There is little difference in the outcome of a hard or soft reset. Both recover lost memory and reload the OS. A hard reset is a battery pull. A soft reset is performed by Alt-R.Shft-Del. The importance difference is you can perform a battery pull reset when the phone is locked up and not responding to the keyboard.
I read somewhere yesterday that Meterberry gives you two options for phone resets. For most people option 1 works best and the phone will properly reset. Option 2 is for when option 1 doesn't properly reset your phone.
Doesn't have anything to do with hard reset vs soft reset.