"First" Archimpresions: Kensei Sacred Fist

 What... what happened to you?

 I like fighting games, they are my favorite game genre, up there with RPGs and Metroidvanias. After losing all faith on modern gaming, I decided to go retro and start getting older games, when companies hadn't become as greedy as today. My first two targets were: Older games I enjoyed and every PS1 fighting games I could find. I knew PS1 had a lot of crappy fighters, I had a couple, but if I had high hopes for one of them, it was Kensei. So, I boot up the game, pick the character I used to love, Heinz(If Hwoarang(Tekken) and Jacky Bryant(Virtua Fighter) decided to have a baby, it'd be Heinz. And first thing I notice is... input delay. It takes some seconds for the button presses to register. I read about it, but in my memories, it didn't seem to be a problem, I remembered an excellent Tekken 3 clone. Goddammit Young Me, this game is bad. Bad. BAD.
 It has some redeeming qualitites though, the graphics are pretty good, I mean, it's a fighter so it has no excuse, but it is very pretty. It has some neat ideas, for example, when blocking, the character will dodge the moves. It looks really nice, and very different from most fighters. Another neat thing, when tripped, if you press Block at the right time, your character will regain his balance, reminds me of Rival Schools a bit. It also has a huge roster(for it's time) of 22 characters, most of them unlockable, so they actuall give you a reason to play with each character(Since each character unlocks a new one). Oh! And there's an unlockable racing mini-game, but I will have to unlock it again before passing judgement.
 Sadly, they don't make up for the rest of the game. It's very slow, moves feel heavy, but they don't have the "impact" to match the wind-up. Also, the game-crippling input delay. It's very annoying, and not very fun. Remember those 22 characters? Well, most of them don't look very appealing, and those that do, are unmistakable rip-offs, and move-wise, half of them are clones. Remember the "reason" for playing Arcade mode? Well, there are no ending. A Console-exclusive PS1 FIGHTER with no endings. Stories rarely matter in fighting games, but they didn't even try. They didn't even try.
 And that's the gist of it. I will continue to unlock everything and then judge it. It will not be pretty.