Ever since the September 9, 1999 release of the Sega Dreamcast, the Soul Calibur series has been a hot property. The Dreamcast game could have been released this year and it would still be a critical and commercial success.

While we wait for the next ‘true’ Soul Calibur game, Namco decided to make a brand new action-adventure game in order to capitalize on the Wii’s motion system and capitalize they did. Soul Calibur Legends could be called ‘generic fighting game’ and you wouldn’t know the difference.

Legends is supposed to take place between the events of Soul Blade (the original game) and Soul Calibur. You start off playing as Siegfried as you begin your quest…blah blah blah. When do we get to fight someone?

Make no mistake, this is an action game – an action game that will tire your hands – you see there are billions and billions of enemies and the way you defeat them is by waving your Wiimote silly – slashing left and right, and up and down until all the bad guys are gone. The bad guys just mysteriously appear out of nowhere, and once you kill them, they disappear. In between big rooms with a lot of enemies, you’ll get to walk through corridors with poison arrows being shot at you and of course, what’s a game without the spears popping up and down from the ground?

The game is an exercise in repetition. Run though corridor, slash bad guys, slash the obligatory vases with power ups, slash more bad guys, end level, and repeat. The good news is that the frame rate is solid, but that seems to come at the expense of quality graphics. The graphics are downright ugly, even for the standards of the Wii. Seriously, it’s been eight years since Soul Calibur and this is a downgrade from that.

Controls in the game aren’t bad – the idea of using the Wiimote as a sword works well and it feels as though the moves you make with the controller are replicated on screen. The game mechanic of allowing you to swap one character with another will remind you of a 2D “tag” element in a traditional fighting game. The game can be fun in limited doses, but gets too repetitive and can cause arm fatigue if you play for an extended period. Each level has an objective, such as eliminate all the bad guys, or find a piece of some broken weapon, and so forth. Some levels are timed so speed can be an issue, although this isn’t Ninja Warrior and usually you’ll have plenty of time leftover. Thankfully the game ends relatively quickly – it’s just too easy.

The other mode included with the game is a “party” mode. While kudos are given to Namco for including a co-op mode, when playing split screen you’ll notice a decrease in frame rate. The game is still playable but definitely not as smooth as the single player version. There’s no online play to speak of and with a co-op quest, there could have been some potential here.

Soul Calibur Legends isn’t a horrible game; it just doesn’t add anything exciting or new to a third person action adventure genre. It’s over relatively fast and it feels more like an unlockable to the original Soul Calibur than a standalone full priced videogame.