The Rumble Fish 2 Review

The Rumble Fish 2, his first release, long ago, popular on the Atomiswave arcade platform, later received a PS2 port from Sega, but here it no longer found the fit he expected. Now it brings us a new proposal for the new generation of consoles. Will you have what it takes?

The Rumble Fish 2 arrives with its classic look, but with a bit of a refresh. But before I continue with this review, many who read me probably don’t know that he is an Atomiswave. This is an arcade board released in 2003, it’s based on the Sega Naomi and this was home to a fair number of games like King of Fighters: Neowave and the Rumble Fish series, the latter of which never made it to the market legally. Home console market, so far. What you can now hold in your hands, or play on TV if you wish, is an excellent adaptation of the 2005 arcade classic, The Rumble Fish 2.

Produced by Dimps, who played a huge role in creating the fighting game renaissance with the era-defining Street Fighter IV, The Rumble Fish 2 is a very, very awesome little fighting game with an interesting and varied character alignment, a battle system that I can’t find words to describe it, I would say exquisite. and sumptuous 2D illustrations and animations. As a novelty we have a large number of new characters and it improves it in almost every way.

As with any self-respecting fighting game, there’s a suitably wacky plot behind why your characters beat each other up. But it’s too simple to even tell you anything, so I’ll leave it here, other than to say that it’s quite funny the name of the fighting tournament that serves as the raison d’etre of your chosen fighter.

I must admit, this is definitely a very fun game, with a real sense of weight and oomph to attacks, and combat that is slower and more methodical than any of those weird games. It has an excellent chain combo system, and thanks to a simplified four-button control scheme, it’s relatively easy to pick up and play. You will find many indicators to keep you focused.

The HUD consists of a health bar and a guard indicator that shows how many more hits can be blocked before your guard is crushed. Which seems pretty original to me. The size of this bar varies by character, which adds a lot of value to character choice. On top of this, two of the characters have their own very special unique indicators. This impressed me at the time and it was the first time I can remember such a custom mechanic for specific characters. Lud can stack actions that allow him to perform super-powered versions of his specials, while Boyd’s Scorpion gauge fills up by nailing certain signature moves and, when maxed out, allows you to deliver crushingly powerful offensive arts. This adds a rather interesting sense of originality to the game.

Offensive Arts and Defensive Arts have their own three-segment bars that allow you to perform a host of super moves and counter attacks, some of which can throw your opponent off the screen. If you can max out the OFF and DEF bars, which is a pretty rare occurrence, you can pull out a Critical Art, which is an all-powerful, usually absolutely ridiculous attack that’s the best way to finish off an opponent. And quite rewarding to behold. Below the guard bar is the Boost Dive indicator. Once it’s full, you can enter a semi-invulnerable state and access empowered moves.

And since we’re talking about the visuals, this game has very good art design, very well-detailed settings and very good special effects, all taking into account that we’re playing a 2D game.

Those who choose the physical release on certain deals get the original Rumble Fish, which is a must for fighting completionists as it can be prohibitively expensive. What it does have is the promise of playing online with the netcode.

conclusion

The Rumble Fish 2 is a pretty good game, it has a great character design, the gameplay is quite original and most importantly, it feels fresh enough that we can click with it, against it it has a lack of game modes. alternate gameplay.

This review was made on PS5 thanks to a copy provided by Sega Sammy Holdings.