Clearly not a fighting game fan. Unless you're just going to make the argument "aren't all videogames shallow and pointless?". All fighting games are definitely not created equal.

i am a fighting game fan. but i do admit fighting games tend to be somewhat generic in the first game if its not a spinoff.

characters tend to be templates. story is there but may be easily ignored(still true for most fighting games.)

what point are you getting at?

Gameplay reminds me of Castlevania Judgment. Might give this a whirl if i ever get the chance.

I do consider Takara Tomy a big company, just not in games.

I think making a fighting game is a good way for a studio to make a game without spending to much money. But really, I haven't seen such bad backgrounds/fighting stages sense PS1! Even Tekken 3 looks more interesting in that area. Overall, new Toshinden seems flat!

I mean, really, Rage of the Gladiator, a Wii Ware game looks more interesting to me and also has Wii Motion Plus, which maybe should be the norm on any weapons fighting game on Wii.

The original games sucked a whole lot. Let's hope this turns out better.

Street Fighter was never a shallow fighting game.  And story has nothing to do with anything.  I'll give you an example of how I'm defining depth in a fighting game:

Compare something like Mace: the Dark Age to Soul Calibur and you'll see.  The fighting mechanic in the former isn't as fully fleshed out and realized, the characters don't have as many moves, and the subtle nuances in the gameplay that encourage fighting with strategy as opposed to just slugging it out just aren't there.

Whatever, Primal Rage and Blaze Blue are practically the same when it comes to depth and strategy. Just spam jump kick and win! They are all practically the same until the third or fourth iteration, that's when they start to define themself!

Why?  Does it have completely awesome over the top fatalities?

How about the characters?  Who will be Toshinden's Kabuki Joe?