Virtua Fighter 2 XBLA Review

Here's the second Sega fighting game I bumbled through over my Easter break. Read about the first, Fighting Vipers, here. Virtua Fighter is a series I have known and toyed with in the past but never for very long. It's immediately apparent that Virtua Fighter 2 is a better game than Fighting Vipers, the moves feel better and a win can't be as guaranteed through button bashing as it can in Fighting Vipers either. Before we get too deep into dissecting the game play I'll lay out a quick overview.


Overview
Virtua Fighter 2 is a more traditional fighting game, there isn't any armour system here. Unlike some fighting games Virtua Fighter lets you push your opponents out of the ring for an easy victory. Each character has their own real world style of fighting and each style is fairly accurate to how they work in real life.

The fighting action still moves at a frantic pace, and rounds can be over quickly if you're not certain about what you are doing. Strategic character placement and attacking/defending high and low is the key to victory here, with button mashing working very rarely.


Rational

First of it may be the more real world styles utilized by Virtua Fighter 2 but the fighting moves and speed felt right. When I first jumped in everything was fast and loose and all of it was heading my way, but over time I learnt to position my character and wait for an opening. Once I had the distance down I started working on blocking and countering and soon I was holding my own against the computer AI.

I'm not great at fighting games!

Speaking of which the AI in this game is miles ahead of Fighting Vipers. Now I know I shouldn't just relate everything in this review to Fighting Vipers, as that's not what this is about. It's just that I played them both back to back on the same day and both are Sega titles for the Saturn, so for me at least the comparisons are hard to avoid. The AI is quite aggressive and always looks to push the fight, which makes ring outs feel a little annoying as the computer will more often than not just look to push forward, whether you've just landed a couple of blows or not. This leads the ring outs to be more of something you have to worry about that something you can strategize for and use on your opponents.

Now AI isn't really what fighting games are about, it's all about the competition between players. Well unluckily I don't have anyone I can play against, but from my limited time with the game I can see how Virtua Fighter 2 could lend itself to some tense and strategic battles. If I was playing against someone who isn't just bum-rushing you all the time I could see myself having a lot of fun here.

Summary
Just like with Fighting Vipers you have to know what you're getting yourself into here. This is a time capsule into the Saturn years and as I mentioned in the Fighting Vipers review, this game is from the early days of the polygon and as such has very harsh, low numbers of polygons. It looks a lot better than Fighting Vipers does but it still isn't pretty. Keeping that in mind if you have never played a Virtua Fighter before this could be a cool place to start. Most fighting game enthusiasts will have tried and have their own ideas about the Virtua Fighter franchise so I doubt this small review will do anything to persuade them.