Fatal Fury 2 | MaraSNK%

O mesmo se repete pro Fatal Fury 2, eu sei que o Special é dream-match e tals, mas fodace

É legal não ser o Geese de novo como boss, o Krauser é um arrombado de difícil, o jogo é super desafiador, e é, mto, mto divertido

7/10

Out of all the fighting games I have checked out for this website so far, I would say that the original Fatal Fury is like if Mom told you that you had Street Fighter II at home. It has a lot going for it, with a good art style, serviceable combat, and a good amount of fights to be had, but with a severe lack of characters to choose from, along with little done to change the formula aside from adding another lane, the game certainly isn’t gonna be one that I am gonna be coming back to in the near future. Nevertheless, I still thought that it was a good game, so I was looking forward to eventually checking out the rest of the games in the series, even though it looked like none of the other titles looked too different from the original. Nonetheless, after putting it off for a while, I finally decided to check out Fatal Fury 2.

Now, I don’t wanna make too many assumptions, but based on what I have seen from SNK’s fighting game lineup, a lot of them look like the exact same game. I’m sure you SNK purists can prove me wrong somehow, but just from an outsider perspective, look at how many series they had in the fighting genre around that time: Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters, The Last Blade, and World Heroes, and I am 90% positive that there are more out there from them. That seems pretty excessive for just one company, especially since, again, they all look VERY similar. The reason I bring this up is because Fatal Fury 2 is basically the exact same game as the original Fatal Fury, except it is slightly better. It does fix some of the problems I had with the original game, but for the most part, I got pretty much the same experience as I did from that original runthrough.

The story is basically the same as the original game, except this time Geese Howard is replaced by a new villain who is trying to find the person who took down Geese, which is pretty appropriate given what kind of sequel this is, the graphics are an improvement over the original game, with more animations and environments to be seen, but it isn’t too much of a step-up to where it feels monumental, the music is pretty good, having some appropriate tunes to bob your head to while beating the shit out of someone, but nothing that sticks out too much, the control is a liiiiitle bit better then that of the original game, but it is more or less the same, and the gameplay is pretty identical to that of the previous installment, but with several new changes added in to make it feel somewhat original.

The game is your typical 2D fighting game, where you take control of one of 8 fighters, take on plenty of opponents in stages across the world, deal out a series of different punches, kicks, and special moves to take down your opponent, and work your way up to taking down the new main threat and keep your title of being the King of Fighters. While carrying over this style of gameplay, it also carries over the general game feel, with my experience of the game feeling about the same as the original, given how the two are so similar in many ways. However, of course, like any good sequel, there are new additions that make this game an improvement over the original.

First things first, this game tackles one of my problems from the original by adding more playable characters, with there now being a selection of eight to choose from… not sure why it took two games to get the amount of characters right, but hey, better late than never. Out of the new additions, there are some standouts that would become staples of both Fatal Fury and SNK’s other titles, such as with Mai Shiranui, and there is enough here to make the lineup feel varied and interesting… not so much as other games from the genre at the time like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, but it is an improvement over the original. Secondly, there are additional moves to be found here, such as with the case of a brand new attack button being added for new possible combos and battle opportunities, as well as the new Desperation Moves, which can be pulled off when you have 25% or less health. While not too much of a change from the previous game, it does make the combat feel more versatile and, more importantly, less limited.

With all that being said though, there isn’t too much more to where I can say this is a massive leap in quality from the original. Fighting game syndrome is still here in full force, so this does make going through arcade mode a pain at plenty of points, but more importantly, the flow of combat feels practically unchanged. Of course, with the new moves you can pull off, as well as just the natural progression of sequels, it is improved upon, but a lot of it does feel very similar to the original, which was already somewhat restricted when it comes to movement speed and how it feels to land hits, which doesn’t feel all too great. The game still provide a good amount of fun, especially when you have a friend to play it with, but if you weren’t a fan of how the original game played, then there isn’t that much here that is gonna change your mind.

Overall, despite a lack of difference in how the combat feels, as well as fighting syndrome still being a pain in the dick, Fatal Fury 2 is still an improvement over the original, fixing the character selection issue and providing more possible combat moves to where you can have a better time with it then the original game. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the original game, but for everyone else who just played the original and thought it was ok, then you don’t need to jump into this one right away. If only there was like, I dunno, an update to this game that would change things up to make it more desirable, while still keeping the gameplay approachable for long-time fans……………. WAIT…

Game #332

Oh boy…Just oh boy...Fatal Fury 2. Let’s just start with the story.
So after the events of the first Fatal Fury and the death of Geese Howard at the hands of Terry Bogard. Geese’s half brother Wolfgang Krauser organizes another King of Fighters tournament in order to lure out Geese’s killer. This time however instead of being at south town like the first game this tournament spans the entire world. Blah Blah Blah Terry beats Krauser the end.

Sigh

This is a major step down from the first game. Like major. In my Fatal Fury review I stated that I liked the game’s plot because it had personal stakes for the main character and not basically being SF2. This is basically SF2 except with probably a better villain. Anyways I don’t have much to say on the story here since unlike the last game it really isn’t as much in the forefront in favor of the gameplay. But before we can get to that we have to go over the presentation so let’s get it out of the way

So the graphic definitely got an upgrade compared to last time. It’s not by much but it is noticeable with the sprite appreciably made slightly smaller to make it possible to have more room on the stages. Speaking of stages due to this being a world wide tournament there’s a much larger variety to choose from well more compared to the last game. Not that you’ll be choosing mind you the stages are still determined by the character you’re fighting. The music definitely got an upgrade with there being some tracks I’d actually consider listening to on my own time. Mainly Terry and Billy Kane’s themes however it's still not particularly great and Jubei’s theme annoys me to no end.

Alright enough beating around the bush. Let’s get to the only part that I bet most of you care about. The gameplay.

Sigh

This is gonna be rough… so basically Fatal Fury 2 has increased the number of used buttons to 4 with there now being a light and strong punch and kick buttons. Throws now being executed by holding forward and pressing Strong Punch at close range. Sounds kinda familiar but I can’t put my finger on it…Special moves are still preformed the same way and you still block by moving backwards which is something I forgot to mention in the last review then again that stuff’s pretty common knowledge but need to go over everything and all. However there is one major addition to the series in the form of desperation moves. When the player reaches a low enough health value their life bar will start flashing red which means when the player inputs a special command the player will preform an extremely powerful attack that does massive damage. However it is worth noting that not even the arcade archives version of the game tells you, you can do (or bare minimum doesn’t tell you the inputs) and I only realized it by intuition. So I wouldn’t be surprised if many players didn’t know about this. But I’ll get more in depth with these later.

We also got a massive upgrade in the amount of playable characters with there now being 8. Of course each of them having their own set of moves and playstyles but I still stuck with Terry because he’s Terry Bogard do I need any other reason?

One thing that this game does that is interesting is that it allows the player to select their first opponent on the arcade ladder. Doesn’t really amount to much but choosing which foe you want out of the way first is pretty cool. Although the player still has to fight every character in the game including themselves anyways.

Another thing that’s pretty cool is that some of the stages actually have gimmicks such as Jubei’s stage having the back lane covered by paintings and you have to break them by switching lanes and Mai’s having a stage where there are flags she can bounce off of.

The Duel lane system is also much better in this game having the player actually have a reason to switch lane as the enemy switching lanes fairly often which actually makes it worth something. Still a bit of a tacked on mechanic but at least they’re trying and that’s where the good stuff ends.

So the quickest way I can sum this up is Fatal Fury 2 is a worse Street Fighter 2 and I mean possibly as bad as world warriors. While the combo system has been fleshed out a bit and in some ways in a prototype KOF 94. It’s just what happened here. So I’m going to effectively lightning round this because This is almost 2 word document pages long.
There’s almost no hit or block stun meaning there is absolutely no combo system or pressure or at least none that’s actually worth anything. Like you hit an enemy and then can immediately grab you it’s that bad and special cancels make just about every character be safe on block although due to the lack of block stun you’re not getting much of a reward off of the plus frames anyways and it just resets to rock’em sock’em robot sim neutral anyways.

There’s no real hard knockdowns outside of Dizzying so you can’t run Okizeme (applying pressure to the opponent as the are recovering from being on the ground). Enemies will practically get up immediately and this is made even worse due to the lack of movement options in the game. Like I’m not asking for anime fighter movement here I just want a forward dash of some kind. There’s a back dash so catching opponents is a pain. There’s no sort of jump height control and overheads are a luxury if they exist at all so trying to do jumpins isn’t all that effective because you are begging to get anti aired.

Not to mention remember those super moves from earlier. I get that they’re supposed to be last dich effort moves but at least Terry’s is downright awful. It’s starts up at a snail’s pace and has like no range. Sure it does half a lifebar but who care about that if you’re never going to land the fucking thing.

And remember how I mentioned Dizzying (getting hit so many times that you’re stunned for a few seconds) I despise Dizzying in general but holy shit I have never ever been dizzied so much in any other game.

And every single issue is made even worst due to this being one of if not the slowest fighting games I have ever played! Like it takes an eternity to do just about everything and combine with low damage across the board. You get an absurdly frustrating experience.

I finally had enough once I got to Billy Kane with his cheap advantages due to being a boss. I normally love bullshit fighting game bosses and at first I thought it was because of those bs perks that I was getting irritated especially that get out of jail free staff spinning move he has. But no it’s because of the game mechanics themselves.

Due to the the lack of movement and pressure I couldn’t really do anything most of the time. I pretty much just started to spam jump heavy punch and praying that it worked which it actually was to a degree. Now I am partly to blame for playing on the highest setting but even dropping it down to normal mode didn’t help due to the blasted game speed.

After a bit of fighting Billy on normal, I finally decided to throw in the towel and I’m glad I did because there were 2 more bosses before Krauser and I don’t think I would have had the mental energy to even think of taking them on.

Fatal Fury 2 has to be one of the worst fighting games I’ve ever played. I put it down there with Blade Strangers and that game barely works. But that’s a topic for another day. At least the first Fatal Fury has some charm to it. I really hope Fatal Fury Special is better.