Damn. I must be the only person who actually liked Soul Calibur IV. I've played it a LOT with my friends and have had an absolute blast.
First of all
juandonde post=9.70418.695557 said:
So Raphael now does a retarded move that enables you to attack in all 8 directions, and not at the same time more like you can attack behind you when the enemy is in front of you.
This move is called Cantarella Needle, and it is to help out Raphael's horizontal game, which has always been abysmal. You use it to punish people who sidestep (Or the Apprentice and his damn jump over you move) If you hit with it it stuns the enemy, setting you up perfectly for a throw.
Secondly, yes the characters are changed. This is because, as someone mentioned before, if the characters are exactly the same then people call the game on being too similar to previous installments. As a long time Raphael and Cervantes player I can say I enjoy the changes and learning to use their new moves (Though Cervantes has become the new "win button" as Mitsurugi and Sophitia were in Soul Calibur III).
Ok, the single player has changed as well. Story mode is short (5 matches) as opposed to the huge map spanning extravaganza that Soul Calibur I had and the Tale of Souls mode in III. Of course in my opinion this just made the story more accessible. You could get through a character's story mode in the space of maybe half an hour if you weren't going too fast and learn what their point is in the story very quickly. Then there is, what seems to be the vast majority crying "It's a fighting game, to hell with the story, just FIGHT" so who cares how single player is? If you just want to fight there's nothing wrong with arcade mode.
Someone was complaining about Critical Finishers. This was implemented to stop people from turtling and keeping a fight dragging on. I think it works well and honestly it doesn't come up all that often. When it does they are fun to watch and fit in with the character's personality. The game makers wanted to promote faster, more offensive fights and I think it works.
As for button mashing, I have never had a problem with it. At least, not so far. A good friend of mine is a consummate button masher and while she enjoyed some degree of success she fell pretty flat against someone who actually knew the mechanics/timing/use of their characters moves.
Hilde. She is awesome, honestly one of my favorite characters in the game. It's nice how she is one of the most heavily armored characters in the entire game, so I wish people would stop ragging on Ivy as an example of how the morals of the game developers are going steadily downhill but then completely fail to acknowledge Hilde as the game creator's attempts to address this very issue. Her moveset is heavily based on charge attacks. Hold B for long enough and she will let loose a down to upward strike that launches foes high in the air which you can combo into an air throw if you're good enough.
Hold A, and she'll charge up her horizontal move, which eventually becomes a very quick unblockable strike. The key to performing well seems to be fending off your opponent and setting them up for your finishing charge attack to round off combos. Hilde's best moves seem to come from her long ranged A+B moves. As an example; down A+B, K will stab downards then she'll body tackle a good distance in front of her. Holding G during this move will cause her to simply move forward with no attack as a fake out.
Note that her charge moves will still charge as long as you hold the right button, even if you perform other attacks that use the same button (ex. Holding B will still charge even if you map A+B to a shoulder button and use A+B moves while holding down just the B button). Hilde can be a lot of fun to use if used correctly.
