First of all, even if you didn't like the arcade version, just stop by
10 minutes and take a look at the PS version. It's not just a fighting 
game.

Indeed, I didn't like the arcade SE that much myself, and decided to
wait for the game to come on PS to try it for real. But the thing Namco 
released on PS has, as you already know, many features the arcade game 
didn't have.

Apart from the traditional additions (time attack, survival... see
PS:TK2), they added a few "nice bonuses", like best CG intro ever (and 
I mean it), special costumes and BGM (arcade, arcade arange, and Khan 
(?) special edition BGM), secret chars, various endings... witch is 
already much, and the soon-to-be-very-famous (if not already) Edge 
Master Mode.

About this mode, here's what makes it great: Edge Master mode is a kind 
of quest (with little thinking and much fighting :) where you have to 
defeat oponents under various conditions. For example:

- You're poisened (life filling out slowly)
- Time attack (3 to 6 oponents)
- Oponent is hurt only by Juggle or Ring outs...
- defeat a very hard-leveled Seigfreid before his castle colapses; in 20
  seconds!!! (this one was hard! Harder than the hard-leveled Seigfreid in
  15 sec! :)

But the best part is that every one or two fights, you'll get a new
weapon to use. Each character has up to 8 different weapons, all with 
different caracteristics! (weight, strenght, defense...). For example, 
Mitsurugi can get a long but weak blade, and Rock can get a Mace so heavy 
he will take 5 seconds to lift it, and kill you in 2 seconds if it falls 
on your head!

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Note to all SSF2X fans (I'm one, but I can try other things.. sometimes :)
Ok, stop right here, I can see you all balanced-characters and technical
game purists starting to cry and say this will ruin gameplay. But you're 
as wrong as you're right, because SE is not a VERY technical game. It's a 
lot of fun, too, and beleive me: this makes the game VERY MUCH fun to play.

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Not all weapons are valuable (sometimes you won't even see the difference 
between them), but all in all, this "quest mode" is VERY funny to play (I 
went to sleep at 6 o'clock in the morning yesterday...);

Building up your characters is the best new feature introduced in a
fighting game since composable team battles in KOF95, because once you've 
earned (sometimes with great pain) these blades, you can use them in every 
other mode in the game! So it helps making your character almost unique!
(Hwang using the crystal sword is very different from Hwang using the
falshion...).

And in some way, as you can save/load your weapons, it's the first use
of the two memory card slots, as you can go to a friend's house and blast 
him with your ultra powered blade!!! But don't get your hopes high, he'll 
probably get the same one the next day, so everyone will be even again. 
This is not a "custom fighter" game yet, but it's the closest yet.

Ok, this is getting very long. You get the idea. Besides, I don't want
to spoil everything, so I won't, but just know finishing this is... not 
the end!!! :)

In a few words, PS SE is more than just another fighting game, and, if
you want to evaluate, I think it has much more fun than Star Gladiator.
SG is remarkable (I like it quite much), but SE is even more attractive.

One last thing I can't ommit; SE has a feel. It's very good at giving
you the middle age sword battle/samurai fighting that fits these games. 
Not as much as SS1/2 was, but close. (Taki/Mitsu/Seig/Li Long... stages 
and BGM are very nice. Chills me! :)

There's much to tell, but I'll make it short for all to understand:
buy it, you won't regret.

-- 
      "Cheers!"

Patrick. (beja@club-internet.fr)