Kino has arrived in the 21st century.

Great fighting game. Fighting feels both fluid and snappy. Simplifies 3's evasion but getting rid of various movement tech unique to 3. I could do without unsuccessful evades being slower than 3's. Crouch dashing isn't as strict. This makes moves performed from crouching easier to pull off. Throw Escapes have a bit more dynamism to them for better or worse. However, jumping attacks are the most cumbersome they've been now that evades are UP and Down.

Character movesets are even more diversified with some having multiple stances for different purposes like newcomers Vanessa and Lei-Fei.

Then we have the new Sabaki mechanic. Basically a parry that can deflect other moves. VERY useful tool even when you're not the type to do normal reversals.

Presentation is great. Great graphics for its time even on the slightly downgraded PS2 version. Stages look great with my favorite ones being Jacky and Akira's. Even the menus look great in the PS2 version's case. Pretty sleek looking overall. Music isn't amazing but they're still cool and fit the stages well.

PS2 has quite a few cool features. There's the Kumite mode where you fight a bunch of dudes, rise up your rank like in a dojo and get items to customize your player. I believe it's the first fighting game to have custom cosmetics and a ranking as far as I know. You can also unlock old victory poses, unlock new ones and even unlock a VF1 styled character skin even for those that weren't in VF1.

There's the A.I. training mode which is my favorite mode in the series personally. You make an A.I. of the certain character and you can either train it yourself or have it watch replays whether it be yours or otherwise. Then you can sic it out on Arcade, Kumite or Versus with a buddy. It's no doubt the weirdest mode and pretty vague in how it works. But I enjoy this mode quite a lot. And I made some monster CPUs out of it.

If that isn't enough, it has the a̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ greatest tutorial in fighting games in the form of its Trial mode. Teaches long time VF basics as well as its new ones.

Great game overall

This is a slightly more divisive title than the rest. Me though... I dig it.

Stages are uneven as hell which is definitely new (and rare) for a traditional 3d fighter. Only other example I can think of is Tekken 4. Stages themselves look cool. Not only did the stages get an overhaul but the movement in gameplay as well did. The Evade button!

This was an interesting addition at this point. The 3d in this 3d fighter isn't just for show anymore. But the addition of an extra main button that isn't an advanced input might prove to be a bit more convoluted than complex which I understand. But I do like moving around in this game.

But man, it can be unfair with a good Kage, a character with more mobility options than any other character since the beginning. But this time he has even more movement options now!

One step down I feel is the presentation. Music isn't as cool as 2. While graphically impressive for the time, I feel this VF has aged the worst. 2 has a great style and 1's graphics are outright iconic. Everyone just seems bugged eyed and then you have Aoi who I think looks terrible lol.

Not a bad sequel. I'll even say its just good. Depends on your tolerance on the E button and the uneven stages.

Really good sequel mechanically and visually.

Fighting is a lot snappier and character movesets are further fleshed out.

One thing about the combat I don't like is how obtuse some inputs for throws are (which is true for VF1 as well) especially when throws are pretty important tools. Some of those good throws can immobilize the opponent to be capitalized on. Thankfully the series moving forward would relegate all throws as P+G which is a lot simpler to wrap around.

BIGGEST issue is how unforgiving the AI is. Like Mortal Kombat 2 and Art of Fighting 2, the AI reads your inputs pretty early on and it gets worse going up (though, MK2 does it at the first fight so it's the undisputed king of cheap.)

And sadly, no home versions of the game (even the PSN/XBLA versions) have a training mode of any kind to actually learn the game properly.

To me, playing VF2 with friends and playing VF2 alone are vastly different experiences and even quality as weird as that might sound. By itself, I believe VF2 is a very good game (mainly for its time.)

Funny thing about the old PC version is that the AI in that game is the complete opposite. Probably wanted the difficulty to come from the Expert Mode which captures your play data over time which is cool.

Humble beginnings, as they say.

This old PC port is pretty cool for letting you choose between the old models and remixed models just like that.

For the game itself, it's okay.
Not the most polished fighter but nothing entirely sluggish.

Product of its time sort of deal.

















Shut up, Dark Edge seethers. VF has REAL 3d!

Another one of those weird fighting spinoffs.
This one seems the coolest in theory.

Platforming is pretty stiff. Not the biggest fan of the R-stick being relegated to that laser whip thing and not controlling the camera.

Combat while not AS stiff is pretty simplistic, though that by itself isn't a bad thing but its the type of combat where that one trick works on 90% of the enemy list. While I don't mind how Virtua Souls are implemented, I think its a grave missed opportunity to have something like a custom combo system. Sort of a virtua soul mechanic but for basic combos since almost every enemy has animations lifted from VF including Sei's canned combos. I don't know. Maybe its just me.

Levels can take a little too long for my liking, especially with the way extra lives work.
While the overall control is pretty stiff and levels from later on can be pretty lengthy, I can't say I was bored barring a couple of instances.

Presentation is kind of bland but I guess it works. Music is pretty nice at least.

This game is very "can be enjoyable."

A good remake if you like the original.
It can be easy to be overwhelmed so taking things slowly is my only advice. By that, I mean not running which is a sure fire way to not run into traps (Stage 8 cough.)
Weapons like the kali sticks and the nunchucks are kind of overpowered lol. Takes more skill around crowds but still. Once I took out the final boss's mooks, I pretty much stunlocked him to death.
Additions from other games are nice from the way they're implemented for the most part. They seem more balanced around the enemies. Though with how many enemies there are on screen, I hardly use the block/parry at all.

Pretty great 3d brawler of its era.
Hard as balls though.

Mechanically, there's quite a few things that separate it from others.
One, its charge attack system. The way they're implemented is pretty easy to under stand. Pretty nifty in many situations.
There are also attacks performed with combined inputs like Jump + Beat = a sweeping move which is really useful. I'd go as far and say it makes combat more complex than others for the time.
Some aspects of other beat em ups (mainly from the Snes era) are multiple pathways. One stage you'll be on a boat while in the flipside, you'll be in a Sega Theme park of sorts with a large Sonic statue.
There's also a shift button which is surprisingly useful for dodging enemy attacks. Just don't charge while shifting. It slows you down.

Big cons are how fucking unforgiving timeouts can be. The timer runs out so fast compared to other beat em ups. You might time out before your health drains.
Then there's the bosses while unique and cool, abuse the ever living fuck out of their super moves that give them invincibility frames. The last enemy gauntlet with the flying Grim Reapers was absolute cancer.

But yeah. Cool game. Cool playable characters with their unique quirks and such. Combat in general feels snappy and satisfying.

Underrated Final Fight entry overall. This game just feels right to me. The movement in this style of gameplay feels very smooth especially doing running attacks. Albeit pretty easy. But what can you do. The whole multiple paths also seem very innovative for the genre. But very few that do aren't even in the mainstream zeitgeist I feel. You can probably argue Final Fight 3 is the first "mainstream" one given the series its attached to. But yeah. Its up there as the best arcade... well.... "arcade" brawlers on the system.

Combat is pretty cool with its focus being purely hand to hand. People may find it more "limiting" than normal yakuza gameplay but I think the game's way of trying to be challenging is to have the exact same skills as the enemy. I think it's pretty cool since the combat is more akin to those Wrestling/UFC fighting games. Fighting styles are pretty cool. A lot of them really feel different from each other despite sharing a few animations. Bosses are probably the best part of the game to me. For the type of combat this is, I feel the challenge is pretty fair for most of them and bosses probably felt the most imposing out all of the series from a gameplay standpoint.

This is probably just a "me" thing but the art style of the game is also my favorite of the franchise. I like the cutscene art a lot. Feels what Yakuza's 1 & 2 might look like in 2d form with its gritty look and all. Its probably what stood out to me the most and in a way why I wanted to keep playing the game without knowing a lick of japanese when I was "checking it out." So at first, it was just me wanting to look a bunch of pretty pictures. Animation is pretty much flash animation but it's stylized up the ass to really make me care.

The game overall looks pretty nice for a PSP title. I also like how diverse enemy designs look. Some of look straight out of a delinquent manga.

Story (from what little translations I managed to scrounge up) is pretty good. I imagine if you like stories like Judge Eyes/Judgement, you'll appreciate its tone and how it differs a lot from main series Yakuza despite taking place in the same city. In this era of the series, its one of the more grounded stories in my opinion. Erm... At least after a certain part of chapter 1/before/after confronting the final boss.

For cons:

Navigation can be a pain in the ass (though it's not because of controls). There's no taxis. And the cops can make getting to places kind of annoying if you end up a lot farther away from your intended location.

Enemy health can get pretty beefy especially on harder modes unless you upgrade stats. Leveling up stats is pretty weird since it's completely different from leveling up normally (experience points, etc.) Money is pretty god damn scarce.

The combat is CLEARLY not designed for multiple enemies. There's no real crowd control options in combat or at least ones that feel natural.

This is probably what can turn off fans from checking these games out, the camera is too close in combat and shakes too much whenever clean hits are made. It kind of makes the game worse than it actually is. Its not like zooming out the camera is a bad idea. Not like obstacles can obstruct the gameplay in the first place.

Side content other than substories is pretty limited. This has more to do with it being on a PSP so they probably had to make due with a smaller space than usual.

This probably depends on who you are but having the options of making cutscenes skippable AFTER beating the game is pretty pinheaded. It made redoing some sections to give the best gameplay performance I could a REAL pain in the ass.

So yeah. Interesting spin-off for the series