Go fire up SC2, pick Xianghua, and memorize the following (look up in the practice menu to learn what the letters mean if you don't know)
Now set the computer to the highest difficulty, and proceed to demonstrate the power of X's roach set.
A similar process can be done for pretty much every character - some random scrub can go find out a character's best half dozen moves/combos, easily beat 75% of the players out there, and give the other 25% (who put the time and effort into actually maximizing a character's entire move set) a run for their money. If this is what you meant by "low learning curve," well, it sucks. The difference between pro and beginner is not big at all once the beginner learns a top-tier character's roach set.
The almost-undisputed best five characters were Ivy, Cervantes, Xianghua, Yoshimitsu, and Mitsurugi. After those five, everyone else was roughly equal, and then Raphael and Yunsung on the bottom.
Sorry about driving this way off-topic, but I cannot stand such incorrect, uninformed statements going uncorrected. Here's a tidbit that the original poster might find helpful: SC3 is far more well-balanced than SC2; as long as none of your play group intends to find out how to abuse the VC bug (or you ban its use), you should be able to have lots of fun with it.
You have no idea what you're talking about. While those characters have a great game, as a lifelong Nightmare player you're just spouting B.S. when you don't put him in the top 5. In fact, the only real competition in terms of "oh the character is f'ing insanely broken" is Mitsurugi. With Soul Calibur 3 you have finally brought Siegfried back, which I complained about for about two years continually, and in addition the game is no longer fundamentally flawed (Soul Calibur 2 was worse than Soul Calibur 1). If you make a statement like:
The difference between pro and beginner is not big at all once the beginner learns a top-tier character's roach set.
You aren't a gamer, you're an insanely amateur gamer who has never mastered a game in his life. It's not just insanely hard to beat me when I play my character (Siegfried on SC3) I would give you approximately a 1 to 2 % chance of beating me within the first month that we played. That's beating me one match, or two games out of three. And I wouldn't even allow you to play me for that long unless:
a) you were paying me for lessons
or
b) I know you personally and you're a good friend and I like hanging with you.
Uninformed statements going uncorrected are your statements about Soul Calibur 3 when you aren't a top tier player and likely will never be.
A final note about the VC would be that it is great to want to use a VC, but it is not just difficult to master, with proper play by Siegfried it is also quite unimportant. It allows you to reverse a parry and counter a two-hit as well as throw some unblockable moves, but the actual motions required are in such a limited time frame that without a programmable controller it's too limiting to want to ban something like that. With the new restriction that you can always parry after an opposing parry, and with a good throw break, the only unblockable is after you yourself parry, VC, and then either throw a weak hit in or throw, which is breakable. If you think tweaking a game to it's limit is too restrictive, then you won't ever keep up with me. Sure, it's annoying when the 1 VC out of 20 hits and it's an unblockable move, but the 19 times it didn't hit the buttons didn't register and you threw a random move, which isn't just frustrating it will cost you all 19 fights against me. I promise. There's a reason that we call it punishing someone for messing up, once you get the offensive with a character that hits as hard as Siegfried there is no way to recover aside from extremely good play. A VC will turn an even fight, but a missed VC will also turn an even fight. And if I wanted to beat up a bunch of guys that can't play Soul Calibur I might VC them all the time but that's because there would be no penalty for missing those VC's. I've hit at least a dozen VC's against good players but the rewards are small, and the risk is great. Do I try to VC every time I get hit by a stun or see an opportunity? No, I do it when I'm in the zone and want to take it over the edge. Is it wrong to perfect someone twice and VC after parries to get that? Absolutely not. If you VC that means your opponent had the same opportunity to VC, but they didn't hit it. Who cares if it is a bug or not. If I get parried and I know they're not going to VC and will throw, I'll try the VC and if I miss I'll do a throw counter. Complain about it all you want, you were the one who got pwned and I was the one that pwned you. End of story. Don't cry about sucking, get better. Or stop pretending to play a game at the highest level and accept that you suck. I make rules to play people like you, such as no low hits and no throws. It makes the game fun for me, and you don't cry. But will I play you on a regular basis with those rules in place? No. Not unless you're way fun to chill with and I don't mind sucking and practicing how to suck.
And as for my feelings about games to own, I have Time Crisis 3 and Soul Calibur 2 and 3. I've got Call of Duty 2 but I haven't even played it...Time Crisis is too much fun and if I have friends over we play Soul Calibur 3...if they can play it... Oh yeah, and Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 are way fun, but I use the guide all the time because it gets me so friggin' lost it's insane. If you're going to play Soul Calibur 3 I'd suggest playing Siegfried if you feel like using the most powerful character, but in fact every character can get to approximately his level. It's just the small difference in that the tip of his sword is slightly longer and he hits slightly harder than the other characters that will allow you to dominate opponents if you master him. And don't call him cheap if you don't like that, learn how to use that to your advantage. He's slower because he has those advantages, and a good Mitsurugi player can easily take advantage of those 2 or 3 millaseconds.
Oh yes, and Vegeta has what is the beginning of an understanding of tournament play. But the real reason those combos are used are that after thousands of hours of testing, those are the only ways to hit a good opponent. Those also do the most damage for the latency and hit that we desire. It's not that they're easy to pull off or hard, why does an Ivy player always do summon suffering? It does the most damage. They don't do it because it's easy...and the same goes for every combo you're going to see by the eventual winner of the tournament.
