New characters: either too powerful and cheezy (suija, yoshi, mina, sankuro "who is a mid boss btw") or too useless (ratsumaru,enja, and that red thing, and the guy that flies.) getting rid of the two bars was one of the biggest mistakes they made. overall not a bad game, but still not a notch on SS4 or SS3 btw there's a storyline explaination faq on www.gamefaqs.com