As arcades continue to decline, less and less fighting games are being released. We could blame the death of arcades on the technical leaps and bounds made in the console gaming market six years ago. But as hard as it is to live without that unforgettable arcade experience, I can't imagine life without the PlayStation. If that's the reason arcades died...then so be it. If that's not the reason, then I guess we'll never know what killed 'em off.

Fortunately, there are some game developers who still develop fighting games for the arcade and home market. It's really a shame though that the latest (and likely one of the last) fighting game released for the Dreamcast isn't a very good one. The Last Blade 2: Heart of the Samurai is so repetitive, so familiar and so predictable that it would be really easy to mistake it for one of Capcom's fighting games. Or even another one of SNK's fighting games, for that matter. It's kind of like playing Silent Hill 2 right after finishing the original: you know you've been down this road before, so why have you returned? Sure, the story and the characters are different, but who cares. That's just it -- familiar or not, Silent Hill is a town worth revisiting in the sequel. The Last Blade 2 isn't worth much of anything though.

The Last Blade 2's simple rolling motion button combinations have been used in fighting games for years. If I had a nickel for every time I've pressed down, corner, forward on the D-pad, I'd be rich. Unfortunately, the Dreamcast controller's clunky D-pad and awkward shape make performing these simple actions really difficult. There's nothing worse than dying because the controller failed to respond properly. Agetec can't be blamed for Sega's mistake, but they could've at least tried to fix the problem by adding analog support. It would have been a lot easier to execute all of the rolling motion techniques that way.

TLB2's story is just as unoriginal as the rest of the game. Several Samurai blade masters have been summoned to compete in a tournament that has only one victor -- and no other survivors. Doesn't EVERY fighting game have a story like that? And there isn't much more to it either. The blade masters make lame wisecracks after every battle ("If we go on, you're hamburger."--Kaede) that do little to enhance the experience. Speaking of Kaede, there's also a character in the game named Shinnosuke. Is it me or have the developers been playing too much of Onimusha?

The sound effects are way over done. If you're battling near a large body of water, the movement of the water should be complemented by subtle noises that blend in with the background music, not over power it. Worse yet, the music quality is akin to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. That's not something you want in a Dreamcast game -- music so low in quality that it sounds like a cartridge.

I can't help but wonder if it was the developer's intention to make a Street Fighter rip-off from the start or if they had something much more original in mind. If originality was what they were aiming for, then somewhere during the course of the game's development, they must have run into a problem. Maybe they didn't have enough time, but if that were the case, they could have simply delayed it a few months. Developers never think twice about delaying the games that we're dying to play, so why would they care about releasing a little-known title like this on time? It's not as if it would have sent shockwaves through the industry or made a few million people throw their consoles out the window in disgust.

If you've never played a fighting game before, avoid TLB2 at all costs. You'll end up hating the game so much that you swear off all fighting games for life. And with Tekken 4, Soul Calibur 2, Virtua Fighter 4, Dead or Alive 3 and Mortal Kombat 5 due out within the next 12 months, swearing off all fighting games would be a huge mistake. You would think that at the end of this great system's life, publishers would strive to release the best of the best as a way of saying a final goodbye to Sega in the hardware market. But instead, TLB2 is just another average game that makes gamers who didn't buy a Dreamcast glad they waited for PS2.

Gameplay: 5
Even at a time when there are no other new fighting games being released on the Dreamcast, TLB2 can't achieve a score above average. Primal Rage looks like Tekken 3 in comparison. Repeating the same button combinations over and over again can only be entertaining for so long. In this case, the fun lasts no more than five minutes. Five minutes, 34 seconds tops.

Graphics: 8.5 
It's amazing how close The Last Blade 2 came to being...average! I honestly haven't seen graphics this bad in years. There are so many great games that never see the light of day in the US, and yet Agetec chose to release this filth in the States without bothering to fix it up any. It wouldn't be so bad on the Game Boy Advance, but TLB2's choppy background animation, ugly characters and the lack of any special effects are what killed it (graphically) on Sega's previously-next-generation console.

Sound: 5
I am so glad that my CD player is only a few feet away from my television! Otherwise I might not have been able to withstand the ear ache given TLB2's horrible music and sound effects.

Difficulty: 5
The only difficult thing about The Last Blade 2 is struggling to execute a move with the Dreamcast controller.

Concept: 1
For the most, I go easy on a game's concept score because I appreciate the effort from developers who try to do something different. On the other hand, I despise it when developers say, "Let's make a game that plays exactly like everything else! If gamers like Street Fighter, obviously they're going to like TLB2. Right?" In a perfect world, yes, TLB2 would be a big hit among fighting fans. Then again, in a perfect world, TLB2 would have been a fun, original game. Reality sucks, doesn't it?

Multiplayer: 5
If a video game isn't any fun to play by yourself, it's likely that it won't be any fun to play with others either. That remains true with The Last Blade 2.

Overall: 5
Everything about TLB2 looks and feels cheap. If someone manages to enjoy playing TLB2, that's great. But I love fighting games and couldn't stand it. Most people are sick of the fighting genre and TLB2 gives them another reason to never play fighting games again.