#909 SoulCalibur II (GCN) Hidden Characters (6/8): Assassin playthrough.
0Gameplay of the console exclusive hidden character Assassin in the Nintendo Gamecube port of Namco’s SoulCalibur II/Soul Calibur 2.
It’s funny to go back and look at something in hindsight, because you gain a sort of perspective on it you never had before. One example of this with SCII is the “extra” characters of the game; three special secret characters only unlocked in the post-game of Weapon Master Mode, and who generally serve as the generic enemies you fight. We’ll see this done better in SoulCalibur III, it must be said, but what they did here was somewhat understandable.
One of my problems with it is…well, Lizardman (given that there is a race of Lizardmen in the SC universe) was an understandable choice, but the other two, Assassin and Berserker? Oh, they reek of being lazy. You may notice something about these two characters…Assassin is just a generic version of Hwang, and Berserker is just a generic version of Rock. Yeeeeah, you remember those two characters from the very first game? Who you probably really liked? Well they’re gone now. At least Rock gets to come back, but poor Hwang never again returns in a truly official capacity. It’s one of my least favourite things about this series, just the way that it really doesn’t seem to even give a fuck about the majority of its own characters, and expends them at will. With the Tekken series I could sort of understand why from time to time, but with SC it’s often done in a manner which is more pointless than a Youtube update, removing better characters for shittier and less interesting variants. In hindsight, it’s really unimpressive, I have to say.
So here’s the first of two “unofficial” appearances by Hwang, just known as Assassin here. Here’s the thing about these “extra” characters however; they’re only selectable the training and team battle modes of the game. I’d completely forgotten about that! You work your arse off to unlock the last three hidden characters of the game, and you’re barely able to even use them. Why is this? Well, as you might have guessed, these characters are actually exclusive to the console ports of the game, and seemed to exist as little more than placeholders to act as generic characters for the purpose of Weapon Master Mode. Indeed, given that many people never played
SoulCalibur 1, I think they (correctly) assumed that people wouldn’t remember Rock, Lizardman and Hwang’s appearances in that title, and so wouldn’t care about their generic inclusions. Truth be told, I suspect they were right, because I didn’t think about the Rock and Berserker, and Hwang and Assassin connection until years later.
As a result, from what I can tell these characters are mostly just their SoulCalibur 1 incarnations, which is relatively common for many of the characters in this game but especially so here. You can’t normally play as these characters…so I of course hacked them for arcade mode, as you do. “Fornicate the authorities”, as they say. As you’d expect, the game crashes once you get to his “destined battle” stage, as there are no dialogues or animations programmed for the scene. A shame really; sort of hints that there would have been something to it in the first place, but that’s life I guess. Still, this is one of the only solo gameplays of Assassin there is, so the video serves a purpose at least. Assassin was pretty damn fun to play as, mainly because it’s just playing as Hwang again, who I always found to be a competent character. Still a shame he got phased out, quite frankly.
Lastly, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA TAKI HAS A “NOTHING PERSONAL” QUOTE HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Anyway, next up it’s Berserker.