A very strong game for its time, it's been overshadowed by its many sequels but deserves credit for establishing an interesting setting and characters that the later games built on. More importantly, it distills the 'feel' of the series as being slow, deliberate, and high-risk high-reward. Having big slow sword swipes that can take off up to a third of the opponent's health really gave this game a far different feel to Street Fight or Fatal Fury while still being satisfying.

There are some strange discrepancies in the movesets of some characters - Haohmaru and Charlotte only have a generic throw and two special moves each, while other characters like Wan-Fu have five different grapples and Galford has multiple special attacks involving his dog on top of a projectile and various ninja specials. Despite this, the actual balance between the characters in matchups is surprisingly good. As has been said in other reviews, this is one of the best first entries in a fighting game franchise.