Virtua Fighter 5 is the best of the series, but it's still not much of an improvement over the stunning VF4:Evolution.
Adding new characters is good - Eileeen and El Blaze fit right in to the mix of fighters already available and offer both a technical and a quick-and-dirty entry experience to players respectively. Long-time fighters have been re-tooled and fine-tuned even more than Evolution, adding stances in some cases and making timing for certain moves easier or harder as the developers saw fit. Generally I approve of all the little changes.
Graphically, fighters in VF5 are awesome and move very realistically. It's unfortunate that certain contact animations don't mesh very well (for example, there are only so many ways a person recoils from impact, and sometimes characters seem to "invade" each-others' polygons). Nevertheless, I wouldn't hold much against them for this reason since it's still the best graphical outing for any fighter I've seen on any console to date. I like the change in music from VF4's hard-rock/metal tracks. Plus there seem to be a greater variety of vocal effects in VF5 than previous installments, which is a nice touch. I found the play-by-play more annoying than anything, but it can easily be turned off so it's a minor complaint at most.
In a strange move on the devs' part, the dojo is (surprisingly) pared down from Evolution. I'm not sure if this was because of some need to get the game onto store shelves sooner? The system is not much worse, but it's certainly far from better, and to go backwards from the most complete and effective training-ground ever in a fighting game seems bizarre.
So why, if VF5 is almost all-around better than Evolution, do I still feel a little deflated by the experience? Is it that VF4 was so great there was little left to improve on? I guess I could be convinced of that, but it still makes me wonder if VF5 was even a necessary game to make in that case. Don't get me wrong - I like VF5.. a lot! But I wish it could have been more distinctly different from its predecessor.