#912 SoulCalibur II (PS2) Guest Characters (1/3): Heihachi playthrough.
0Gameplay of the exclusive guest character Heihachi in the PS2 port of Namco’s SoulCalibur II/Soul Calibur 2.
IT BEGINS.
Ask someone at random about SoulCalibur, and they’ll probably say “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”. Ask someone who doesn’t call the cops unnecessarily on a whim, and who’s a little more knowledgeable about fighting games, and they’ll probably say “oh yeah, that game with all the weird guest characters in it”. Indeed, this is where the series starts to get pretty polarising. The SoulCalibur games from this point onward get experimental and they get odd, making quite frankly bizarre choices in terms of both features and characters included. In particular, guests.
Guests have somewhat come to overshadow the SoulCalibur series, as I’ve said before. Indeed, they’ve somewhat trivialised what is otherwise a pretty great series, and presumably were an expression of Namco’s desire to show the series that was now for all consoles. The problem is, said choices get really weird after a while, piquing in the fourth game in the series. Hell, only one of the three choices for this game really make any sense, with the other two not being offensive to any extend, but definitely feeling quite out of place. Indeed, Namco sort of backed themselves into a corner by including Yoshimitsu in SoulCalibur I, leaving the only other weapon-using Tekken character to include being Kunimitsu. Which, let’s face it, was never going to happen. Instead…they went for Heihachi. This isn’t the only time we’ll see a Tekken character guest-star in this series, but that’s a discussion for later down the line.
Now, Heihachi of course doesn’t use a weapon. Instead, he has this metal accessories he wears on his feet and arms. Namco was so obsessed with legitimising this that they even a similar moveset for created characters in the SoulCalibur III. Heihachi is a slightly goofy inclusion (particularly because they don’t even try to make him look like he’s from the era, unlike Yoshimitsu), but the moveset is ultimately the most important part of a character, and luckily that’s where he shines. His double air kicks, his 1-1-2 combo, qcf+P attack, he has them all. Hell, he even has the Mishima Uppercut, done in the classic f, N, d, df + P style. He also has his karate outfit from Tekken 4 as his alternate costume! Indeed, despite being a lazy choice for a hidden character, Namco did put quite a bit of time and effort into Heihachi, and as one of my favourite Tekken characters he was pretty damn fun to play as here. A big problem however is that he has little to no range, and doesn’t really function like any other character in the game, putting him at something of a disadvantage, especially compared to the other two guest characters. An interesting choice nonetheless, and it’s nice that the PS2 version has something unique at it, at the least.
Also…as for that face glitch, I have no clue what happened there. I loved it too much to not keep it in the playthrough though.
Next up, another strange choice for a guest character as we move onto the Xbox version of this game.
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