I guess it's a matter of personal preferences, but after SC4 I tried Tekken6, and it was a disgusting experience. I see Tekken as a smashing-button game for noobs who doesn't know how to play fighting games. Maybe the noob it's me because looks like Tekken is the most masive game in the world, but I really dislike this game. My experience with VF was better than with Tekken but it doesn't have online mode (PS3 version) so, I didn't play it so much.
SC4 has a great learning curve too, at least for me. I spend a lot of time mastering Ivy.
There's alot in Tekken to be honest. It doesn't look like there's much to the system because most people see a bunch of juggles or whatnot... You have to be on point when it comes to punishing certain moves that are blocked (because there's jab punishers, launch punishers, and some knockdown punishers)... If you watch high level players fight, at best you might get 1-3 combos a match sometimes... There's all sorts of setups and traps, and plus some characters have better ways of closing in or retreating (wavedashing, ha-ha steps, basic stair-stepping)... But T6 was jacked up imo, because sure everyone could do the same amount of damage in a combo, but it doesn't make it balanced... Yoshimitsu was even messed up in that game... I mean when has Yoshimitsu ever had a blocked sword move in any Tekken??? Never!!! He had so much potential, and Namco screwed it up, and I'm not a Tekken Yoshi player... Bob was nerfed just a little, but is still the high tier character people goto for that easy win aside from Steve Fox...
I do like Soul Calibur, but part 4 seemed like it attempted too much for the sake of making it casual friendly... In the end it felt like Mortal Kombat with a generic finishing move... What bugged me the most was that they should have learned their lesson about character balancing with SC3/3AE, and didn't, because when 4 dropped, Yoshi was top and had to be nudged down with an online patch, then Algol pretty much redefined the 3d fighting experience with his projectiles, and was banned because even after the patch he still had infinites... Hilde was loved at first, then when the potential was truly revealed, she was soft banned by some, and not by others, or just completely banned... EVO 09 SC4 Finals had tons of people booing once they saw Hilde's brokeness... Namco needs to learn character balance!!! Granted, not all games come evenly balance, but SC4 wasn't even close... I liked SC3AE but it was already too late at that point... No one care enough to take time in learning the game they already had on console (which is sad because they do it for BB and other games like it)... And if they do bonus characters, just don't... Most times they're broken and/or banned because they're not on the same console, except for the Apprentice, which was cool but he's probably not gonna be in part 5, so why bother...
I do like both games, its just they really screwed up with T6 and SC4...
I loved SC 2, SC 3 and SC4. SC4 was my first online fighting game and I became a big fan of it. I really played a lot. I love the characters design, their weopns, their figting styles and the envyroment. I think SC has an incredible nice work af art direction, better than other more famous games like SF or Tekken. And its graphics and gameplay are better than any other 3D fighting game.
ewwwww lol sc1&2 imo but virtua fighter destroys it
VF is good and primarily balanced (I'll explain that one later), but people complain about it being too hard... 3 buttons vs 4-6+ buttons... That alone makes crap easier... There's quite a bit to learn, but what fighting game don't you have to learn lots in??? KoF has about as much info to learn as VF and SC... And if you play any SF you have to know your matchups for each character so that alone is more than enough... Plus there's not alot of "good" marketing backing the game up... There's no Ono, or Seth hyping it, and no major TV commercials... Just a single ad on the 3rd page of a GameInformer... That's it... Whomp whomp whooooomp... And game reviewers hype it though, saying its great and blah blah blah, but no one plays it... You've gotta be on virtuafighter.com to find out who's playing and even then its not always consistent...
But yeah, I hope Namco is truly listening to the fans... I remember when Aris was talking about why he quit playing SC and went over to Tekken... And he was pretty good...