A great stylistic mix of arcade and realism combine to make Fight Night Round 2 a stunning boxing game.
Gameplay: 9
The strongest feature of the game is undoubtedly the gameplay. The control method takes a little while to get used to, but once you have it offers a lot more control over your boxer, allowing you to rip out many flashy combos or haymakers at will. The game allows for a large degree of different styles so I would consider it well suited to any fans of fighting games, whether you're an all out offensive player or more of a tactical one.
There is nothing like slugging it out and landing a knockout blow, then watching the slow motion replay, after half an hour of intense confrontation. At first it does seem rather too easy, as if you could breeze through the career mode in a few hours. But when you start training up your fighter and get up the ranks of the pro boxing league the difficulty evens out well and gives you a great challenge on normal mode. Hard mode is reserved for those who have completed the career mode a few times, I believe.
The AI is generally excellent, apart from the odd moment where it seems the computer is overcompensating by blocking and diving too often or on the other hand letting you get too many easy shots in.
Graphics: 9
I don't think the third game has improved on the graphical prowess as much as it could have. The visuals in FNR2 look great and run at a breakneck pace with smooth frame rates and pretty impressive sweat and blood flying when you land a strong blow on your opponent. There are no ugly textures or clipping issues as you might find in the Smackdown/RAW series, no jerky animations or anything to distract you.
The transitions between combos, different stances and such is very impressive. Just the sort of high standard you'd expect from EA. The only niggle I found was that the crowd members don't have enough frames of animation to look completely realistic. It's better than having a flat textured background though, like a lot of older FIFA games.
The create-a-fighter mode is okay, nothing more. As I don't consider it too important to the game I still score the graphics highly, however it is annoying to try and create yourself in the game and have it look more like Ashton Kutcher. The WWE games have a much more in-depth and enjoyable create mode.
Sound: 7
The sound of leather on skin, the grunts of the boxers and the cheers of the crowd are very accurately rendered and detailed and serve to heighten the atmosphere pretty well. The ESPN announcer does a respectable job; there isn't too much recycling of commentary from match to match. However when a phrase featuring the name or nickname of your boxer is used it often jars as the vocal inflections don't match up. In fact, the announcer obviously didn't record plurals for the fighter names; what EA have done is tacked on the 'S' sound and you can tell. Not too bad though.
Why it loses marks is simple. The soundtrack is all rap, and there aren't that many tracks either. I have a similar criticism of Burnout 3; although I don't mind pop-punk and emo music, I don't think the whole soundtrack should be all one style. I can't imagine Ali coming out to a rap song in his heyday, and especially not Marciano.
Value: 7
There are many hours of gameplay in the career mode alone. Playing with a few friends and arranging tournaments is also good fun, though I feel the other modes could have been better thought out rather than being as streamlined as they are.
What is a problem is that when you play through the career mode you only fight against game-created boxers. I feel there are enough famous boxers of different weights included so I was annoyed to see you can't fight them - even in cases where the boxer would have already retired when your fighter had just started. As the game often has an arcade style, this would have made things more entertaining. Winning the final fights of your heavyweight career against B-Hop or Ali would be extremely gratifying.
Tilt: 8
Some flaws aside this is a very, very good video game. I'd consider it the best in the series (despite a poor create-a-fighter mode) and although it's a few years old still well worth a look. There's still nothing quite like it on the market so that pretty much makes it a one-stop-shop for boxing and fighting game fans alike.
Overall: 8.5