comes out, but I'll be hating every other second of it. How is it that faceless, single-color ninjas have more charisma and appeal in one skeletal finger than a guy with a giant sword with an eye on it has in his whole body? One of the many mysteries of our universe I suppose.

Edit: Thank you for reminding me Brendan, I almost forgot the worst offender of all, Necrid. Not so much that he's the lamest character (his built-in energy sword dealie is actually kind of cool), but because he's such a disappointment. Namco gave Todd "Motherfucking" McFarlane free reign to create an original character, and he fucked it up, bad. He looks like some sort of idiot man-dinosaur, and what's up with the big yellow thing?