Okay, so since it's starting to look like America may have received its last Virtua Fighter game, it might be time for me to move on to the 3D fighter with the strong, reliable community. There are things I dig about Tekken, and it seems like a fun franchise to dive into.

But before I do, I need to feel better about something first. So I have a question:

What exactly keeps the insane juggling from completely breaking the game? From the outside looking in, Tekken is almost indistinguishable from Killer Instinct, and victory seems almost entirely tied to "who will be the first to land a launch and punch out a ridiculous combo."

Am I just watching too many world-class pros play this game, does casual play really come down to this kind of "juggle-off," or am I missing something? Are launchers impractically risky attacks or something?

@TranceQuina: TechHits pretty much nailed it. The thing that balances juggles is that they are available to both sides and one juggle doesn't end the round. You can eat a big juggle and still pull the round off. The one thing that can make them look bigger than they are is the wake-up game in Tekken. This is a big part of Tekken and if you guess wrong getting up, you'll probably get another smaller combo started on you again and then you restart the whole wakeup guessing game. Starting out against good players, it's hard to get back up after getting knocked down. Also most launchers are hard to connect with against skilled players. Tekken, though, is a high damage game so it can easily come down to 2 or 3 mistakes costing you the round. I came from VF as well, and I really like that game better but unfortunately Sega doesn't seem to care. The biggest difference to me is that Tekken is much more of a poking game and the grappling isn't as effective.