There’s a lot of love out there for the Soul series, and rightly so – Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast had an absolutely enormous impact, and the games since have been of a generally high quality. But the game that tends to get forgotten in all of this is poor old Soul Blade (or Soul Edge, if you’re not playing the Western PlayStation releases), and this is unjustifiable.

Soul Blade changed how I looked at fighting games. Most previous releases had offered little for the single player beyond an arcade mode, a couple of variants like Survival and Team Battle and maybe some unlockable characters. Not so in Soul Blade – Edge Master mode offered a proper storyline and a huge variety of weapons to unlock, as well as variant rules that helped you improve at the game such as health handicaps, restrictions on how you could damage your opponent and requirements to perform specific moves.

But as great as the extra playable content was, the main thing that Edge Master accomplished was drawing me into the unique world of the game, and this is why I love it. The fantastic music bestows each battle with an epic feel (seriously, go listen to Bravely Folk Song again) and the interactive ending sequences were an inspired addition – I’ll never forget Voldo’s misery as he destroyed the sword he had fought for so long to obtain. If you’ve missed out on the original instalment of this classic series, rectify that at once – it’s amazing.