Sango Fighter 2

The Good
... A lesson learned from Street Fighter. I think that Sango Fighter 2 surpasses the original game with faster gameplay, better physics and action that keeps you awake. It has a more Street Fighter 2 style of play, with new moves and fight methods. More characters are available, and I love the graphics - As in Sango 1, they are colourful and beautiful. A game ahead of its time.

The Bad
BUGS BUGS BUGS! This game is riddled with bugs; the most annoying one being the random movement of characters around the screen - In the middle of a fight, I may lose control of my character and he goes into his own world and moves all over the screen on his own! Madness! Other bugs include the random freezing of the game (does this on all PCs I've played it on) and the inability of some characters to perform special moves, even when I have entered the correct keys for the move.

The Bottom Line
Generally, it is a good game with a Street Fighter 2 feel, or perhaps more of a Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo feel! Very playable, fun, and great for its time. Try not to let the bugs ruin your game - they may show up once or twice per time you play it (not every round mind you).

Overall, a good 90s fighting game that easily falls into the same category of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter.

The Good
The graphics were an incredible update from the first game, and the character portraits look absolutely gorgeous even for now. (of course, I could be totally biased since I personally love myself some 16 bit era graphics)

It also attempts to make a fairly tight game play design and controls... when you have the right settings or you're playing on the right computer.

The Bad
While a valiant attempt, it is unfortunate has it's host of issues that are hard to ignore

1. controls While the controls were great when played on the right settings with the right computer, the moment any of those change, the game becomes almost unplayable. The reason? the input precision goes from decent to non-existent once you stop using the proper settings. As a result, when playing this game on a modern day machine with a DOS emulator, I find my characters will occasionally not respond to my inputs, only to suddenly going on the fritz several seconds later from the inputs I put in previously. And in a fighting game, even 1/20 second input error can be problematic. When the input precision drops to 1-2 seconds delay, the game becomes impossible to play.

2. the competition This was the era of street fighter, samurai showdown and a bunch of SNK fighting games. On it's own, it's a decent product for it's time. Placed next to these guys though, and the game immediately goes from decent to mediocre to downright derivative.

The other games listed above have incredible amount of depth to the point that Street Fighter 2 Turbo, a game made during the same period of time, is still played till this day in Japan, and was revived for our current day audience in an HD Remix format. That depth is a testament to how incredible the game play was.

That level of depth... is just not there in Sango 2. To be sure, depth is not a function of complexity, but there is a certain amount of it you need before the game becomes TOO reductive. If we can equate say, Street Fighter as chess, then Sango 2 would be tic-tac-toe. Yeah, it's an unkind thing to say, but that is honestly what it is.

The Bottom Line
A fairly bland computer based fighter that features the heroes fo the Three Kingdoms period.