sorry, i didnt think it was that big a deal >_< anyway, you could rent it but i say you wont ever be able to unlock everything that you'd want for it, the ammount you can customise is unbelievable. If you want a brief summary of the way everything works you can read this (i'll try not to give too much away): Potential spoiler ahead
You create your own individual character cards, you have to earn experience for new moves (this is done in all playable modes even vs), every character has their own indivdual skill tree where as you earn experience you decide which skills you want and it effects the options for the rest of the skill tree. Your characters also have battlepoints which basically show how much they've done/won/fought im not too sure if it makes any kinda damage difference because it doesnt seem to make any when playing friends but in original mode i seem to be able to defeat any oponent quite easily with my goku who's at 300,000 bp (you start at 1,000), plus fighting between you and your mates you exchange bp for wins/losses, more bp if you beat someone with a higher bp and stuff. You have to use the dragonballs to get quite a few extra's (there are a lot of wishes you can make, anything from stat upgrades and skills to different voices for announcements) Dragonballs are obtained in both single player modes, not in vs.
The gameplay is very balanced, and the choice of your characters totally depend on how you want to play. Also crazy juggle combo's require a lot of practice to be able to pull them off, I can only do one or two basic ones with every character, but other than that there are completely personalised combo's for each character which not only require learning that characters timing, but are effected by your opponent as well because of their size, and weight. The only personalised combo's ive learned is one of trunks's and one of Goku's, but I only know very simple ones =\ and i have been whoring this game as much as i can scince i got it. The only thing i have trouble with is the flying, i still havent learned how to incorperate jump attacks into my fights. It's a very fast game, there is one flaw though, that blocking can be whored badly, however there are ways around it, and you still take small ammounts of damage while blocking.
Really a great game imo, best dbz game i've played, I never was any good at streetfighter, but the budokai games were all very easy for me and always left me feeling unsatisfied, except for budokai tenkaichi, but that was only because of the multiplayer, imo the storymode and ranking mode didnt keep me interested enough in the game and the lack of proper customisation and the purposeful unballancing of characters really detracts from the gameplay. The way you build up you own characters in this makes the single player a lot more worth it. Attacks are varied, and so are stats, but they're all balanced with one another. This game would be even better if you and your friends all had copies of the game, and built up your own individual characters to fight each other with, but unfortunately, all my friends bar one or two hate dbz and would rather die than buy something associated with the series, but they still like this (the also really liked tenkaichi). Thats sort of my review, but remember i am bais in favour of this game, like the gamespot review is blatenly the opposite.
Edits;
SSJ is a limited time period, you dont have many combo's per say, but its all about how you use them and how they link up with your special moves and the dashing, as well as super moves
Ravendust: you can choose either a stat effect or a skill from another complete character card but the moves they give depend on who you are and the person you're giving them too.
Chakra: Im not too sure what you mean about them being the same moves [] is weaker and /\ is stronger it also effects different moves in different ways like the rock throw stays for a minute if you use [] if you use /\ it shoots off right away, I think they're all customised at least to a much greater extent than in tenkaichi or budokai, all attacks are different in some way, some less than others, but some are completely different. Plus i dont know if it'd replace it, i havent got that far before =P but i've got 1 empty slot left on my character card.... so i was hoping it'd be okay :x if not i'll just have to grab a stat effect... might wish to restart goku again too, because i really like that gohan move :x, btw spirit bomb for me is [] + /\ which means i can just press L1 to use it instead, you must've chosen something different on your character tree or you're talking about the dragonfinisher rather than the spirit bomb move >_>
