Enter 1999, where Japan have been soaking in the newest 'next generation' console; and the rest of the world waits with baited breath for their own local release. The Dreamcast has been wowing the crowds, but admittedly, it doesn't have everyone convinced yet, especially since Sega's competitors have no recourse but to dilute the market with speculation and doubt.

For this particular reviewer, any such doubt is now a distant memory, for Soul Calibur, the sequel to Soul Edge, is a game that does for the Dreamcast what its predecessor did for the PlayStation, and more. This is no exaggeration: Soul Calibur represents such a quantum leap in home entertainment that it will leave no doubt in anyone's mind that the next generation is truly upon us.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, the Soul Edge saga is set in a mythical medieval period where several characters from around the world are fighting to gain possession of a powerful sword known as the Soul Edge. The sword itself is festering with evil, causing whomever who wields it to bring great terror and tragedy to all those around him or her. In this sequel, some of the original characters have returned along side several new characters in the quest to find the Soul Edge.

Anyone who's played Soul Calibur in the arcades will immediately see how much of an improvement this Dreamcast version is. With increased detail running at a higher resolution and maintaining the same frame rate, it quite literally leaves the arcade version for dead. That's 640x480 at a constant 60fps.

The Dreamcast version of Soul Calibur also benefits from many of the Power VR chip's special effects, which generate bump-mapping that's visible on the ground surfaces, and superior transparency effects that are visible in the simulated motion-trails of the weapons. These are visual features that Namco's original arcade hardware simply couldn't do justice to. On closer inspection, the texture detail on each of the characters' costumes and skin is strikingly real. Just as an example, you can see the veins beneath the skin of a certain characters' biceps or neck, which looks even creepier when these body parts are set in motion. Once you get over that, you might have a chance to see how realistically the hair and fabric of each characters' costumes move about. Even the flesh jiggles, which everyone had a nice giggle about in Dead or Alive, looks amazingly real.

After the characters, you have the fighting arenas themselves, which look equally as amazing. On one hand, the backgrounds are completely rendered in 3D; and with a good bit of texturing, levels like the Venetian Towns and the Underground River (which is reminiscent of Li Long's old stage) are utterly jaw-dropping. The ground that you stand on is filled with just as much detail. In every stage, you can see your weapons and feet kicking up the dust as they scrape against the surface of the ground; and you'll occasionally see the odd rat running around in some stages. Other stages will have leaves blowing about haphazardly at your feet, which blow violently away when your weapon comes down heavily against the ground.

All of this graphical splendour is capped off by copious amounts of lighting effects, such as real-time lighting and lens flare. These effects become most apparent in the stages where you can select the time of day you are playing, say during daylight, dusk, or mid-evening. This would also be a good time to mention the perfect shadowing. You see, most games, even Virtua Fighter 3, are flawed in respect of the cornering, seaming, and break-up that can be observed in the shadows. In Soul Calibur, however, they are absolutely rock solid. Granted, it's a relatively minute point that most people will either take for granted or not care about. However, all of these little effects add up to the breath-taking experience that is being put on offer.

As far as sounds are concerned, while Soul Calibur reaches a very high standard, they realistically aren't anywhere near the standards that have been reached by the visuals. The music is all essentially electronic, but makes use of excellent samples to create the effect of a fully orchestrated musical score. Needless to say, it follows the same adventurous cinematic flavour of the first game, and is faithful to the arcade version. The sound effects, on the other hand, are only above average at best. The character voices are sampled at a very high quality, and they all yell and scream quite convincingly. However, all of the slashes, weapon impacts, and feet-shuffling are stock-standard, lacking in variety, and repetitive. This becomes quite apparent when you view the characters in the Exhibition mode, which is sans music. This is not to say that the sounds in Soul Calibur are bad - in fact, they are excellent by comparison to every other game on the market. It's just that, as mentioned earlier, it doesn't reach the same lofty standards as the graphics. Most people probably shouldn't care about this little whinge either, because it's barely noticeable.

For this particular reviewer, however, the main draw card of Soul Calibur is not in the incredible graphics of the game, but rather in the new fighting engine that has been adopted by Namco. Soul Calibur can be described as the after-thought of a mutually beneficial alliance between Namco and Squaresoft in the creation of Ehrgeiz. All of Namco's previous fighting games, at least from a technical perspective, can be described as lacking in true depth of strategy. Most of the time, the two opponents will simply take turns hitting and blocking each other. After the production of Ehrgeiz, it's quite obvious that Namco learned and adopted a few of the innovative ideas that were used in games like Bushido Blade and Tobal 2.

First of all, you have the introduction of complete three-dimensional - or 8-way as they call it - movement. This opens up a wider scope for strategy through sheer footwork alone, as opposed to performing those retarded and jerky side-steps that you see in Virtua Fighter 3 or Tekken 3. Secondly, the block button plays a key role in not only blocking, but also deflecting your opponent's attacks. Pressing forwards and block will produce an aggressive offensive deflection, whilst backwards and block will let your opponent glide harmlessly past you, allowing you to lay three or four chunky hits into them during that momentary period of disorientation. The block button also allows you to cancel your moves, whether it's a one-hit attack or mid-combo. This allows you to fake out your opponent and mix-up your attacks; which ultimately makes playing against a practised human opponent much less predictable.

One of the more important new features, however, is that the cheesy dial-a-combos are gone. This is because Namco have introduced a fighting engine that places particular focus on momentum and limb placement. That is, different moves that tend logically to lead into each other can be linked up for a good combo. For instance, after a big downward crescent slash, your hands might be in the perfect position to follow it up with a horizontal slash.

This fighting engine is further enhanced by the quasi-analogue properties that have been given to the buttons. With some attacks, you can keep the button held down to wind up for a bigger swing; whilst with other attacks, you can keep the button held down after the attack so that your weapon is held in a new stance, which opens up a whole new set of moves.

Could there possibly be anything wrong with a fighting engine so complex? Actually, no. Soul Calibur is executed to absolute perfection. What Soul Calibur *can* be faulted for, however, is for what it doesn't do on top of what it already does. The basic complaint is that the fighting arenas are entirely flat. Sure, they look pretty with all that bump-mapping, but it would've been much more interesting if it used 3D landscapes like stairs, walls, and hills like in Virtua Fighter 3. If you've played Virtua Fighter 3, you'll know that these landscape subtleties add a great deal of depth in allowing you to exploit height differences, and even using the landscape as part of your attack. By choosing to use flat arenas, Namco have effectively cut out an entire dimension of potential strategy.

The final aspect of the game to be examined are the optional extras - and boy, is Soul Calibur filled with them. On top of the usual Practice modes and survival modes and time attack modes, Namco have also brought back the highly popular Edge Master mode - now renamed to Mission Mode. Essentially, you travel around the world and undertake various challenges, such as defeating 7 characters on one life, or playing a game of Hot Potato with your opponent where the last person to get hit gets poisoned. Other missions might have you fighting with invisible opponents, or lace the fighting arena with that danger zone we all love to hate from Dead or Alive. In any case, each of these missions test your skill, understanding, and ability to use every fighting method in Soul Calibur. This includes blocking, deflecting, juggling, throwing, running, and so on.

The point of this mission mode is to rack up as many experience points as possible, and then trade in these points at the art gallery to unveil... a piece of art. There are well over 350 of these little works of art. This might seem a little pointless until you realise that some artworks give you a bonus by unlocking something for you. This could be a new stage to play on, an alternate costume, a new character for your exhibition mode, or even the option to play with your characters in "metal mode" (your character looks like Dural). Ultimately, what this leads to is more game time, more replay value, more variation, and more value for money.