#894 SoulCalibur I (ARC) Hidden Characters (4/8): Siegfried playthrough.
0A playthrough of the hidden character Siegfried in the arcade version of Namco’s SoulCalibur/Soul Calibur 1.
The most apparent of the model swaps, as he fights like Nightmare down to a tee.
This is an alternate version of Siegfried, where he frees himself from Nightmare. Oddly enough he’s actually a non-canon character here, as Siegfried doesn’t free himself from Soul Edge until SoulCalibur III.
As we saw with Siegfried! in Soul Edge, Siegfried was corrupted and malformed by Soul Edge, causing him to turn into a freakish, warped entity. Yes, a console-exclusive element set up a plot point for the next game in the series, something we only last saw with Devil Kazuya in Tekken 1. Boy oh boy did Namco love their foreshadowing, and I really do appreciate the attempts they made to have a comprehension, concurrent story in a fighting game series. So Nightmare is the evolution of corrupted Siegfried, though he doesn’t look quite as impressive here as he does in later games.
It’s probably also about time I mentioned the Engrish in this game. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen (it’s not on Samurai Shodown II’s levels, where Haohmaru somehow ended up involved in the Northern Irish insurgency of the 20th century as a result of mistranslation), but it is pretty bad. This most notable example of this here is “Demons are attack!” which just reminds me of “heat is kill”. Is that a good sign? Probably. You also have to the love the “a new quests” bit, which of course is seen on every game-over screen, making the Engrish in this game actually unavoidable. It’s beautiful, really.
As for Siegfried himself, he borders on the broken here. A little slower than the other characters, he makes up for it with hard-hitting strikes (when they do actually land that is), as well as his f+B attack. This attack, oh man, I adore it. I’ve typically always used Nightmare/Siegfried in this series, and that attack is part of it. He thrusts out his sword in front of him, which sends the opponent flying backwards and, often, into a ring-out. Including Inferno himself, of course. Hell, it’s my crutch move that I’d always use for a particularly difficult mission in this or the next game, and it was my main “go-to” move until SoulCalibur IV I think, when the AI improved a fair bit from what I recall. It’s cheap, certainly, but this game is a bit chaotic and easy to get the hang of but difficult to master, so it’s nice to have a cheap move to rely on from time to time.
On the whole, Siegfried really didn’t need to be here, and he just feels like a way to pad out the roster. Still, his inclusion is somewhat cool and presumably is supposed to appeal to Soul Edge fans returning to the franchise. On the whole, not a bad addition, but not a very creative one either. I feel like Li Long would have made more sense, but goodness knows Namco doesn’t give a crap about him.
Next up, another returning “veteran character”.
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