Has its ups and downs. Fans of the series should enjoy it while other gamers might be let down.
Gameplay: 3/5
+ If you just smash random buttons you might have fun for a little bit. If you intentionally try to do some of the two to three move combos you'll feel proud. But most of the harder combos require nearly impossible timing and I can't fathom how someone would actually try to use the move in a real match instead of accidentally mashing buttons to come up with them. Also, it's all too easy to spam one move, which is a typical woe of fighting games. The single-player AI can be disappointing at times, too. The last boss creates a huge problem too. There are eight levels of difficulty and on the easiest he's still an extremely unfair fight. Granted, if you spam one move he's a cakewalk but if you are a beginner and legitimately try to fight him he will destroy you over and over. I know Capcom stated they made the final boss hard on purpose but at least they could have fine-tuned the easier difficulty levels so that beginners could have more fun, while at the same time maintaining a challenging fight for those who care to face him on hard. Overall, there are definitely high points and low points in the game and you'll experience both joy and aggravation.
Story/Presentation: 2/5
+ I was really let down here. I know at the core this is an arcade game, but at least for the home version they could have made deeper story lines. All you get is a very short (we're talking just a few seconds) anime video when you start arcade mode with a character and another short anime video when you beat arcade mode. I'm not a fan of anime but I still would have liked to have seen either longer videos or more of a plot interwoven throughout the game. They have so much in their hands for making each character feel special with a unique story, but sadly they don't take the opportunity to act upon it. All you get is "Hey, there's another fighting tournament...better join..."
Graphics: 4/5
+ The graphics are what really separate this game from its predecessors. The models and stages are 3D but the series stays true to fighting side-on with a fixed camera perspective. Which is absolutely fine once you see the detailed animation and character models. They truly are wonderful, colorful, and a joy to look at. The camera does have a neat action when a character is about to perform an Ultra move, where it zooms in on the specific character about to unleash the powerful move while the background glows. I really like this feature because it slows down the fight for just a brief second (giving you a chance to grab a quick rest), heightens the tension for what could possibly be a game-finishing move, and overall just shows where the game can really show its strengths. The only negative thing that I encountered was the character's lips clearly did not match the American voice acting. I'm not sure if they match the Japanese voices and this was just a lazy decision on Capcom's part to not make unique facial animations for English speech, or if this was intentional and fitting with the anime style. Either way, it can easily be overlooked but it was just a small thing I noticed.
Value: 4.5/5
+ There's no doubt this game has great value to it. There's the obvious fact that you can spend hours fighting against your friends (if you have a controller for your computer), or the excellent online matches (where you can choose an unranked match or a tournament-style ranked match with people around your rank). But there's also the fact that there is SO much to unlock in this game. If you are a completionist you will be putting many hours into unlocking all the characters, titles, icons, medals, and completing all the challenge modes.