Geese may fly away, but a Wolf will come to play.
Overview
Hooray! They did it! The Bogard brothers and their friend, Joe Higashi defeated the entire competition that Geese threw at them in Southtown. The finale saw Terry landing an attack that sends Geese flying off the roof of his tower onto the hard concrete below, dying from his injuries. Everything is back to normal, right? Man, you are so incorrect! Someone has taking the rights of Geese’s prized tournament and expanded it so fighters from across the world could take part. Now join Terry, Andy, Joe, and several new warriors on their road to becoming the champion of Fatal Fury 2.
Graphics 7/10
The graphics have gotten better this time around. The landscapes for majority of the stages are nicely colored and quite remarkable in telling where the fighting takes place. Terry’s stage, set on a speeding railroad passing Mount Rushmore is possibly one of the most unforgettable spots you will ever reminisce of SNK gaming. Each battlefield compliments their respective fighter in a very graceful manner. Sometimes, it was a little too overpowering. Chang’s stage had too many colors going on and Mai’s stage, beautiful the setup, had too much belts of water passing by too quickly. The graininess of them all could cause short term annoyance and headaches.
The fighters’ animation also got altered for the better. The newer combatants do not look like sore thumbs when fighting the likes of the revamp Terry, Andy, and Joe. Breaking items in the background were also a nice touch, and none of them look funky getting knocked/jumping over in the next plane. I did question what Jubei was throwing as a projectile, until someone told me it was a cookie of some sort. As humorous it was, it was strangely weird at the same time. The letter font for the game, especially during after/before fight quotes, could had been fixed to not cluster words with awkward wide and slim sized letters. Another thing they could work on was the character selection screen. Having the cast come together behind an empty black space did not look appealing.
Gameplay/Controls 7/10
SNK redefined the overall personalities of Terry, Andy, and Joe, by uplifting the attitudes towards their specials. The newer fellows have some pretty interesting attacks and specials. However, the motions most of them act in combat become corny in many instances. Examples that can be pointed out is the hitting detection of Kim’s crouching hard kick and for a guy like Big Bear whose occupation is being a wrestler, he sure as hell does not do that many grappling moves. The fighting planes are still intact so you can jump from a spot, roll to the side, and knock someone back with ease. A great touch is when their hazards surrounding you like metal clock wheels and a stampede of bulls. Yikes!!!
Whoever withstands the chaos in the end goes on to face three minions before meeting with the last boss, that is setup almost exactly what Street Fighter 2 did with there bosses. Shame on you, SNK! You have Axel, a boxer from USA and…that’s it. Lawrence Blood is a powerful bullfighter who carries around a sword and a red cape. Billy Kane comes back in to seek revenge against the ones who defeat him and his boss, Geese. Finally, the granddaddy of them all, Wolfgang Krauser, who wait for the winner to enter his castle and prepares for the ultimate showdown, complete with an entire orchestra.
Intelligence of the computer is definitely there and it shows. The battles can be pretty even on both sides while you will get a few instances where some controlled enemies seems to know when to strike you with pinpoint accuracy and that is not fun sometimes, my friend. If you can dissect the pattern of these supreme smarts of the computer, you should have no problem beating the game. The bonus rounds are shown with a much simple formula to deal with. The arm wrestling trials from the first game hurt your hands like a mofo.
New to the game was that of the fighter having the chance of performing a dangerous super move. It could be done as many times as they wanted when their energy is flashing red near defeat. It truly was a major factor that resulted in huge amount of damage on the victim, if it succeeded. The good side of things was that many of those supers could be seen in its beginning phases easily, so players could watch out for them. Well, that and the way to execute some of them did not come out easy to register.
Speaking of register, the controls were still clunky, but loose enough to get anybody’s special attacks done with simple movements. It was a large, vast improvement from the first game. The entire row of buttons acts as having weak and strong versions of the punch and kicks. Jumping onto one plane and smacking somebody to it got more fun thanks to separating them by having A & B or C & D work in unison to do these actions. Although, not really used in the game by casual players, they were tremendously useful it someone know this game like the back of their hand.
Sound/Music 7/10
The sound bites receive a thumb up from me from what I can only say is superior, but it does contain some faults. No longer do they rely on using one sound file for multiple characters’ speeches. Everyone now have their own distinct voice to tell who is who. If I think clearly, most of the spoken sounds are just grunts, moans, and incoherent sentences no one could understand. Thanks to the muffling in sound, fanatics are forever thinking Mai really said “Me Bouncy!” and Big Bear has one of the worse lists of sayings for a voice actor. The only other easy to recall sounds are the one word quotes like “Okay!” and “Ole!” and Wolfgang speaking fluent English. Why Terry speaks “broken” while Wolfgang can is a complete mystery.
The music tracks are incredibly addictive and have catchy beats. I really enjoyed the soundtrack and think it was one of the biggest highs the game have in it. You could tell SNK attempted to have the music match with the scenes they came off of. Mai’s theme had that Japanese chimes to work around and Andy’s hangout in Italy sounded very European. My minor complaint was Big Bear’s theme sounding too much like it came from an 8-bit game.
Replay Value 5/10
With eight fighters at your disposal, this game can hold well on its own and offers a totally wonderful showing of fighting. With the different playing fields system and the inclusion of super moves in near losing situations, its makes the matches much more hard to dictate then ever before. Still, it took a lot longer to beat the entire game, since the game like taking its time going to one place to another. It is just good leaving it as being a two player game, because the endings are total crap.
Overall 7/10
If you do not know by now, sequels to the original of the series is always going to be a better product. Fatal Fury 2 did just that and while the game has some things lacking and need help with, the game is what it is. Not the best, not the worse, but it is enjoyable.
- By Boombada
