Went up to the arcade today, and there it was. So I played around with it a bit.
First off, its not as good as 2, but its better then 3 and 4, easily. The backgrounds are for the most part, the same ones from 3 and 4, and alot of the sprites are the same. Overall though, it looks very pretty.
The game has an interesting system. There is a rage meter at the bottom of the screen, which I assume is for supers (I never really figured out if it was for that or something else). Theres an instant kill mode that activates by pressing A,B, and C together, which, like in guilty gear, sucks down your super bar. Once you run out, no more supers for you. And no enlightenment mode, either.
Ah, that. I didn't actually see it, myself, but essentially, once you lose one round, a small part of your life bar will be orange. Once you reach this part, it turns blue, and by inputting a command that I don't know, you will slow down everything in the game but your own character for a few moments. The orange bar is small, but there is a way to make it bigger (no idea though).
Controls are, as such: A-weak slash, B-medium slash, AB-hard slash, C-normal attack(kicks, punches), D-evade(rolls, short jumps, lie down), ABC-IK mode, BC-something or other. That out of the way, a few character thoughts.
Mina-the bow and arrow whore. All her normals are essentially arrows she fires out. Really good to keep people out, due to the speed. She has a move where she fires an arrow into the sky, and another command will bring them all down whenever she wants, on top of her foe. OUCH. Hard to get in on, and due to a move where she leaps across the screen, hard to stay on.
Rera-UBER fast. She can rush you down, and may have Mina's number, essentially. She can hop on a wolf for even more speed. Lots of speed, lots of priority, lots of pain.
Yoshiro?(whatever his name was), either way, he was the guy with all these knives. He's cool. He's got some painful moves,I saw people use him really well just with some basic stuff.
Water dude-he owns the skies. He has an air fireball of sorts where he throws 3 blobs of water down. Very good, and tricky to get past. I think he could be decent.
Genjuro-HELLA better then he was in SvC, Genjuro can do alot of his old tricks. Good uppercut, same old genny fireball, hell, same ol Genny.
Rimiruru-my god, what have they done to her? Barely any range on her normal moves, and kinda crappy specials. Nice super though.
Charlotte-my other girl, and she's pretty good. Standing B beats out alot of stuff, standing AB is good anti air, she's pretty good at poking. Once she loses her sword though, about all she can do is die.
Needless to say, this game is better then SvC, what with being pretty playable with other people. Detroit has always been an SNK town, with Samurai Shodown being one of the big games...I'm bettin SamSho5 will continue the tradition.