This is without a doubt the best Tekken game since Tekken 3.
The game starts up with a spectacular and action-packed intro showing Heihachi Mishima and his son Kazuya fighting a series of Jack 5 robots in a shrine. After a while though, Kazuya betrays his father and leaves him to be blown to pieces by the Jack's. A mysterious person wearing shades stands outside stating that "Heihachi Mishima is dead". From this, we can only assume that he was killed in the explosion. Or was he?
Aside from featuring the 3 new characters: Asuka Kazama, Feng Wei and Raven (not to be confused with Vulcan Raven from Metal Gear Solid) Tekken 5 offers the player to buy things for their favorite characters. Every time you win a battle in Arcade mode or finish a character's Story mode you're given credits. These credits can be used to purchase accessories which the character can later wear. Although it's mostly useless, it's gives you a reason to keep playing the game. For those who wish to experience the older games again, Tekken 5 comes packed with the arcade versions of Tekken 1 to 3. No matter what you're looking for, you'll certainly find it here.
The controls are as responsive as you could hope for. Your character will respond to your action the exact moment you press a button.
One look at the game will make your eyes melt. Everything looks gorgeous, for the character modeling to the backgrounds. To add even more to the mix, every time a character hits the ground they will leave their mark in the form of a series of cracks. Even though it's a bit weird that they disappear when the character lands anywhere else, it's still a very cool effect. The same can be said about the music. While playing, you'll sit there tapping your foot to the rocking tunes, which are so good that they can actually compete with the tunes from Tekken 3.
So far everything mentioned about Tekken 5 has been great. There are however some flaws. One of them is that the final boss; a devilish person called Jinpachi Mishima is too hard. Even on Easy mode it might take you about 20 tries before you finally beat him. Also, Tekken Force mode has been replaced with a game called "Devil Within" in which you can only play as Jin Kazama. This game suffers from a somewhat lagging camera and is not the most exciting mode of all the modes present here.
With that said, Tekken 5 is without a doubt the best Tekken game since Tekken 3. No matter if you're a big Tekken fan or not, this is a pure purchase that you won't regret!