The hyperactive man-beasts make a solid return - sharper, smoother and with a few new faces, but is it enough?
Secondly, back in 1999 when Bloody Roar 2 was released, Tekken was the reigning beat-em-up champion on the Playstation 1, and neither Bloody Roar's original foray into man-beast scuffles, nor this sequel, did anything to topple Jin and his grandad from their fighting throne.
So, setting the bar fairly low in terms of expectations, Bloody Roar 2 is nonetheless a nice little surprise, a solid example of the genre, and a guilty pleasure for those of you who are yearning for 32 bit brawls with an added twist.
The big selling point of this series inevitably continues here, which is essentially the ability to turn your roster of fighting game stereotypes into beastly alter-egos, where they go large. It's kind of an early nod to Devil May Cry's devil gauge, in that the characters physically transform (only into animals as opposed to daemons) and when they do they go large - ending up bigger, stronger and (usually) faster.
The sequel throws out some characters from the original, in favour of introducing some new faces, most notable being the voluptuous Jenny (who turns into, of all things, a bat), the freakish Buzusima (a chameleon!), and Stun, a mummy-esque individual who, as if not looking inhuman enough before his transformation, is able to turn into an 'insect' as the game calls it, essentially an enormous scarab.
Fortunately, the inventiveness in the characters and their beast-forms is not lost on the controls – as is the norm for all half-decent fighting games, the characters handle differently, often somewhere either side of the established 'strength vs speed' conundrum. Newcomer Jenny, for example, is fairly speedy, but her hits lack the strength and damage of say, the much slower Stun.
It's unfortunate, however, that the gameplay options and unlockables are not quite as varied – there are the quintessential ingredients (single player, multiplayer, survival etc.), as well as a neat story mode for each character, but aside from a couple of unlockable characters, the game isn't overly expansive. On it's own merit, it is a fairly substantial package for a fighting game, and chances are for the price you could buy it for on ebay nowadays it's practically a steal, but still, it never quite manages to escape from cowering under Tekken's shadow of excellence and variety.
The very few new gameplay additions do little to aid this, in fact the decision to remove the 'rage' charge from the original in favour of one-off uber moves (which rarely work and are easily blocked), seems like a step in the wrong direction.
Ultimately, Bloody Roar 2 will provide you with exactly what you want as long as you're not going in expecting another Tekken in particular. It seems somewhat crude keep making such obvious comparisons constantly, particularly as it is still one of the strongest fighters on PSone, but really, even ten years on, it's very prevalent and true. I owned Bloody Roar 2 and had plenty of hours of entertainment with it, and still occasionally do, but from an entirely objective point of view, unless you are something of a beat-em-up fanatic, or really long to see who'd win between a mutated chameleon and a hyper-active rabbit, Bloody Roar 2 is interesting, solid but un-spectacular, and you're probably better searching your bargain bin for a copy of Tekken 3 instead.