A game born of love from the adoration of fanservice, horror, and anime fighting games, fueled by the fans that sunk money and hours into the project when it was nothing more than a pipe-dream.

As a non-fighting game fan (as in, I very rarely play them, and when I actually do, I'm terrible at them), this is one of the few that I greatly enjoy. Comboing feels fluid, moves feel like they're always just within reach, and every character plays WILDLY different from each other (and in some cases, plays wildly different compared to other head-to-head fighters). My personal favorite character is Painwheel, the poor girl. Now, while I do like the gameplay, I do have some umbridge against the final boss, the titular Skullgirl herself. Her fight is always the same, three phase horror-show that requires an IMMENSE amount of skill. I barely manage to beat her after dozens of tries per character, and I still wonder how I didn't lose my hair over that some days. Never the less, its core design is awesome, and its options for how it handled VS is quite welcoming. The only real mark I have against it is that Valentine is broken and unfair.

The story is an odd, but thankfully well balanced mix of the objective silliness of this 1920-30s inspired Art-Deco world, and some surprisingly dark themes of human experimentation, death and grief, torture, murder, the loss of loved ones, and exploitation, to name a few, normally handled with grace and maturity when the moment counts the most. One moment you'll be smiling and having a good time with a silly character, next you'll be feeling bummed about the horrible sacrifice they need to pull for the sake of what they believe in, or get angry when some monster of a person pulls the rug out from under them. While it is told visual novel style (and for this version, with no voice-over), it still feels like there's care and substance despite the clear budget constraints.

The world itself (especially backgrounds during gameplay and stills during cutscenes) are beautifully haunting, jaunty, forboding, creepy, strange, comfortable, contemporary, and whatever else it needs to be for that moment in time in a very striking artstyle that practically pops out just as much as the characters do, but not to a degree that it makes said characters blend into the background. Honestly, it's so well done, I catch myself saying both "I wish I could actually go there" and "holy crap, I do NOT want to go there".

The girls (and few guys) are very well designed, each with distinct motifs and references to pulp and horror. The fanservice really isn't as outthere as some people (even the current caretakers/developement team of the game) make it out to be, and honestly doesn't detract from the gameplay. In fact, at times, it tends to enhance the personality of the characters and how they interact with the world. But, that's just my personal take on the matter.

All in all, it's a great fighting game, despite its small-ish roster and some personal gripes against the boss and lack of VO. I hope to find a physical copy of 2nd Encore, though I'll likely never get it updated due to the rampent censorship that's been currently going on. Such a shame too. I wanted to try out the new character.