Via IGN

The last time that we saw SNK and Capcom together in the same game was SNK's take on the SNK vs. Capcom fighting game, which was trash. Sorry, I don't want to mince words on this subject. I can't even use the catchphrase "unadulterated fun", because it wasn't anywhere close to the fun of adultery. The game sucked and whoever was involved in the project should hang their head in shame. Having said that, the franchise known as SNK vs. Capcom has once again resurfaced, but as a follow-up to the massively popular Card Fighter's Clash game that appeared on the Neo Geo Pocket platform several years ago. This time around, the title is on a system that's perfectly suited to the style of gameplay that it offers, namely the Nintendo DS.

Like the first two titles, Card Fighters pits two players against each other in a heated card battle game featuring characters from the Capcom and SNK universe. However, everything about the old titles has been changed in the DS rev. For instance, you can now have up to eight character battle cards on the field at the same time, and each of them have HP (Defense) and BP (Offense) points. Secondly, there are force orbs that are used when bringing out your characters. At the beginning of each game, you start with 3 colorless orbs, so you initially your weakest characters will be summoned first. Once you have these characters out, every turn that they're on the field, they'll generate more force orbs, which means that players will generally stick with a few colors instead of all five that can be selected from. This also prevents people from bringing out their most powerful cards from the get-go. You can, however, discard cards to generate more force orbs or let them generate it actively or passively. The different force orbs in the game don't seem to have any inherent weakness or strengths towards each other, so the only time these force elements come into play is when you have to build your card deck. Along with the force elements are the individual abilities that many cards possess. Unlike the NGPC versions of the game, these abilities need to be fed more force orbs in order to become active, which balances out some of the more powerful cards very well. As an example, Trish's card comes with a Roundtrip ability, which can lower or raise her attacking power, but you have to feed that ability two more force orbs if you want to use it. If you don't, then it won't activate. Later on in the game, you'll receive an Evil Ryu and Akuma card, both of which have a ridiculously high attacking power, which can be boosted even more if you feed it enough orbs, but the cost of the ability itself is so high that it may not be worth it.

During the player's turn, you can choose to attack or wait, which brings up several strategies that will be necessary to win during the later stages of the game. You see, attacks force characters to become inactive during the opponent's turn, which means you can't defend at all. So, if you have two character cards going up against two other cards, if you attack with both of them, you'll be left completely defenseless during the opponent's turn. This actually turns out to be one of the game's most glaring flaws, and one that I hope is fixed if the game is ever localized for America. Basically, whoever chooses to go first is allowed a free hit on their opponent provided that they can get their characters out with the initial 3 force orb granted. If you're able to get enough characters out, you can easily knock off 50% of an opponent's lifebar in a single turn before they can do anything! Sure, the player who goes last starts off with 4 force orbs instead of 3, but the bonus is so small that only an idiot would choose to go second in the game.

We spent most of our time in the story mode, where you control a young boy as he climbs up the Card Battle Towers. There are actually two of them in the game; one for Capcom and one for SNK, and you actually have a lot of traveling between the two. The initial floors are easy and battles are for the most part a matter of who can get the most cards out first, but later on, as you get better cards and as your opponent plays smarter, it's not uncommon to see full 8 on 8 card battles going on. One downside to story mode is that you have to do quite a lot of fetch quests in order to progress. For instance, you'll have to find a specific character card from one of the NPCs roaming around the tower in order to get by another character, or you may have to get several different cards at once. The problem is that this isn't Pokemon, with its varied environments, it's just a freaking tower that looks the same floor, after floor, after floor. Probably the biggest strike against the game is the lack of Wi-Fi play, which this game is begging for. You have local multiplayer against another player, but there's no shared gaming, and good luck finding someone to play with.

With all the stuff Card Fighters does right there's an ...