So close but not that far.....
GRAPHICS: 9/10
Namco has always done well in this area, and this year is even better. The characters look great and have multiple attires. The menu screens actually don't look that much different from last year, but that shouldn't make much of a difference on whether you buy it or not. The environments are all gorgeous. And when I say gorgeous, I MEAN GORGEOUS! They are interactable too...sort of...I guess...well not really. The best thing you've got is when you land on the ground hard, you'll knock some tiles loose and it'll somehow heal. Ah yes, the old "healing tiles" trick. That is just a real nuisance in my opinion. Other than that, it's still very very good looking. Yeah, I'm shallow.
SOUND: 10/10
Still incredible. The announcer does his job really well. The music is sort of ambient orchestral music, and I really liked it. It didn't blare out during the fights, but it didn't disappear either. The voice-overs are also very good, but most people might be a little annoyed by it. Especially by all the screams and grunts of the characters. It didn't bug me too much though. They did a hell of a job with the sound in this game.
STORY: 8/10
Well what do you expect? It's a fighting game. Anywho, the story is, an evil sword called Soul Edge has broken up and now the good guys have gotta find it and assemble it before the evil people reassemble it and destroy the world. That's pretty much it. It's better than most fighting games, but that ain't saying much.
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
OK, the fighting system last year was awesome. It was simple enough to pick up and play, and also challenging enough not to just blow away. You can either button mash (the most successful way) or perform complex combos. The computer can do this too, but they're cheaper about it this year. If you make one mistake, the computer will combo you and destroy. I just hate cheapness. They added 3 new characters, and none of them are clones of other ones, so that's good. The single player campaign is just as good as last time, and also you can now create-a-player. I don't know what that's exactly supposed to add. But hey, it's fun. OVERALL:
They do a lot of things right and stay close to the last one. If they could polish up the tiniest things, and maybe explain to me why they needed to add create-a-character, then they'd have a true classic.
FINAL SCORE: 9/10