Capcom Fighting Collection 2 review

Fighting game fans are spoilt for choice right now, with so many titles available at their fingertips. They can jump into the latest Street Fighter, take a trip down memory lane with the likes of Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, or play something entirely different like Mortal Kombat 1. There really are so many options. And now there’s also Capcom Fighting Collection 2 to consider.

Like its predecessor, Capcom Fighting Collection 2 bundles up a number of classic fighting games from the developer’s back catalogue, all originally released either in the 90s or the 00s. More interestingly, some of these titles haven’t been available outside of Japan before, or simply haven’t been available to play on home consoles. And so for fighting game fans, it’s going to prove to be quite an attractive package.

The titles included are quite a varied bunch. At one end you’ve got the brilliant Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro, as well as its sequel, Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001. There’s also the phenomenal Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, and mash-up title Capcom Fighting Evolution, which features characters from Street Fighter, Darkstalkers and Red Earth. All offer the thrilling 2D fighting action that you’ve come to know and love from Capcom, albeit with their own unique mechanics and twists on the format.

At the other end you’ve got four 3D fighters that are a bit more “out there” and experimental. Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein, sequel to Star Gladiator, is the oldest game in this collection, and it shows. It still proves to be a fun fighting game experience inspired by Star Wars, however. Another sequel is included, too: Project Justice, which is the follow-up to Rival Schools. This title particularly stands out due to its story mode, where, after choosing a school, you can never be certain which characters will be available to you in battle.

The final two games are Power Stone and its sequel. These stand out from the rest of the titles here as they’re essentially 3D brawlers that let players pick up and use a variety of items as weapons. Additionally, should players be able to collect three gems, they momentarily transform into a more powerful version of themselves, allowing them to cause devastating damage. Power Stone 2 notably improves on its predecessor by allowing up to four players to get in on the action.

Related: The Best Fighting Games on PS5

Capcom Fighting Collection 2 includes quite the selection of games, then, and as usual you’re free to play around with their settings, make use of various filters, adjust their controls, and more. Online play is also possible, and should be great thanks to the inclusion of rollback netcode. Throw in the usual collection of museum-like content, and this is likely to be yet another must-have for fighting game fans, especially if they have fond memories of the titles included.

How much you’ll get out of some of these titles is questionable, though. You’ll probably not spend much time playing the original Power Stone thanks to the inclusion of its much-improved sequel, for example, and as fighting games go, the likes of Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein and Project Justice just haven’t aged as well as some of the other games here. On the flipside, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium 2001 and Capcom Fighting Evolution are all still brilliant, meaning you’ll probably be revisiting them long into the future.

It’s not as essential as Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, then, but Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is still a great gathering of fan-favourites from yesteryear. While some have aged worse than others, every game on offer here is still fun to play for a short while at least. Perhaps the biggest disappointment for fighting game fans will be the continued lack of crossplay, but overall, it’s yet another well put-together and enticing collection by Capcom. Now, we’ll just have to wait to see what they bundle together next.

This review of Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is based on the PS4 version, with a code provided by the game’s publisher. It’s available on PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC.