Exact same Soul-Cal 3 fun arcade-matized. It's like paying $ 0.50 to impose youself on everyone in the room.
While stuck waiting in a hour long line to see 'Pirates, I said screw it and walked to the theatre's arcade and guess what I found. =O
The arcade version on Soul Calibur III takes away absolutly nothing from the consul version. Except Chronicles of the Sword and the ability to use custom characters (as far as i could tell). But if you've played the consul version you probaly won't miss eiter of those.
Gameplay- Despite whatever minor fixes were made, this handles the same way it would at home. Same moves, graphics, sounds, and characters are still there, except all characters have 4 additional costume options (Siegfried's Costume 5, FTW), Olcadan is readily playable and Amy is playable as a unique character. (Raphiel's love if you will, that uses Soul-Cal 3's create-a-character Rapier style) And, a certain boss character from the past games appears (not playable though). As for a Night Terror fight- ???
The main story mode has returned arcade back to back fighting style. And unlike the Console version it doesnt bridge the gap between Child's play and REDONKULOUS-ly hard. The later fights can be a little...trying... but a certainly do-able. For instance, Abyss still zips around like he does at home but doesnt rape you quite as badly with the death scythe.
It also includes Legends mode...which confuses me. It seems like you play through the game with a character of your choise, level him up with a series of fights, fight the final legend character and if your character has the Higher level, the character you made becomes the new legend character, but instead of being able to access your newborn killing machine with passwords and user names, you have to play the mode again with a different character and chose to level up (or down) your character (or whichever legend you chose to fight) after a half way boss-fight.
Look it up in the forums.
This game is accessable to pretty much everyone, and hardcore fans should definately appriciate Legends mode and certainly arcade mode as well. (I managed to start rambling in one sentence) Fans should also be looking forward to the upcoming tournaments Namco Arcades is sponsoring. =D
So .... Go play it. 9.7/10