Could have been a contender!
Then you got the ground game. In theory its pretty good. You use the right analog stick to control the ground game. When you´re on top you have transitions to better positions until you mount the opponent and ground and pound for the win. These are easy enough to do and the tutorial is very helpful. In fact the tutorial really makes everything seem easy and you´ll feel ready to play on the ground in no time. The problem is when you actually start playing. You can also reverse transitions to maintain the mount or to get out of trouble when you´re on your back. Now comes the hard part. The AI, at the second hardest difficulty starts to reverse everything you do automatically. So the basic match goes like this: AI goes for takedown 3 or 4 times in a row. You sprawl 3 times on the fourth they will get you down no matter what, trust me. They try for a transition 3 or 4 times. You block 3 transitions, try one yourself to get out of your back which always gets reversed and the AI gets side control. You try to get back to full guard but the AI will block all your attempts and mount you no matter how many times you block him. You try to transition out of the mount, 5 or 6 times and the AI will block you every time and pound you from the top. If you manage to give the back and then get up, the AI will then go for takedowns and well you get the picture. So what happens is this: if you play the game on lower difficulties you will win every match with a KO or TKO. If you up the difficulty, it seems no matter what you do, the AI will kill you on the floor. You know the theory, what to do and how to do it but the automatic reversal rate from the AI is so high you dont stand a chance. The only way you can be successful is if you get really good at reversals yourself but the timing is so small, you will need hours and hours of practice to get it and frankly for me its not worth it. What you get other than this is classic fights, where you have to win the same way the real fight ended, which gets boring really fast when you got a guy beat but have to back up because you have to wait til the 3rd round to KO him and career mode where you put the game on easy and go on endless sparring sessions to build up your fighter stats and where submissions are even harder if not impossible. You also have online, but both my matches were unplayable due to lag, and pretty much only pro´s play by now so if you´re starting now you will be destroyed.
This is a fun game, but in my opinion the ground game is practically broken against the AI, as are the submissions so other than flash KO´s there´s not much here to enjoy, unless you´re a huge UFC fan or are willing to put 60 plus hours to really master the ground and stand a chance. Could have been a contender.