SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters Clash

SNK and Capcom's answer to Pokemon

What is it? Well... basically it is a card collection game. Something like Magic the Gathering, or various other card collecting games. The object is to use the Character and Action Cards in your deck to do 2000 (or 3000) points of damage to your opponent before he can do the same.

You start with a deck of 50 cards, and every time you defeat an opponent, you earn 3 or 5 cards (depending on how tough that opponent was). The character cards are very basic and have a certain amount of Battle Points (BP) and Soul Points. The BP are used in attacking and defending for that character. The SP are points added to your player's Soul Point Pool. SP are used for paying cost on Action Cards or paying for unite attacks. You can only put one Character Card in the ring per turn and can only have a total of 3 characters in the ring at a time.

This game is LINKable, so you can link two games together to trade or battle with a friend. I've yet to test that part out.

There are a total of 300 cards in the game, 125 Capcom and 125 SNK characters, and 50 Action Cards. When you start, you have a deck of cards that have an average of 300 BP. I have been playing a total of 8 hours now (it keeps track for you) and I have seen characters of 1500 BP, and I have gotten my characters (through various powerup cards) up to 2200 BP on occasion.

The portraits on the cards are excellent (as are the portraits of the characters you play against, although Yosiki's is annoying for some reason.) as they are colourful and full of character. I especially like Mech Zangief's portrait where it looks like he's climbing out of the card!

Another thing I must say about the portraits is that they all stick off the card a little to the top, and sometimes to the sides, it's amusing. =) The portraits seem to be using a 16 colour (15 colours and a transparent) palette that is used for the entire card. The little characters that walk around RPG style are 3 colour sprites without much in the way of full animation.

The gameplay consists of going from place to place and challenging folks to matches of Card Fighters. The wandering around portion is top down, very like Zelda or Pokemon. Sometimes you'll find someone who wants to trade with you and people with bits of information are everywhere. This isn't where the game is really at. The fun part is really the matches themselves. The amount of strategy involved in this deceptively simple game is very deep. The computer AI seems to be a bit different for each character you play against, so you meet with several strategies.

Unfortunately, you aren't required to put much thought into deck-making when playing against the computer. Personally, I just toss in my biggest characters and some favourite AC cards (is that anything like an ATM Machine?) and I seem to do fairly well. Although the minimum card size in my deck is now 600 BP, I still have Chun Li in there (500 BP) because she reduces all other characters on the field to 100 BP when she comes into play. Unfortunately, she also drains your SP, but it is a small price to pay for whittling down your opponent's Zero Akuma (1500 BP to start!) to something more manageable. =)

I have yet to find a human opponent to play against with this game (I ordered another copy of the game since the US versions are disappearing... If you want this game in English, order it from Toys R Us NOW before they run out!) but I suspect that this is where custom made decks would really shine.

Sound:

Very nice... good sounds for attacks, excellent music, I haven't tired of it yet... =) There are various little speech samples in it that the speaker doesn't do justice to, but aren't bad.

Presentation:

Big A+ here! Very nice menus, navigation is easy. The look and feel of the game is fresh and vibrant, no doubt helped by the bright colours the NGP can create... Great little attract screen (though it's a little silly to have an attract screen on a portable game but... *shrugs*)

Overall:

This game is a perfect portable game. You can look away for a sec and look back and not have been clobbered. It will wait for ya. You can save in the middle of a fight! Just turn it off and it will pick up where you left off! This only applies in fights, though. If you have a battle, get a really cool card and turn it off without saving it, you will have to fight again to get that card. This game is quite addicting, and great for those long trips.

Overall: 9.5

-Paul Gunn