New player, in need of advice

[tobal]

Hi everyone. I just joined, I'm glad I can be here.

I'm playing Soul Calibur for some time now, but only against the CPU, and I'm not really interested in playing against human players... not yet anyway. Partly this is because my only gaming console is a PS2 :) (well, that's not entirely true... I have a PS1 too :) ).

Mostly I played Soul Calibur 3 until now, but now I got SC2 because I seen that it's new, HD version is very popular. I'd like to ask for advice on which game should I play to get usable playing routine? Maybe in the future I'll get a better console, and maybe I'll want to play against human players. Which game should I train with if I want to compete against others later?

One extra question: why is SC2 HD so popular? Why did it get an HD version in the first place?

 

[Mage]

Soulcalibur II was seen as the most popular game of the series and as a result Namco decided to go ahead and release a HD version, although some people have speculated that this and the purchasable content in Lost Souls were attempts to pool money together in order to begin development of Soulcalibur VI, although none of this has been confirmed.

Honestly, if you ever want to compete against other players you'll have to cave and get a newer console with Soulcalibur V, it's the game that's mainly played at any tournament these days and as a result you'll find a lot more "active" players on that game to play against (and obviously it includes online matchmaking which allows you to easily play against other players). It also differs a lot from previous versions and is more fast-paced which also gives rise to even more reason to invest into it.

 

[linkorz]

The HD version of SC2 actually died out rather quickly online. Most people play on the Gamecube version through emulation.
I can't provide an apt answer to your original answer (As my mechanical knowledge of SC3 is rather limited), but SC2 is widely considered to be the most balanced game in the series and the most fun.

 

[ZER0]

SC2 is considered the gem of the soul series, much like how Tekken 3 is treasured as such.
SC2 is also the game that pushed the soul calibur into the competitive scene and had widespread acclaim from both casual and competitive players alike.

The game itself was pretty balanced and had an easy-to-pickup battle system, no one character was 'awful' per se...as opposed to ZWEI or Dampierre in SCV.
Not to mention the voice acting was on point the amount of content in the game was phenomenal increasing its replay-ability factor.

SC3 however had quite a few game breaking glitches aswell as the infamous memory card wiping glitch, where your data would often corrupt and would trigger the memory card to wipe...it is not without its good points. But continually losing your data was a problem.

And linkorz is right, very few people play SC2:HDO because the online is crap and is really only used at tournaments. Everyone plays via the dolphin emulator as it is in HD, has better online and most importantly...is free.

 

[Party Wolf]

If you plan on playing SC2 online, then definitely play SC2. Just keep in mind that you aren't going to be able to find people randomly because of how poorly the online was made.

If you plan on playing a newer SoulCalibur then 2, then you should play SC3 because of the fact that there are more characters. SC3 also redesigned a lot of "clone" characters to make them more unique (e.g. Kili/Mina). In SC2 they have a lot of shared moves between them, so you won't be able to learn as many distinctions as you would in SC3.