Character Creation

Soul Calibur IV Guide - Character Creation

The ability to create original fighters—a feature first introduced in Soulcalibur III—returns in this iteration of the series. The character creation mode comes with a bevy of new features this time around such as weapon and equipment effects, and the ability to customize standard characters. To create an original character, select the created character slot on the fighter select screen. After selecting the new character's gender and fighting style, you are taken to the trait selection screen. Assigning the new character an Equipment or Battle trait only affects the auto-generation of the character. The alignment chosen only effects the “Alignment” skill.

If you don't plan to use the character in Story Mode, the Tower of Lost Souls, or special versus matches, disregard the stats on the right side of the screen and focus on making your character as flashy as possible. Otherwise, explanation is in order. Each character has five skill point categories: Power, Impact, Boost, Gauge, and Special. Each piece of equipment contributes a certain amount of points to one or two of these categories, and may also alter the character's attack, defense, and HP stats. There is a minimal variety of equipment from the get go, but more equipment becomes available for purchase as you unlock Honors (see the “Unlockables” section of this guide for details).

If you shift over to the Skill Settings tab, you'll notice that there are slots for four different skills. Each skill bears certain point requirements. For example, Hysterical Strength requires that the character have at least 50 Boost points to equip, while Soul Gauge Vamp requires that the character have 100 points available in Gauge, 30 points available in Special, and also have a style level of at least 9. The panel on the right side of the screen indicates the number of points available to work with.

Style levels are gained as a character with using that participates in battle. There is no need to “grind” for these levels; they'll come naturally as you play. As you can see, equipment plays a big part in determining the strength of your created character. For this reason you may be forced to sacrifice aesthetics for stats, therefore it's best to create characters specifically for use in the modes where stats are in effect. Once you're done designing the character, give him or her a name and select “Finish” to save.

As previously mentioned, standard character's can also be customized. Choose one of the standard characters from the fighter select menu, and then select one of the empty data slots next to that character's two default costumes. You can also alter the color of the standard characters' default costumes. To do so, from a character's equipment menu, select the first option and then the costume you wish to customize. You can then use the equipment color menu to change the color of that character's costume. The character's default weapon may also be changed in the Style/Weapon tab. When customizing a character's default costume, you can add a piece of “Special Equipment” to greatly boost their skill points. These accessories are only available to standard characters, so no equipping them on originals or altered standards.

Check out the “Skills” section of this guide for descriptions of every skill in the game.