Tekken at it's finest.
Now about the gameplay. There are 9 battles in story mode. 1-3 of the battles (varying from the characters) are story based for example if you play as King you'll encounter Craig Marduk and there will be a short cinematic before the fight. Controls are comfortable. BUT there is one thing that bugs me. You side-step by double-tapping the up or down on the D-pad. Witch not always works as you planned. If the side stepping was as easy as in Mortal Kombat 4 the controls would be perfect. Another thing that grinds my gears is that this game is hard. I haven't played a Tekken game in years. So that means I'm as good as a beginner. I personally know few people that have never played any Tekken game except this Tekken 5. The game is unfriendly to beginners. The AI is hard for a beginner even in easy mode. The practice mode doesn't help at all. Although it is cool that you can easily view any combo in practice mode. Still the you can't turn on to AI in practice so you just fight against dummies therefore not learning anything. Most of the games help the beginners like DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi 2. It teaches you the basics and you can fight against the AI in the training mode. And easy mode is really easy. But NO Tekken 5 just cuts the crap and says "You are a newbie! You suck at this game. Live with it." I've played for about a week now but I'm still no better. About the boss. The last boss is Jinpachi. Strongest character in the game. Oh wait. Scratch that out. Cheapest character in game. His attacks mostly stun you and he can teleport. Moves mostly by teleportation witch is kinda fast. Uses cheap attacks like stunning and then shooting you with laser witch drastically cuts down you HP bar. His attack power is stronger than any other character. On top of that he has an attack that quickly hits you, launches you backwards and heals Jinpachi. There's a big difference between strong and cheap. And Jinpachi's not strong. He's cheap.
Now about the visuals. The graphics look spectacular. And hits lookvery good too. Environments look good and Characters are not to shabby too. One of the best graphics you'll find on PS2. There's customization option for characters witch are pretty weak. Not very much you can choose. But hey! You can still make some color tweaks for characters. Most of the characters look good as they are and have small room for improvement.
Summary: A solid game that has small room for improvements. But I must say. If you have never played Tekken I highly suggest you to strongly consider before buying it. As for Tekken veterans. Get up from the chair and get this game. You don't know what you're missing. If it wasn't for sloppy sidestep controls and if it had easier mode. I would almost even call it perfect fighter.