Each character has 15 lessons or missions, and suffice it to say that if you can pull off all the missions for even one player, you'll know their moves like the back of your hand, not to mention the timing required to pull of chain combos with any of the characters.Īnd, for those of you jonesin' for some Speilberg-type antics, you can now direct your favorite fighter however you want, thanks to the director mode. It's a fantastic system, and it's done in a slick mission-based format.
The trial mode first introduces you to the basics of the EX combo system by starting you off with the special moves, then the supers, then slowly works in chain combos. The controls and combo system take a bit of getting used to, but thanks to the training menu's trial mode, the learning curve is about as gentle a pace as you could hope for in a new fighting game. And thanks to the tried-and-true quarter- and half-circle special moves, whipping out four and five hit combos will seem like second nature.Īnyone who hasn't played any of the games in the EX series are going to need a little time to adjust. For those of you who insist on playing as one of the classic SF characters, fear not, cause the gang's all here.
EX Plus faves (at least in my book) Kairi and Sakura were kicked to the curb in favor of a few newcomers: Volcano Rosso, Nanase, Sharon, and Area. Overall the game just feels more solid, both in part because of the slightly improved graphics and sound, and that intangible feeling that you get when a developer has spent some time with the hardware.Īs I mentioned before, a few of the characters have been given the boot. Sure, a few of the characters have been tossed in favor of some new flavor, but for the most part, you won't be busting brain cells trying to learn new combos.
Gameplay The sequel adds a few more gameplay bonuses to thicken up the action, but for the most part, Capcom and Arika have done something more important: the original EX wasn't broken, so they didn't try to fix it. So it was neigh-reckless abandon that I tore into this version, and I'm happy to say it passed with flying colors. Street Fighter EX Plus did a fantastic job of taking a 2D fighter and preserving almost all of it's elements in a 3D world, yet added it's own gameplay twists to the mix that completely accounted for the name shift. Having already experienced the first efforts of Arika's 3D translation of Street Fighter, I more or less knew what to expect. Having been subjected to the rather large amount of butt that was Samurai Showdown: Warriors Rage, I felt rather compensated when I popped a final copy of Street Fighter EX2 Plus into my PlayStation, and watched it hungrily chomp away at the binary goodness help within the disc.