SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash - SNK Version

"Half-baked attempt to cash in on Pokemon CCG popularity."

It is a well-known fact that you can only make one first impression. The creators of the game have put lots of efforts to make sure that it would be the good one. Bright colorful pictures that literally jump out from the cards, beautiful sound effects, perfectly drawn locations and relative ease with which you win your first battle (unless you are really bad at the game or greatly misunderstood the rules) should be enough to convince any skeptic. Unfortunately, that's where most reviewers reach a conclusion. It is unfortunate because this game suffers from bimbo-syndrome: it looks great but you wouldn't marry it.

Story 3 / 10:

What kind of story do you expect in card game? Go and get some cards... If it is story you after you'd be better off buying RPG. Story in this game not as important as the gameplay, but it wouldn't hurt to have one.

Gameplay 3 / 10:

I consider myself a bit of an expert in card games (if I can say so myself), and therefore my opinion would be from the experienced player's point of view. Also, I'm not going to explain how to play the game - there are many guides available for that.

The game borrows a lot from other card games such as Magic: The Gathering and to a greater degree from Pokemon CCG (though I'm not sure about using the term ''borrow'' as it would imply giving something back at particular future date). Even the main menus look similar. In Pokemon they are ''Hand Check Retreat Attack Power Done'' and in the game they are ''Hand Search Info Attack Ability Done'' which is close enough to cause a concern.

The sign of well-designed card game is balance between cards. To put it simple there shouldn't be any ''useless'' card. For example in Pokemon CCG Charizard card clearly more ''valuable'' than Charmander card but you won't be able to play the first if you don't already have the second on the table. In this game some cards are clearly more useful than the others are and you'd be better off replacing some of your cards with better ones, hence the limitation of 3 of the same card per deck. In fact, some of the cards become obsolete later in the game.

Deck management is also over-simplified due to the simplicity of the game itself. After receiving a new card have you ever asked yourself: ''What the hell am I supposed to do with this card''? The answer in most cases would be: ''You shouldn't have put it in your deck on the first place''. Unless you are into all the complicated back-up combos that is, and why wouldn't you - it give your character 300 BP extra, no questions asked. So what you get is a bunch of character cards that want nothing to do with each other (apart from back-up combos). And you get a bunch of action cards, some of which produce insignificant and useless effects and some produce the effect so strong that it throws any hint of strategy out of the door.

The final drawback of the game is that the characters don't have separate Hit Points (or Health Points) and attack damage - they both represented by one number. That means that if your ''tough guy'' with 700 Battle Points takes 400 damage he becomes no different from puny 300 guy (unless he has some really good special skills of cause).

Control 8 /10:

Control serves its purpose well, however since the main play area doesn't give you much information, you'd be doing a lot of menu jumping. To address this problem number of search category shortcuts were introduced, such as ''B + Up'' for the Ring Character Status, ''B + Left'' for Your Discards, ''B + Right'' for Enemy Discards, and ''B + Down'' for Status. Also you can't change the direction you facing like in Pokemon Gold/Silver which means sometimes you'll end up on the different floor trying to navigate around the stairs.

Sound 8 / 10:

Sounds and theme songs are nice but not as perfect as we'd like them to be.

Graphics 9 /10:

The game pushes 16 bit graphic to its limit, and if it wasn't for some signs that were left untranslated the game would received the perfect 10. Also the graphics on the main screen not as informative as it should be to give you ''the big picture''.

Replay Value 2 / 10:

Jeff Campbell in his review said, ''Clash is a game that should be put in the other category''. That category would be RPG. The difference is that instead of levels and spells you receive better cards as you do play. And that's another reason why the game wouldn't make it in real world: you only as good as your deck. Strategy isn't as important here as it should be in good CCG. It is for that reason you are unlikely to start playing it from the beginning since it would require you to repeat the process of building up your deck all over again.

Buy/Rent:

The game requires a lot of time to complete therefore buying is the only option. The real question is to buy or not to buy?

Bottom line:

What you have here is half-baked attempt to cash in on Pokemon CCG popularity. The game could be recommended as an introduction into CCG world for beginners or as a toy for people who like bright pictures. I give this game 5 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 06/14/00, Updated 06/14/00