Bloody Roar 2

Bloody Roar 2, is a brawler arcade game developed by Eighting/Raizing in 1999. (Also known as Bloody Roar 2: Bringer of the New Age in Japan/Europe and Bloody Roar II: The New Breed in the United States).

Bloody Roar series differs from other fighting games as every character has a beast mode that can be used to use new attacks, recover some of lost health and generally to be faster and/or more powerful with their attacks.

Characters

Reception

Bloody Roar 2 received generally positive reviews from critics. Doug Perry of IGN said that "What the game lacks in history and originality, it makes up for in a deep combo-laden fighting system, exquisite graphics, and layers of gameplay modes that few games offer."^[5] Johnny Liu of Game Revolution concluded that "Bloody Roar II is a game that you just don't want to spend that much time with. It's fine for a try or two and nothing more. While good enough, Bloody Roar II isn't anywhere near the best.^[3] James Mielke of GameSpot said that "if you never picked up the first game, Bloody Roar 2 is still a good game, with a much better cast than the first one. However, in contrast to the original American version of BR1, Bloody Roar 2 is a marginal improvement that still suffers from second-best status due to the exclusion of integral gameplay elements that should never have been messed with. The game is a major disappointment for such a promising series."^[4]

Response to the graphics and design was mostly favorable. Perry noted that the game's high-resolution graphics "sharpen and crystallize the polygonal, textured-mapped characters" and proclaimed that this brought the game "into the top tier of best-looking PlayStation games." He added that the animal designs "are all bizarre, lean toward a Japanese sensibility, and are exquisitely designed, both in their tight programming, and in the level of texture details, shape, and movement."^[5] Liu stated that while the game is graphically sharp, "it employs minimal animation outside of the characters." He said that the animal designs "do look pretty good, although the human counterparts could use some work," and compared the appearance of the Stun character's beetle form to "a bulked up Unit 01 robot from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion".^[3] Mielke considered the game to be "as gorgeous as the first installment - in fact, it looks almost exactly the same, with beautiful light-sourcing, speedy 60fps action, and all sorts of special effects when switching into beast mode."^[4]

The sound and music was met with mixed response. Perry said that the sound effects were "as good if not better than last year's game," but called the music "truly uninspired" and compared it to "a series of generic riffs extracted straight from the bad heavy metal of the dour mid-'80s."^[5] Liu was critical of the voice-acting, noting that "most of these guys sound just sound wrong" and that "the announcer is completely devoid of excitement; instead of getting pumped up for an exciting match, I felt more pumped up to go do something else... anything else." His response to the rest of the audio was more middling, saying that the sound effects are "good, but nothing new" and the music "isn't very impressive -- typical fighter fare, with a few choice selections, funneling down to some bothersome noise."^[3] Mielke positively described the voice-overs and sound effects as "really well done".^[4]

References

External links

• Eighting site
• Bloody Roar 2 at MobyGames
• Bloody Roar 2: Bringer of the New Age at the Killer List of Videogames