I don't know why they couldn't have had a button combination (instead of using "D") for the taunt move (which drains your opponents spirit). That way they could have freed up all four buttons for punches and kicks. I suppose they wanted to have the "D" button just for spirit taunts, as it was meant to be such a major new feature of the game. Charging was also with one button (A or B), simple to do, unlike for example, KOF94, where you hold (A,B and C). Often when games introduce new moves, they make it easy for players to get the hang of them. Or in fighters, when they introduce a new character, with new movesets, they make the new character more powerful than the other fighters, to encourage people to try them, instead of the old characters. One example is SSF2, where all four of the new characters were quite powerful in comparision to some of the old characters. Or, at least, they all had dragon punch moves.
The only way I can beat AOF2 is by exploiting the game engine- by using cheap moves that the AI can't counter. For example, using Takuma's jumping flash kick (even though you have run out of spirit guage), over and over again, at close range, against a blocking opponent, to chip off a little of their energy bar each time, until you finally win (hopefully before the timer runs out). This technique works better on the lower difficulty levels. You can't use it all the time against the tougher opponents like Mr. Big and Geese- you have to mix it up with other techniques, like jumping kicks, sweeps, and standing roundhouse kicks. I don't even know if it's possible to beat the game on MVS difficulty, with normal gameplay, where you do different moves all the time. I suppose it would be, but you wouldn't win as consistently. You have to do this on other fighting games too, use cheap moves (AI exploits) to beat the game's boss, but in AOF2, it's like every character you fight is a boss. IMO, a fighting game shouldn't make you have to do this to beat the game's boss, but a lot of them do, especially SNK fighters ("SNK boss syndrome").
