I'm glad I never played this one. It doesn't sound that great from your review. I don't know why it's so hard to make a good 3D beat em up either. The only decent one I played recently was Ken's Rage. That was mostly because I love Fist of the North Star though. It was extremely repetitive, monotonous, and had a lot of the same issues you mention that FF had. Developers should stick to 2D for beat em ups. It's simpler and seems to work a lot better. TMNT 4 and especially DD II on NES are two of my all time favorites as well.