After bringing the first Art Of Fighting game to Switch, HAMSTER made the typically HAMSTER move of skipping ahead to Art Of Fighting 3: The Path Of The Warrior. That instalment offered a different, but more accomplished fighting experience and now the gap between those two is plugged with Art Of Fighting 2 which story-wise picks up from the first game’s cliffhanger and gameplay-wise offers the same kind of combat.
Visually it’s similar too. The animation may not be as slick as in Art Of Fighting 3, but it takes the first game’s look (already impressive for the time) and improves upon on it. Once again big sprites battle it out with a facial battle damage feature making blood and bruises appear as the bout progresses. There’s more detail in the surroundings and background animations too, with a good variety of streets, gyms and other locations battled in. Good touches include steam, water drops and glowing lights of various colour or things such as the fountain outside the Garcia home or a carousel in the background of King’s stage.
There are 12 characters to pick from, the bulk of which come from the first game including Ryo and Robert - the Ryu and Ken of the series - as well as boxer Mickey Rogers and the imposing Jack. Newcomers include ninja Eiji and previously damseled Yuri. In the first game, only Ryo and Robert could play through the arcade mode and although the rest of the lineup could play in VS matches, two of the characters had to be reached in a single player playthrough first. This time around all 12 fighters can be picked from the start for two-player battles and for the single player arcade mode. Unlike the first game, however, there are no story scenes playing out between fights, but there is some humorous chats before each encounter.
As before, you have a spirit gauge that decreases as you perform special moves which still drops quickly, meaning you only have a few chances before they become ineffectual. You can recharge it by holding a button down, but rarely do you actually get a chance to do this. Taunts can be used to deplete your opponent’s gauge, but unless you have a screen’s distance between you, you’ll most likely receive a swift kick to the face. With this system in place you’ll find fights quickly turn to the use of regular punches and kicks which lessens the enjoyment somewhat, but it works a little better than in the first game. While you have them available special moves connect easier than they did before and there are no slow startup times.
Another change is that there are now two strengths of punch and kick, depending on how long you hold the buttons down for. Separate buttons would be preferable, but it works better than the first game’s approach of having a 'strong' attack that is a punch or kick depending on which button you pressed last. That method is still available however, should you be out of throw range (which the button is otherwise used for).
If looking to get to know the fighters and their moves, a two-player matchup is recommended as the single-player game is difficult from the get go. The difficulty can be bumped down in the options menu (default: four of eight), but even then there’s little room for error with your opponent punishing any misstep with a counterattack or knocking you out of the air with each misjudged jump. If your special moves fail to connect you're in trouble as you won’t have chance to recharge your gauge for another attempt. The other settings include the usual button remapping options and ability to add scanlines to the image. Number of rounds and the time limit can be adjusted as can the game’s language; for some reason even the English version is in Japanese by default.
Playing through the game can be a frustrating experience, but there’s some incentive as each character has an ending for you to see. If you are looking to see the endings and find you are getting good at the game, it’s recommended you throw a round at some point otherwise you’ll get an extra fight at the end against a youthful Geese Howard. An extremely difficult fight in an already tough game, Geese will annihilate you while you are busy blinking. If you’d like a good challenge, however: go fight Geese.
Two-player battles are more enjoyable than the arcade mode as you are not dealing with the high difficulty of the CPU, allowing you to experiment with the various moves and special attacks of each fighter. There’s not the range of options available in other fighters and once the spirit gauge is depleted you’ll usually resort to basic punches and kicks, but there’s still some entertainment to be found.
Conclusion
Art Of Fighting 2 takes the first game and improves on it in a number of ways. There's a slight increase in available fighters and some visual improvements too. More importantly the game plays better with the multiple strength attacks implemented in a smoother fashion and special moves being more effective. Use of special moves is again limited, your swiftly depleting spirit gauge is depleted forcing you to resort to basic attacks. This could be seen as encouraging other methods of play (no fireball spamming here), but generally it just lessens the enjoyment. That mainly applies to the two-player mode as in the single-player arcade mode you'll mostly be concerned with survival. There is satisfaction in defeating the tough opponents, but the fights themselves are not as entertaining as they could be. Art Of Fighting 2 isn't a bad game, but there are better options on Switch - including the superior third instalment.
Comments 9
AOF never clicked with me. I hope the Real Bout Fatal Fury games make their way to Switch. One of them is on PS4 so hopefully it’s not far behind coming to Switch.
I tried the first recently on an snk collection and it did surprise me how basic it was. Maybe I’ll skip 2 and try 3 next.
A good game for what it was back in the 90s but a game I just can't go back to. Also unlike the Super NES versions of these games (same for Fatal Fury Special and Samurai Shodown) there's no way to unlock the hidden boss for play in the game. You get arcade perfect versions of Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting 2, and Fatal Fury Special, but if you want to play as Amakusa in SS, Geese Howard in AOF2, and Ryo Sakazaki in FFS then the Super NES versions had them via secret code which we probably will never see in digital form in this day and age.
This game is brutal. Art of Fighting 3, to me, is still the most playable AoF.
And I want to mention that the digital manual that's accessed from the pause menu for pretty much all the ACA titles are very basic, especially for the fighting games, and they don't include all the moves. That goes for the desperation moves as well. Look up gameFAQs or other various strategy guides for complete move lists.
For survival, I'd probably recommend using Ryo since he has the largest amount of moves, IIRC. Zanretsuken (forward, back, forward + punch), can vacuum attacking opponents into you so they get full damage every time. Kohou, a Dragon Punch without the invincibility of Street Fighter's version (forward, down, down-forward + punch). And he even has an air fireball that fires diagonally downwards (down, down-forward, forward + punch in the air), or straight across (down, down-forward, forward + kick in the air) which perfect for countering jump attacks.
A couple more universal moves that might/might not help, when you're standing, hold your assigned C button + Punch for an uppercut (what usually happens to you when you try to jump in), and C + Kick for a standing low kick that's good against crouching opponents. And your basic throw, back + C, seems to have decent priority. So spam that whenever your opponent gets too close.
It'll probably also help to shed whatever fighting game experience from current games you may have prior and start from scratch because this game doesn't play by any of those rules. Have fun?
I could never understand why Hamster releases games like these and Metal Slug series for example, out of sequence on the Switch...🤔
I feel like releases like this are really only for people who like the Nostalgia factor of them. For people like me with no connection to Neo-Geo titles, they don't generally sound very interesting. Never owned a Neo-Geo and never had an arcade in my hometown, so what I have played of these games has been as an adult. They haven't felt bad, they just don't hook me.
Like all beautiful looking women, they may look pretty, but they all horrible personalty. This is how this game can be best described.Looks nice, plays terrible.
@JayJ Wasn't it World Heroes 2 that got the Jet version?!
@BionicDodo You are right, lol, I guess I mixed them up. Both are sort of the mediocre fighting games when it comes to the platform.
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