With the announcement that Ezio Audiatore de Firenze will be in the upcoming Soulcalibur V, I've decided to transcend history and the world to rate the Soulcalibur guest characters!

These often out-of-place characters have always been a sticking point not just for fans, but for fighting game fans in general. While SNK's fighting games used so many crossovers that they managed to make (soon to be) 13 games out of it, Namco-Bandai's weapon-fighting game series has been at the forefront of out-of-place guest characters. I've decided to rate them on how worthy they are of being in Soulcalibur, how much sense they make, and how cheap they are/can be (because as we all know, Soulcalibur doesn't have any cheap characters at all *end sarcasm*). These will be in no particular order, but by the context, I'm sure my dear readers (all six of them) will get where I'm going.


There are no guest characters in Soul Edge and Soulcalibur, so let's start with the one that everyone got to play back in 2003, Soul Calibur II! And guess what? We get three of them! One each for the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube.


PlayStation 2 Version
The big boss of the Tekken series makes sense because the series had been PlayStation-exclusive since the first game way back on the PS1 in 1995. But at the same time, he makes no sense at all. Want to know why? He has no weapons!

Before anybody goes nuts on me, I'm sure that Heihachi has had his fists (and possibly his geta sandals) registered as deadly weapons considering all the rear he kicks in the myriad Tekken games, but unless you're Dhalsim, you can't use your fists at about three to five feet away, and they most certainly are not bladed!

However, as your typical hard-hitting character, Heihachi is actually pretty good. If you can close distance well, then his raw power and excellent combos will keep anyone off their feet, not to mention in Soulcalibur, you have the advantage of ring outs. Heihachi is only as cheap as you make him, like most characters in the Tekken series (unless you're Eddy Gordo/Christie Montiero).


Xbox Version: Spawn
I don't have much of a comment here. As far as weapons go, Spawn makes pretty darn good sense considering his giant axe. He's a big and slow character, very similar to other characters in the series like Nightmare or Astaroth.

He actually kind of makes sense in his appearance too. Spawn is from hell, and from the looks of it, Inferno (SC2's final boss) is kind of like hell incarnate to begin with. There can be only one big boss of hell, and Spawn's out to kill the imitators...I think. Eh, good a reason as any for Spawn to be in Soulcalibur II.


GameCube Version: Link
Any arguments have been made for me here. Link, as a traditional sword-and-shield warrior, makes perfect sense for the Soulcalibur universe. I get the feeling that his template was referred to very heavily for Ezio because of the myriad weapons the two have.

Link's got his trusty Master Sword, arrows, bombs, and boomerangs available to him available at all ranges, but they can be pretty cheap, especially if one stands back and spams the unblockable arrow attacks.

Soulcalibur III
KOS-MOS

This one is kind of weird, and she really isn't a guest character per se. To "unlock" her, you have to create her in a specific way in the character creation. The Soulcalibur Wiki makes a valid argument that since she's an android, she must be created, and since created characters can be given any weaponry and fighting style the player chooses, it's sort of like the way she can use her nanomachines to form weaponry in the Xenosaga games.

Still, I find it difficult to truly call KOS-MOS a guest character since she wasn't created specifically to be in Soulcalibur III, and she doesn't have any of her weaponry from the Xenosaga games. Upon further review though, it's probably just as well that she doesn't. I decided to put her in since she's the closest you can get to a guest character in Soulcalibur III.


(*sigh*)
I think we are all in agreement that Soul Calibur IV was a bastion of bad ideas when it came to guest characters. I mean come on, Star Wars?! Before anything else happens, let's take an honest look at how the characters actually play.


Darth Vader
The man who ceased to be Anakin Skywalker actually makes the most sense out of all the Star Wars cameos in terms of play-style. He's tall, he fights very much how a regular sword duelist would (albeit with some more kendo-style moves) and he can also get physical much better. Probably because he's more machine now than man, but that's another story. In essence, if he wasn't the Dark Lord of the Sith, he would be a good template for a new Soul character.


Yoda
This sounded like a bad idea from the outset, and it ended up being even worse in execution. Yoda is, hands down, the WORST guest character in Soulcalibur there has ever been. Because of his small stature, most attacks will go clean over his head! That is barely forgivable, but the worst offense of all is that he can't be thrown. Ever. Your only hope of beating Yoda is that you catch him with a lot of sweeps and also intercepting him in mid-attack or mid-jump.

I refuse to make another Star Wars joke to end this paragraph.


Starkiller/Galen Marek
As if the Star Wars cameos couldn't get any worse, here is one of the most unbalanced characters I have ever seen in a fighting game. I know that Starkiller's game is all about speed (hence the underhand lightsaber grip), but with how long it takes to get your guard up in Soul Calibur IV, you might as well just drop the controller and turn the game off.

What makes him just the slightest bit better than Yoda is that he can be had, but only through careful counter-attacking and basically beating him at his own rushdown game. In a sense, Starkiller is the ultimate rushdown character, but that only makes him all the more cheap.

That's about it for Soul characters. I did not include Kratos in Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny because I did not play that game, and from what I've heard, I don't want to. However, I'm still looking forward to Soulcalibur V when it comes out, as it is the only fighting game other than Street Fighter my friends play.