Capcom Fighting Collection 2 PS5 Preview. It’s been said enough in the last few years, but it feels like Capcom is at the top of its game when it comes to providing highly requested content for players. While this has been true for some of Capcom’s homegrown endeavours, it has instead chosen to navigate the far trickier waters of licensing in order to bring back some seriously fantastic games to modern platforms.
This began with the revival of their collaboration with Marvel and has continued with their ongoing work with SNK, bringing back their classic crossover arcade titles. While SNK aren’t the only focus for this compilation release, it was clearly important for Capcom to get this out just after finishing their extended collaboration in Street Fighter 6.
Based on what I’ve played so far, this collection stands up to the standards that have been set previously, adding a solid lineup of fighters for modern players to enjoy with friends.
Capcom Fighting Collection 2 Hands-On-Preview – Another Golden Collection
If It Ain’t Broke
Capcom Fighting Collection 2 very much sticks to the formula established by their other compilation titles, even down to the way that you navigate through each game. The menus look remarkably similar, and you’ll be able to quickly jump into the games you want.
It’s elegant, it’s punchy, and it works perfectly well for a collection of games. You don’t want to be wasting time sifting through options. It’s the small things, but this does feel like a premium package in its presentation to the player.
What you would expect out of a modern fighting game is very much what you get here, with the limitations of the games themselves. Training modes are built into every game in the collection, as well as the distinction between “arcade mode” and “versus mode” for a more traditional experience.
It would have been easy to just throw the games at players, knowing that a primarily veteran playerbase was going to pick them up, but no. Capcom still want newer players to try these games and see where games like Street Fighter 6 grew from; it’s an incredibly admirable addition with a lot of depth.
This also emerges in the incredible amount of content preservation across all of the games here, with some particularly neat inclusions that I’ll save for the larger review. This is more than a collection of ROMs, that’s to say the least.
Variety is the Spice of the Fight
The one thing that these collections can attest to is their dedication to variety. You might expect that the name “Fighting Collection” would stop Capcom from sharing some of their other games in this collection, but that isn’t the case.
In this preview, I can only talk about a few of the games on offer, and one of the more intriguing games (at least to me) is Power Stone 2. It isn’t a fighting game in the same sense as Street Fighter Alpha Upper 3, or Capcom Vs. SNK, but it’s still an invaluable part of the story that’s been preserved here.
Power Stone 2 is an arena fighter rather than a standard 2D fighter, and the difference is stark, yet not wholly unwelcome. Compared to the idiosyncrasies that come with Capcom’s other fighting games, this was refreshingly simple to get into and felt like it would be far more suited to a party setting.
The same is true for Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein, a 3D fighter that also feels almost totally distinct from what people might expect from the Capcom standard. It’s a deep cut that I’m pleased to see here.
Punchy Presentation
From the games that I’m able to talk about in this preview, each one feels carefully and tightly reconstructed to preserve what made the originals so great while smoothing them out for new players.
The mesh of 3D environments and 2D spritework in some of the games felt like something that might be compromised in bringing the resolution up, but it still feels just as natural here as it did back when they first released.
For my own taste, I’ll always prefer the consistency of 2D backgrounds with 2D sprites, but that’s something that I’m happy to sweep under the rug when the quality is still high and effort has clearly been made. Better that than an ugly smoothing filter being foisted upon me.
Across the board, Capcom Fighting Collection 2 promises to be another formidable addition to Capcom’s already stacked set of compilations. It rounds out their offerings and spends time investing in places that you might not have expected, and that makes this collection arguably a bit more interesting than some of the others so far.
There are still some games that I’ve not been able to dive into for this preview, and I’ll be digging into the nooks and crannies of this set of games when the time comes for review, but for now, Capcom are continuing to outdo themselves in both new ways and in preserving their classic victories.