SoulCalibur II

Very high on the fighting game ladder, with lots of characters and weapons that meaningfully change the game of the standard tournament fighter, but with a good difficulty curve that just about anyone can experience. Weapon Master has a lot of individual challenges that divvy things up among the standard fighting. Even the dungeon crawling is kinda interesting, although the text-based presentation doesn't distract enough from the "characters" in its individual story just being the SoulCal cast. Were this mode done with the create-a-character suite of later titles, it would be perfect. But this is still a very good fighting game package, arguably rivaling Melee in its day.