Recommended by Dusty Vita on this list.

While Marvel vs. Capcom was an enchanting concoction of two disparate corners of pop culture that created a fighting game experience you couldn’t find anywhere else, Capcom vs. SNK 2 leans in the opposite direction and sets out to create the perfect mechanical marriage of the two without sacrificing any element that made them special to begin with. In fact, I’d argue that it does a more interesting job in combining the gameplay of the source material than any other crossover fighter I’ve played.

Like any good crossover, the roster is sure to satisfy basically every fan of the genre, but CVS2’s true claim to fame is it’s brilliant Groove System. By selecting one of six presets styled after Capcom and SNK respectively, the player is able to tweak the game’s feel to their liking by essentially adding and subtracting mechanics depending on the Groove. Do you like Third Strike and the exhilaration that parrying gave? Pick P-Groove! Do you yearn for MAX mode and the dizzying movement options that made King of Fighters so interesting? Try N-Groove! Are you someone like me who really enjoys the custom combo system of Street Fighter Alpha? A-Groove is the one for you. Each style also completely changes how your meter works, so in essence, you basically have 6 versions of every character in the roster that aren’t insignificantly different. With an insane number of options and even some amount of mechanical overlap between certain Grooves (for example, 3 of the 6 Grooves feature rolling as an option) There’s basically no chance the player can’t find something they’ll like.

Here’s the catch: for each team, you only get ONE Groove choice. This isn’t like MVC where each character gets their own assist that changes the composition of your team, you just get one. They could have easily opened the floodgates and let the player customize every single character to their liking, but this little restriction makes the act of building a team way more interesting to me. It’s a small yet significant way to nudge the player towards experimentation and makes the construction of each team feel meaningful. Without it, it’d be too easy to pick what feels comfortable and just assign each character a Groove that fits in with their original design.

Another small wrinkle in the team building process is the Ratio system, though this is something that works in the background compared to the immediate changes Grooves make. Before the start of the game you have the choice to customize the size of the team, with sizes ranging from 1 to 3 team members. In an effort to balance this, you’re also tasked with assigning the strength of each team member using 4 points, with each point making the character way stronger and tankier than before. As someone pretty new to the game, I can’t speak on the competitive viability of picking a small team size over a larger one, but like the Groove system, I suspect it just depends on the characters in question and the taste of the player.

The aesthetic of the game is probably the one element to the game that deserves the most “objective” scrutiny. It’s no secret that Capcom liked to reuse sprites from older arcade games for their insane crossover titles (not surprising given the size of these rosters) and while at it’s best some of the sprite styles blend together and help make the aesthetic cohesive, a lot of times it makes certain sides of the roster feel really out of place.

Outside of a few characters that clearly needed a graphical facelift, the whole vibe of the game is so cohesive that a few blemishes tend to fall by the wayside for me. Being a post-Y2K game, it’s no surprise that the whole package feels like an exercise of friendly competition more than a battle for glory. The televised tournament setting present throughout every aspect of the package ties the mood of the game together for me and calls back to the setup of The King of Fighters Tournaments present in that series very nicely.

While Capcom vs. SNK 2 is a game that admittedly doesn’t scratch all of the competitive itches I may be looking for in a fighting game, it feels so complete and confident in it’s execution that I can’t help but love everything that its going for. I think I’d go as far as to say that it's one of the best casual fighting games for this very reason. If it feels like this writeup feels more like a surface-level examination of the game’s features more than anything, it's because it nails everything a first timer would probably cling to upon trying the game, and that's why I find it so endearing.

It may not have the craziest combos of any crossover or the most consistent sprite work of the era, but it makes up for all of this by being one of the most accessible, inviting, and overall jovial packages in fighting games. It has something for everyone, and that might just be the trick to get more people into the genre I love so much. You don’t need to dumb down the mechanical breadth to appeal to a casual demographic, you just need to make a game that can make someone go “Wow, that game looks cool as hell, I should play that”.

Ruining the entire balanced meta for the sake of adding more characters is a bold controversial move, but still a respectable one nonetheless. Most players who give fighting games a shot will always be casuals, and from their perspective the game with the most content will always be more interesting, even if the dedicated minority pro scene hates it. Hell, if you are reading this you're most likely a casual, like me, who gets entertained by what's available but likely won't be spending much time with the game after a few matches with your friend, and that's completely okay in the end. That's why, even tho it's by no means by favorite, I still respect the devs decision to make Street Fighter Alpha 3.

Oops wrong review.

For this one, Capcom can just go fuck themselves, they only put Joe and Dan and called it a day.

What stands out most is the writing and RPG mechanics.

There's a lot of reading and complimentary voice acting to introduce characters or scripted segments. The writing describes the fantasy world in Disco Elysium, the characters you talk to, and a lot of dialogue. I think this is why there were some negative reviews of DE, so know what you're signing up for. The game is conversations and dice-rolling to determine if you're achieving an action or dialogue option, then walking to another area to do the same with an invisible timer.

The fantasy world of DE is fantasy. There are some parallels to our real world geopolitically and there is some conversation between the two worlds definitely, but they're not all direct. Non-spoiler example is the reference to a political philosopher in the world of DE, Kras Mazov, who is almost a direct reference to Karl Marx. However these are not always direct references or placeholders and stand-ins our world and it shouldn't be read as such. So, DE can be accessible without knowledge of our own social or political histories here on Earth, which is a benefit for a non-history buff who wants to play a detective RPG. The story and the world feel complete and lived in, which also makes me excited for more stories in the Disco Elysium universe.

The characters are defined as such that you can fit the role of someone who admires or detests them, as well as the player's feelings towards them. You'll talk to people a lot, and that is the game, and where the writing is forefront. You can learn about your character and play their role, with just a little continuity errors - as events happen or you take on a persona, so do the conversations. It's the first option, but I really recommend Encyclopedia as a first character so you learn more about the world as you discover your character.

The gameplay is a bit of running around, figuring out places to go, more people to talk to, trying to resolve an issue, hitting a wall, gaining experience and trying again. It is almost a "bottle episode" where you're on the same coastline town between a few buildings for the entirety of the game, but there is so much happening, with many subplots and metaphorical (and actual) doors opening that every day or level-up you gain will feel like a new place. When the story resolves, it's absolutely possible to replay the game and discover or complete quests you didn't have access to, play in the new Hardcore Mode, and role play as an absolutely different person.

The artwork is a watercolour expressionist that is beautiful to look at, which you'll be looking at a lot of the same landscape. Watch a bit to see if you like and understand what you're looking at. There's also a helpful highlights over objects and people can be interacted with, and some animated sequences to add variation to the flow of the game. There is minor tearing when zooming out or changing animations, which is barely noticeable and doesn't impact the gameplay. The music is also very well done to be both interesting and ambient, so that the loop doesn't become annoying or frustrating. You feel when you're in a dance-y or lounge-y spot, or you feel like you're on coastline because of the ambience sounds.

I really felt DE was an emotional roller coaster with humorous bits deriving from situations or dialogue, frustrating because you're dealing with someone or something you want to respond to outside of your role, sad because of how awful and sad everyone and the world can be, and satisfying when you start to check-off in-game goals. I'm not very experienced in detective games and plan on diving into them now after playing through DE, so I'm not sure if this is an introductory game in the genre, but as a stand-alone game it is absolutely worth the play through.

I played this game on MAME on my PC, after I heard about the announcement of the Breakers Collection announced for release sometime in 2020. Breakers Revenge and its prequel are somewhat forgotten Neo Geo arcade games that feature a pretty awesome but small roster of some cool characters. I did a few playthroughs as Rila and I really enjoyed her moveset. Shes a charge character like Blanka or Balrog from Street Fighter so it was a very comfortable experience. The games controls are very typical for games like this and I found them very responsive, I felt the experience overall was smoother than the Fatal Fury titles of its time. Graphically the game is standard, the maps are very easy on the eyes and the animations are a bit stiff, but the moves have really cool particle effects, making landing a special move feel really cool. The mechanics for this game are pretty par for the course as well, but it includes a feature called "breakering", which allows you to perform certain moves in the later frames of hitstun in certain combos. I wasn't really able to do this to my knowledge, perhaps by mistake, but its likely very important for high level play. Of course this game is a coin guzzler and is a very difficult game to finish, but thankfully with emulation I am only limited by my own patience. I think this game is really underrated, even though it was developed by Visco it feels very on par with Capcom/SNK fighters and it was really a good time. Im highly anticipating the coming collection, hopefully with some sort of difficulty toggle. Definitely give this game a shot if you find the means.