There is a certain visceral charm to physically slashing the Wii Remote through the air and having your on-screen character respond. Indeed, Soulcalibur Legends is a game that will actually make your arms sore after a couple hours of play, but this works to the game's advantage because long extended sessions of gaming reveal the recycled content and lackluster presentation in the rather straightforward action-brawler.

To begin with, the controls work. They aren't 100% perfect, but the game is pretty good at recognizing your slashes or thrusts, especially when you focus on concise, strong movements. Quick shaking of the Wii Remote back and forth is best confined to when you want to execute combos on quick characters, because although the Wii Remote speaker will sound a slashing effect when you correctly perform a move, the game drops actions that are entered while the character is either in the middle of an attack or recovering from one. Taken on the whole though, these controls are what make the game interesting. Slashing through dozens upon dozens of enemies, room after room, would never be as interesting if you weren't allowed to get carried away in the moment and make your own determined sword thrusts.

Unfortunately, the camera in the game can prove problematic because it keeps close and tight on the player's character. The interior environments and packs of enemies make this an unwise choice. Because the camera stays closely over the shoulder most of the game (except for when you're locked onto an enemy), players essentially have tunnel vision, and as enemies get more aggressive they'll increasingly attack from behind or just beside the character. This can be avoided by mentally keeping track of possible enemies off screen, blocking to swing the camera behind the camera directly, and the smart utilization of the game's lock-on system, but it doesn't excuse the fact that you'll sometimes take multiple hits because you couldn't see an enemy or projectile attack just two steps to your left.

Although the game can boast about ten hours of story mode, the presentation feels somewhat lacking. The game has only ten or so levels for players to beat, and it will contrive reasons for you to revisit each level multiple times, using only slightly different objectives, paths, or obstacles. Thankfully, the levels are all short and sweet, most of them lasting between five and eight minutes, which is a nicely bite-sized amount of game time. Oftentimes, the temptation to complete "just one more level" is irresistible. However, the repeated locales only serve to emphasize the uninspired environmental art of each stage. The characters, bosses, and enemies in Soulcalibur Legends received much more attention, but the game still ends up looking overall like a well-done GC game. It's not really a fault of the technology, but the failure to make the world of Soul Calibur composed of interesting and unique objects, patterns, or even entire rooms or hallways.

The story, which takes place between the Soul Edge and Soul Calibur games, is rarely told through cinematics. Instead, all the melodrama and save-the-world speeches are told through 2D character portraits appearing at the side of the screen with a text box at the bottom for you to read their conversations. This means that while the game's sound and music are appropriately enjoyable and epic, voice work is limited to a select few quotes and battle cries per character. Sometimes characters will converse or make observations while you're actively in the midst of a level or fight, but it still feels like a cut corner on Namco Bandai's part.

The game does offer some surprises, though, like the shameless cross-over appearance of a certain character from the "Tales" RPG series. Another bonus is the game's split-screen two-player mode, which contains side missions that are unlocked via story mode. This is where you'll find a handful of cooperative missions, or even more competitive scenarios, for you and a friend to jump into.

Of course, as a straightforward brawler, Soulcalibur Legends delivers. There are monsters to kill, a world to save, gripping bosses to slay, and Wii Remote controls to enhance the entire experience. Soul Calibur Legends is fun, but just not fun enough to dismiss its flaws in camera control, art direction, recycled content, and a generally second-tier presentation.