(May contain smaller spoilers for Tales of Souls choices)
Tira comes to Soul Calibur 3 as one of three brand new characters. Her fighting style, the dance of death, her weapon and the ring blade are also brand new to the Soul Calibur series.
Her background is fairly brutal not unlike the sharp barbs on her ring blade. Her profile tells us that her life story begins as an assassin for an organization called The Birds of the Passage who were routinely used by the rich and powerful to eliminate their enemies across Europe. For Tira, killing had become an everyday part of life until the day that the Evil Seed ran down across the world. The seed managed to disrupt The Birds of Passage so much that Tira was set free from them, presumably in the confusion. She was taken in by a relatively normal family for a short time, but due to her harsh upbringing, a minor incident caused her to murder them all. From then on, Tira became a wandering traveler, murdering anyone who came across her path. During this time her emotions reached fever pitch, slight incidences would either cause severe depression or ecstasy in her, making her extremely volatile to be around. This continued until one day she heard about the Azure Knight, Nightmare, who also seemed to delight in murder as much as she did. She tracked down Nightmare immediately and became his faithful servant, fully giving herself to the evil sword, Soul Edge, which he carried.
She has two missions, one to destroy Soul Calibur, Soul Edge’s good counterpart, and two to find a new host for the evil blade, so that it may continue its existence should Nightmare fall in battle.
Pros : The reasons why I like playing Tira are similar to why I love playing Ivy. Her weapon and style of fighting are very unique and in my opinion very cool to watch. Seeing a small girl wielding a giant ring and pounding someone like Nightmare into submission gives a certain satisfaction to the player. Her weapon also allows her to air hike the enemy very easily. Most of my most damaging moves involve throwing the enemy in the air then juggling them with Tira. I also like her look to a degree as you can thankfully change the colours of the main characters costumes through Standard Character Colour Edit. In blue, she looks more attractive ^_^
Cons : Unfortunately Tira seems to suffer from the clichéd bad girl syndrome that Ivy used to occupy in Soul Calibur 1. She is the sexy sidekick who works with the bad guy and is merely a foil for the main enemy rather than posing a threat on her own. Her rather garish outfit also does nothing for her likeability, not just because it exposes the underside of her breasts, which means they jiggle around whenever she moves, but more because the default colours on her costume are an absolutely hideous shade of green!
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