#939 SoulCalibur IV (X360) Hidden Characters (1/11): Cervantes playthrough.
0A playthrough of the hidden character Cervantes in the Xbox 360 version of Namco’s SoulCalibur IV/Soul Calibur 4.
SC4 seems a lot, lot slower than SC3 was. It’s extremely jarring, and personally speaking I found it rather off-putting for what is otherwise a pretty casual fighting game series. Indeed, that’s one of my major issues with SC4; it’s almost like a transition from a casual to a serious fighting game, but entirely stuck in the middle of said transition, being satisfying for neither crowd in the process. That’s not to say you couldn’t have fun with it, but it’s neither casual enough to be enjoyable nor serious enough to be satisfying. It just feels wholly dull as an experience and, well, that’s because it is.
This is the final time I get to look at Cervantes[Edit: not really, he will sort-of make one last appearance], and it’s not a dramatically good send off. Cervantes is pretty competent here on the whole, but just not different enough to be truly viable, to me at least. I think the issue is that he, like so many of the other characters, is just SO similar to his previous incarnations that it feels almost trivial by this point. What differences does he have? Well, a qcb motion will now allow him to enter into a temporary stance which will give him access to a variety of different moves, including his psycho crusher-esque attack (which bounces off the walls in walled stages, funnily enough), and even gives him a brilliant looking (though usually ineffective) spinning uppercut attack which launhes the opponent high into the air. He can also combo into that falling slash of his, which is pretty cool (although tends to be quite ineffective).
In fact, Cervantes is perfectly fine here. He feels a little slower than previously incarnations (presumably due to his age), but he’s okay otherwise. I think the problem is just that bloody AI. It blocks. Nearly all the time. In every single mode. Namco games have always contained that move-reading bullshit, but SCIV amps that up too far, quite frankly. The game has a system which is supposed to alleviate this in the form of guard crushes and armour-breaking. The problem is that guard crushes are rare, and armour-breaking only happens when you get a direct hit in, making either one a bit pointless on the whole. Hell, a character having an armour-piercing ability is practically essential to keep sane, unless you want to spam throws every two seconds. If you pick a good weapon however, your character will have fewer points to spend on abilities, which feels like a weird trade-off to me. Why would you include all these variables in the “serious” title in the series? I have no clue.
Cervantes is a mediocre sort of fine, I suppose. Yes, I’ve run out of things to say about him at his point, quite frankly. Next up, the last look at the scorned Korean female of the series.
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