Game:

Soul Edge (1995)

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Playthrough with Siegfried. The PS1 port of Soul Blade was released in 1997 and is as good as it gets for a fighting game console port. It adds several extra game modes, the best of these being Edge Master mode. This mode has you pick a character and then earn new weapons for them by winning fights, all with story text between stages. Several extra characters can be unlocked, including the boss and alternate versions of the regular characters. In addition to having the original arcade soundtrack, is also features two arranged soundtracks.

I haven’t played this in years, and one thing that immediately stood out to me is how great the backgrounds are. They look much more impressive than what’s in the PS1 Tekken games or any of the Saturn Virtua Fighters. Li Long’s moving raft stage in particular is really good. The load times for this port are also incredibly short -if only the 2D fighters on PS1 could load like this!

Another addition are multiple endings per character. In the arcade version, each character only had one ending, which consisted of images and text. These endings are still in this version, but are used in the Edge Master mode. For the PS1 port's arcade mode, the endings use the in-game graphics. At a certain point in a character’s ending, you have to press certain buttons to trigger an alternate ending. For Siegfried, you only need to press the vertical attack button as he approaches the Soul Edge (at 13:35). Although the ending seen in this video isn’t canon -his other ending, where he tries to take possession of the Soul Edge, is. You can see that ending in my playthrough of the Japanese version:
   • Soul Edge playthrough (Playstation) (...  

The only downside is the difficulty. Just watch Rock, the first opponent, who instantly starts input reading and countering as soon as the first round begins. Admittedly, the CPU in this game is nowhere near as cheap as in other games, it can just get a bit obnoxious at times.

In the arcades, this game was called Soul Edge. The PS1 port was also called this in Japan, but for other countries, it had to be changed to Soul Blade. This was because of a company called Edge Games, who tried to own the word “Edge”. It was Electronic Arts of all companies who took them down, years after this game had been released.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games#Electronic_Arts_petition_for_trademark_cancellation
This was why the name Soul Edge or Soul Blade was never used again, with future sequels being called Soulcalibur.

There are a few differences between the Japanese, American and European versions of this game. The American and European versions censor part of the intro where Sophitia is in the lake. The European version, which is what I’m using here, also changes Li Long’s weapon. Originally he used nunchaku, but as this weapon was illegal in the UK it had to be changed in the game. So instead, he now uses a three sectioned staff.

The non-Japanese version also feature English voice acting for certain characters, such as Siegfried and Cervantes. Siegfried’s best line has to be “I’ve never had such an easy victory!”.

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