Fight sports have rarely managed to interest me, but a fun fighting game is something I never mind so I decided to take a look at this latest from Sega.

In the Quest mode you can start up a career and get some money. First up you get to pick a character and there's plenty to choose from, and we're not even talking about the styling. For the styling there's tons of options like clothing, jewelry and hairlooks, but this will cost you money.

Cash is earned by winning matches and this motivates you to keep playing so you can show off your character with all the expensive stuff. Luckily there are also some other aspects to keep playing as after a while you would otherwise get bored of course.
To get some variation you can do tournaments, an Item Match or Ranking Match. By winning such events you get more items, a higher ranking or more money... all pretty straight forward. Also with the standard fights you can make your character stronger and after a while you'll get the possibility to win from an opponent that's clearly stronger than you.

Of course this isn't all that innovating and we have to settle with a lot of eye-candy. The graphics are luckily quite good with beautiful and variable environments. The water moves in a phenomenal way with the moves you make, winds swirls through the trees and sometimes even the sides of the ring are destructable. The colors on the other hand are a bit numb and I wouldn't have minded a more grin look than the tight look they have now.

Many gamers won't find the environments for this game good enough and will mostly look towards the spectacular (combo) moves. These are certainly present but it's not easy to do or even practise them. There's a training mode present but even then most average players will find them hard to accomplish.
Some experience or strong determination are a necessity. People that don't have that can better remain playing in single player as the multiplayer part is quite something different. Let's say that if you're not a trained and experienced player you have no chance for survival.
Online you'll also have to fight your way up to the top of your rank again and this is a nice find to prolong the lifespan of the game.

The conclusion I have to draw is that in the end it's a recap of all that we've seen before. There are some nice features in the game and also graphics and sound are decent. And of course it remains fun to play a fight game against a friend and if you've loved the previous parts you'll probably have fun with this one as well.