I agree with the op. A lot went wrong. What bugs me was that the least guilty party was Superbot.

Maybe sony should have asked HAL Laboratories to do PSASBR for them ^^ Or ask the very active SSBB mod crowd.

Your OP amused me since it was about as far from "straight to the point" as can be :P

But apart from that, I agree with a lot of what you said, you bring up a variety of good points.

The biggest flaw in the game - for me - was the story mode. I actually really enjoy the mechanics of the game, despite what everyone else says about it. Lack of feedback from hits? You're filling YOUR bar instead of an opponents bar. Works absolutely fine for me. Fast, fluid and enjoyable.

But after that initial video of title fight, I was so hopeful Sony were going to nail the arcade mode in this kind of game. There's so much potential there for great crossover, an enjoyable storyline where the characters invade each others universes etc. But character stills telling a nonsensical story is not it. Not it at all. The brief cut scenes before the rival fight were a great example of what worked, but they were over before they even begun.

The roster didn't actually bother me, but then again, it was aimed at people like me who would be happy with Ratchet/Jak/Sly anyway. And "people like me" aren't a particularly big group to target a game at, which was another problem.

this is the main reason. i played and loved all starts but seriously, fat princess? prappa the rappa?  there are two other characters i cant even remember their names. get tommy vercetti or CJ from GTA, john marston from red dead. why didnt they put sully or ellena fisher in their two? plus no final fantasy characters was somewhat stupid

Main Reason -> Terrible terrible fight engine.

Secondary Reason -> Sony's mascots aren't charming enough.

It got 11k in OP week in Japan, king nation of the fighting games.

They had no Japanese characters.

Here is my response from another thread and I'll post it again here:

I REALLY REALLY LOVE PS All Stars. I've played so many hours of it both alone, online and local. Seriously over 30 on Vita at least and 50 on PS3 easily. Still playing it and cant wait to play the new DLC characters.

But here is the thing.

It doesn't feel like what the name suggests: PlayStation All Stars.

Like this is supposed to be a collection of the star characters who have made contributions and impact to the life of PlayStation throughout the years. But it's missing so many frickin characters who did so.

Why the fuck is Evil cole in there? Why is Dante there? Raiden for me personally is one of my fav characters in gaming but he isn't All Stars worthy. Same goes to Heihachi.

Characters who should be there: Crash Bandicoot, Solid Snake, Wander, Cloud Strife, Ezio, Lara Croft, Spyro, Sephiroth, Sora, A Chimera or Nathan Hale. These are the type of characters who would truly honor the name of a PlayStation All Star. An All Star character is a character that when asked to gamers who is a memorable character that has embraced PlayStation, they would mention that character multiple times.

A character appearing in 1 fuckin game shouldn't be considered an All Star. Nariko? I love her too but she ain't no All Star.

This game should've had 30 characters on disc from the get go.

It was too much of Smash Clones for Sony fans, and not enough of a Smash Clone for Smash Brothers fans.

I can answer that question in one word: Super Smash Bros.

I don't regret buying it one bit. I don't really care about arcade mode because that's a tech demo for to practice the move set of you preferred characters for when you fight other people. If I buy a party fighter I want to fight, I'm not interested in adventure modes. If I want adventure I buy an adventure game.

So my conclusion is that most PS gamers have no friends and pretty much play by themselves, which does pretty much negates what's best about PABR. Yep the roster could have been a little better, but for me it has my favorites: Jacket, Ratchet, Kratos, Nariko. Crash would have been good but I'm fine with Sony not paying Activision a bucket of money to get him back for this game.

The game gets a solid 7/10 from me (that's like an Edge magazine 7, not an IGN 7). I think a lot of what the OP says about aspect of the game are probably right in terms of it having problems with a wider appeal.