Ok. Some small gameplay impressions.
For one, the gameplay has definitely been tweaked. The characters that come back definitely are not exactly set like the way it was in SSV. In fact, some of the damage seems to have been altered as well.
Sankuro, being a regular playable character now, got a serious nerf. Seems balanced now, but with a little risk. For instance, his Gun shooting super (which pretty much was a fight winning move) has been given about a split second of extra lag, as well as the specials where he calls out the helpers. No longer does the helpers seem to come out nearly before he calls them. They now will impact after he calls them. Needless to say, this effectively makes him so much easier to fight against, when playing against the CPU. Still, the most effective old way works (stay close to him, get him in a corner, and throw him before committing a slash on him. (That is, using the old 2D (throw invincibility) moniker that when within a throw, no other moves (nor helpers) can hit the fighters until the throw is finished) Also, his Pizza recovery move takes longer for him to heal. It doesn't fill his health bar nearly completely so quick now. Still, if he knocks you away, and immediately does it, it still helps him. The thing is, you're given more opportunity to hit him and make his health gain practically worthless, even if you hit him once he ate it.
The manual has a missprint, for something I'm glad was a missprint. The manual makes it look like the same button to pause the game is the same button used when doing a suicide. That was mistaken. The Start Button pauses. The back Button is used for tossing the sword to the ground (tap 3 times) and for suicides (b,f,fd,d+Back).
Controlwise, it is rather spot on. The speed is intact, too. Moves come off without a hitch. Take note, suicides seem to not work in Practice Mode. Guess it needs rounds to actually make use of it and Practice Mode doesn't excercise rounds.
Loading. Takes about 1 1/2 to 2 seconds tops between fights. Yeah, it's there, but it's actually still short. The only thing one can complain about it is that it's there at all. (Loading screen). It's about 2 seconds in story mode since it actually loads the Story intro demo for the next scene, fighters backgrounds, and any story stuff done after the fight is over.
Interestingly enough, the Announcer voice (and the voice in the intro) is in English for the English version of the game, Japanese for the Japanese version of the game. The characters, of course, still use their same voice actors and actresses and speak Japanese. The voice announcer and intro voice is quite decent and appropriate sounding, though it may come a bit of a shock that it is in english. Purists may want to use the Japanese version just because they're used to always hearing the fights announced in Japanese.
does the game have an arranged soundtrack at least?
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