When talking about game systems, fighting mechanics in this case, depth is less of an opinion than it would be for a game's story.

To show a simple and very shallow comparison of depth (oxymoron? maybe not) compare the move lists of these characters:

Pai Chan from VF4 Evolution (there is a newer version of VF4 but it's not on consoles)

Ling Xiaoyu from Tekken 5: DR (not quite available on consoles in the west, but it's on PSP)

Pai is probably the most newbie friendly character in VF, which is why I chose her. Her closest comparison in another game would be Xiaoyu, so I chose her as well. They both have a couple of stances. I haven't checked the entire list yet, cuz it is kinda boring :P but in particular I looked at the throws. Pai and Xiaoyu are not throw/grapple-centered characters (whereas the likes of Wolf or King are), so I thought it would be a decent comparison.

Xiaoyu has 10 different throws, with 3 of them being situational (meaning requiring something other than standing face-to-face with the opponent and hitting 'grab', i.e. from the left side, right side, behind...) A couple of them are even out of certain stances which adds a couple more options than what another average Tekken fighter would have (Raven, the character I use more often, has 8).

Pai has 21 throws. A couple of them are the same throw from a different side, so the number of unique throws may be closer to 18, and 8 of those are situational.


As I mentioned at the top, this is just the most basic way of comparing the depth of the 2 games, though it probably isn't the most thorough way to display it. There's a chance that one of the Tekkenites will have more moves than one of the VFers. I was going to include Lei Fang from DOA4 in the comparison, but I can't find a decent visual representation of her moves. Deadoralive.jp had official lists back when the game was released (I still have the file for Hitomi), but it's taking way too long to load.

Also, what's an 'R=U theory'? It might be something simple, but I just wanna make sure.