Sometimes, I wish I had more time to play video games. You know what? That's not a sometimes, it's an always kind of thing.
I actually do play the games I review and unless something is just straight up terrible, I try to play it to completion. Trust me, I'd like to play more RPGs but I can't bang out a 40 hour game in a week. Usually, I feel like I have sufficient time to get at least an everyday gamer's level of understanding of a game. That's kind of all I need, it's sort of in line with my gimmick. But sometimes I come across something I wish I could put more time into, or at least feel like I should put more time into. I have heard since the 90's just how great Virtua Fighter 2 is, that it's incredibly easy to learn but incredibly difficult to master. I don't know how true it is, but I remember hearing stories of Japanese players lining up and waiting for hours to receive lessons from pro VF2 players back in the 90's. It's not hard to find long, in-depth guides about each character on the internet that go into the minute details of just about every potential scenario and what moves to use. That's kind of crazy for a fighting game with no projectiles, no dial-a-combos, no lateral movement and only three buttons. Every time I play VF2, it feels like a simple game, but I think that has a lot to do with just not having the time to put into it. It also kind of leads to some frustration with it and not going to lie, it makes it hard to look at VF2 objectively.
First though, let's talk a little bit about where this game came from. Originally hitting Japanese arcades in 1994 before making its way stateside in early 1995, Virtua Fighter 2 was published by Sega and developed by their in-house AM2 team. The project was led by Yu Suzuki, the iconic developer whose accolades were well known to most hardcore gamers. VF2 was revolutionary in many ways, it introduced texture-mapped 3D characters and was one of the first games to use motion capture animation. It was an early example of a 3D fighter, at least in theory (in practice, VF1 and 2 are actually not true 3D fighters, I'm not going to get into it). VF2 would eventually be ported to the Saturn in late 1995 and it would go on to be a critical and commercial success for the console. It wasn't quite arcade perfect, but by the 5th gen ports were getting pretty close. While VF2 was most popular in Japan, it was successful in the U.S. as well as PAL regions. I've seen a lot of reasons as to why, but the general consensus is that VF2 is excellent, one of the all-time great fighting games. I liked it, but I don't know if I would go that far. I was never a Sega kid, but I do have some nostalgia for the game because it was in just about any arcade I visited. I have always seen the appeal of it, but I have also always preferred most of the other big name fighting series.
Let's start with the positives, the first of which is a fairly large, very interesting roster. All of the fighters from the original return, bringing back what was one of the genre's strongest lineups at the time. Each fighter has a unique play style and they all feel different despite the relative simplicity of the control scheme. Series poster boy Akira has a lot of power moves, Jeffery and Wolf serve as your grapplers, Kage and Pai are fast volume strikers, Sarah and Jacky are well rounded and Lau...well I've never actually played as Lau but he's there. New to VF2 are Shun-Di, an elderly drunken boxer, and Lion Rafaele, a French high school student. Shun is a welcome addition, but Lion... we will get back to him. Characters are balanced for the most part and their special moves are all relatively easy to figure out. You only have three buttons, punch, kick and guard, so it's more a matter of stringing the correct buttons or combinations of buttons together and determining whether you need to hold or just push the joystick to activate them. The VF series is known for its realism, so you won't see any fireballs or dragon punches here. All of the attacks are grounded in real-life martial arts and there are very few attacks that constitute anything superhuman. They may not be as effective as the game makes them out to be (if you are attacking an opponent on the ground, DO NOT jump up and drive the top of your head into their sternum, you will hurt yourself far more than you will them), but they are at least realistic. If I had one small gripe here its that Wolf, one of the grapplers, uses all pro wrestling moves. Usually I'm all for a nice vertical suplex or giant swing, but if there was any fighting game where they could have incorporated some freestyle/Greco/collegiate wrestling moves, it's Virtua Fighter. Would have been nice to see him hit a gut wrench or arm spin or double leg takedown or something like that, but that's just my own personal bias.
The other positive here is the presentation. I never realized how much better VF2 looked than its predecessor before I saw them side by side. It truly was one of the best looking 5th gen titles, the arcade version is especially clean. Gone are the blocky models of the original, everything is super smooth and clean. The generic static images in the arena backgrounds are gone as well, replaced by some truly great looking locales. The sound is also excellent, I don't think the tracks are quite as memorable as the ones from the first game, but they are still awesome and, in some ways, a better fit for the action. VF2 also makes much better use of sound effects to supplement what's going on in the fights. Hitting your opponent is so satisfying and I especially love the impact sound on the throws. Everything here is so much more polished than it was in the first game, and probably more polished than anything VF2s contemporaries were doing.
My biggest problem with Virtua Fighter 2 comes from the A.I. I know the game was predominately designed to play with other people, but I don't always have that option. I mostly play games, even fighting games, against the computer and boy is it ridiculous here. You might be able to get past the first two or three fighters easily, but eventually the game starts pulling out every cheap trick it can to stop your progress dead in its tracks. You thought Mortal Kombat II was the all time grand champion of input reading? Well then you haven't played VF2. Good lord is it brutal, especially against the grapplers. You can't take that much damage here, it kind of fits with the whole "realistic" thing, so even one successful throw is going to be difficult to come back from. I swear if CPU Jeffery decides he's grabbing you at the start of a round, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and if you so much as think about blocking, that's exactly what will happen. Part of what makes VF2 fun and balanced when playing against other humans is how precise you have to be with your special moves. If you don't hit it perfect, it won't work. That's fine when playing against another person under the same constraints, but when the CPU can just bust out whatever moves whenever it wants it creates a serious imbalance. The CPU is also difficult to punish, it whiffs and before you can even counter the A.I. is already punishing your punish. Again, almost none of this is a problem when playing with another person. It's also stuff that exists in other fighting games. But it's way worse in VF2 than just about anywhere else.
Speaking of imbalance, we have to talk about our good buddy Lion. Remember all that balance? Yeah, he kind of breaks it, at least I think he does. Characters like this that violate the fundamental rules of the game always do. You see, Lion is a practitioner of Praying Mantis Kung Fu, which means he has a hunched over stance. That makes him almost impossible to hit with high attacks. If high and low attacks were equally strong, it would just be a minor frustration. But there aren't all that many strong low attacks and even the characters that have them will struggle to chain them together. The only character who can? Lion, of course. You basically have to block low against him and slowly chip away at his life with low pokes, all while hoping he doesn't just decide to throw you. It's kind of like playing against Oddjob in Goldeneye, you can figure it out but it's not fun and it ruins the game for everyone involved. Also, side note, how many French high school kids do you think are actually named Lion? I would put money on this being a translation error. That, or there are as many people named Lion in his hometown as there are Borts among the patrons of Itchy and Scratchy Land.
At the end of the day, I really liked VF2 and I understand why it was such a killer ap for the Saturn. I had my frustrations with it, but they largely came from the fact I was playing against A.I. I could also complain about the lack of options, there is just arcade and vs. mode, but that was standard for the time and it kind of fits with the stripped-down nature of the title. I think if I had more time with it, I would have appreciated VF2 way more. The franchise is still going, though it's not nearly as popular as it once was. VF3 was met with an emphatic "meh," but that was largely because of when it was released. VF4 was a critical darling and people seem to like VF5, but the series has kind of slipped down the fighting game pecking order. Personally, there are quite a few series I would play over VF. 2D-wise, I like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and probably even Guilty Gear better. In terms of 3D, I'm definitely taking Soul Caliber. I also like Tekken 3 better than any VF game I've played, though I think VF overall is the better series. But I'm definitely picking VF2 over any Dead or Alive titles, or any anime-based fighter that's not Guilty Gear. Even amongst the series I generally like better, I would have to put VF2 over their weaker titles. At the end of the day, VF2 was a bit of a frustrating experience and I don't hold it on the pedestal that some gamers do. However, it's still a really, really good game.
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