This is probably gonna get boo'ed but I have to mention VF3TB. While most folks were addicted to the still impressive visuals and ease-of-play present in Soul Calibur, it was the depth present in VF3TB that grabbed me.
While featuring a heckuva lot less flash and noticeably lower-poly models, VF3TB was still beautiful in its own way. The multi-leveled arenas actually made you change up the moves you used while fighting, and the animation really wasn't anything to scoff at either. In fact, I'll never forget the first time I saw Lion actually retract his leg after a blocked UP, K, K attack.
I often wonder how many people that bash this game actually gave it a good amount of play time? It wasn't much of a looker, but the gameplay was incredibly satisfying, and more importantly ... skillful. Aside from Taka, P, P, P, K was the longest combo you were gonna find here, so you were forced to create huge strings from individual moves and expert timing. In short, this meant you could never hope to get anywhere in this game by button-mashing. Practice was the order of the day, but fights between two skilled players were nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Moves were deliberate, sometimes you and an opponent would literally just stand at opposing ends on the arena waiting for the other to move so one could take advantage of the smallest opening. It was excellent! Honestly, the only thing bad I can think of is that too few people came to realize just how good it actually was. Sure it was a rushed port, but so was Saturn Daytona, and most Daytona fans I know still consider that to be the best incarnation of the game save for the arcade parent.
Games like Soul Calibur and DOA2 bored me after a few weeks because they were perfect examples of graphics over gameplay. In short, you could master them far too easily and never felt as though you had accomplished anything special when you did. If you wanted to show a detractor that the Dreamcast could do kickass graphics, you showed them one of these two titles. If you actually wanted to have a skillful and rewarding fighting experience, then there were few better than VF3TB at the time.
Looking back at it though, most of what I mentioned about the game is present in most VFs, heh ... guess that's why I'm such a fan
Virtua Fighter is all about mastery.
