Very disappointing.
First off, the fighting. The new no boundaries enviroment and "360 degrees of hurt" is not so much true. There are boundaries, and a lot of them. Yes, it's a little bit more open, but you dont even need a radar, and whats the point of having all that room if the computer never leaves you alone. And the new style of fighting is really quite lame. Only one button controls the kicking and punching, and all characters have a very short punch kick combo. Also, the way you fire attacks is horrible! And to top that off, characters only have 2 signature moves. The rest are made up and every other character has it.
Second, game time. The game is very short and very repetitive. You either fight or run. Running is hard because the coms stats are tweaked to make it harder, a lot harder, so you cant fight. And there isn't any need for tournaments now, because there isn't any more zeni. You fight for moves now.
Over all this game is very disappointing to me. Some may think other wise, but I'm saying, look beyond the hype. I beat the entire game in less than 3 days. Thats impossible to do with budokai 3.