Soul Calibur 2 Official Fighter's Guide

 (9 customer reviews)

First off, note that this is a "Fighter's Guide", not a "Strategy Guide." It includes a section on Weapon Master Mode, mostly to tell you about the weapons. It includes a section on the game features, mostly to tell you about how they affect the characters. The only reason to buy this guide is because of the quality analysis it offers in the character sections. Strengths, Weaknesses, effective tactics, useful combos, and most of the moves that were left out of the official movelist. However, the guide is obviously one author's opinion, and while Lummis has obviously played the game against good competition and knows advice for each character's strengths and weaknesses, he's not as brutal about abusable moves or difficult characters as he could be.As a case study, the guide recommends forward,A,A,A as a good move for Kilik to use when expecting a counter hit, and lists several reasons why this is so. It also includes a handy picture in case you weren't sure which...Read more

This book teaches you all the basic moves and tactics for every character-including Link, Heihachi and Spawn. All characters that are unlockable are also given coverage. Broken down into strengths and weaknesses; and offering gameplay styles for each character, the advice given is crucial for a newbie trying to pick up this game. Pick up terms used by SC II veterans easily with a guide to buffers, 8 way runs, guard impacts, air control, the different stagger effects, and more.The downside is the lack of deep insights. Only certain characters have a combo section-not all. Advanced players will find the advice rather amatuerish, and probably can give the author a detailed explaination of the generic "mind games" term used.Weapon Master coverage is also dense. It tells you the condition needed to unlock every goodie available, but doesn't tell you HOW to go about tackling the challenge! Consider it a reference if you will. Still, if you are a novice player who starts...Read more

The Soul Calibur 2 Official Fighters Guide is a great "hintbook" but that doesn't neccessarily mean it's a "Strategy Guide". Which isn't bad. The guide is after all, a "Fighter's" guide and therefore it helps you to master the combat of Soul Calibur 2 but not the game itself. To begin, the game REALLY helps out for someone who isn't familiar with fighters or the Soul Calibur franchise for that matter. It helps you learn all the basics quite well. Each character has a combo's list and tips on how to use them. Detailing their strentghs and weaknesses and even tells you for some of them which characters are good to match against others. It doesn't mention characters to use all the time, but you get the general idea of who should match who. I also like that when reading this guide, its as if it's speaking to you. Therefore, it really is a good reference. Should you be a master at SCII then it probably won't matter, but let's just assume you...Read more