Review by: Dominic Nguyen

Having played Soul Edge, Bushido Blade, and Samurai Spirits, I must say, this game is the best weapon-based fighting game out there. Even though it got limited distribution in American arcades (Curse you, Golfland!), this is still an excellent game.

Graphics: 7.5/10

The anime art is excellent. However, there's only 5 minutes of it!!! Despite rumors of an episode on CD2, I have yet to even see anything beyond a rumor. The only anime segments are the opening, 1 minute, and the endings, which are about 30 seconds each.

The modelling is good, but the faces are poorly done in the character select screen (except for Joe). There are also several glitches in the graphics, such as flicker (which I've only seen at the end of the round) and some popup with the fence.

I don't mind bad shadows, Virtual On had the same kind of shadow, and I still play Virtual On. The trails behind your weapons are done perfectly.

Sound 9/10

The music is excellent, crisp and clear, except the only thing that annoys me about the music is the opening music, which suddenly ends in mid-sentence with a bell tone for no apparent reason. None at all.

The voices are clearer than in VF2, and there's actual speech, instead of "Oof!" and Shun Di's infamous "Ruff ruff ruff".

The impact sounds are also good, and almost make you hurt in sympathy.

Extras: 7/10

Training mode is extensive, although you have to choose a move to train one-by-one and since load time is a little longer than VF2, it gets annoying. There's also a Dojo mode which is completely useless if you don't know japanese. It teaches how to play and other stuff. There's also a useless mode where you choose a character and find out his/her specialty while they're fighting. There's a survival mode, watch mode, and a time attack also. The Saturn version is rumored to have the arcade and Saturn-specific joke weapons, but I haven't found them yet. Red-eye is also supposed to be playable.

Gameplay: 7/10

Jump kicks are now more useful since they're faster and done almost MK style. Combos are done the same way as VF, but moves can be cancelled during mid-combo by pressing guard. Some attacks do too much damage so matches will be short if the damage isn't set lower in the options menu. The fighting is fast unlike VF. The throws don't look as painful as in Tekken or Virtua Fighter 3, but they're good enough. Overall, the gameplay is above average. For some odd reason, only one person has counters.

Overall: 8/10

It's a good game, but don't expect 40 hrs of gameplay. Remember that it's a fighting game and there's only a couple extras that'll probably give it only a couple more hours to play.