"Werewolves, zombies, and vampires! Oh my!"

Darkstalkers Chronicle: The Chaos Tower (From now on DS:TCT) is perhaps one of the more original fighters I have ever played. Its full of the coolest characters ever to be featured in a fighter (let alone video games everywhere.) Furthermore, the variety of game modes will keep you coming back for awhile!

Gameplay
Decent, but the road to glory is filled with potholes.
All the fighters are breathtaking. Each one different and none of them clones in a true sense. However what makes this game stick out is the fact that almost ALL of the fighters are based off some horror movie monster. You have your choice of the classics (vampires,mummies, fish men,sucumbi, and yetis)and then other monsters that could easily be in their own horror movie (possessed samurai, cat girls,a being made of flame, and a little red riding hood gone bad.) This leads to a lot of variety in all of the fighters adding much needed replay ability to the game.

You have your standard modes. Arcade, network and training are there. However they throw tower mode into the mix, but more on that later.

Your arcade mode is broken up into three modes: Darkstalkers, Night Warrior, Darkstalkers 3, and Darkstalkers 3 (SP). Each one is the incarnation of the arcade versions of the DS series. Darkstalkers is your standard arcade fighter with one difference. Darkstalkers Mode. At the bottom of the screen there is a special bar. Once that fills up you can pull off an EX move or (my personal favorite) go in DS mode. In DS mode you have a slight change added to you. L. Rapter gets a Chainsaw, Morigan gets a mirror image of herself to hep attack etc. However they get dull after awhile. So they added EX moves. When your special gauge is filled you can pull of an EX move. However, here is where the game's fundamental flaw comes into light. The controls are dismaying. All of Sony's controllers were never meant for 2D fighters and DS:TCT is a prime example of it. The D-Pad just makes it so that pulling off EX moves are all but nigh impossible. They try to compensate by adding "easy" controls. The easy controls make combos easier to pull off by simplifying the controls. However You have no control on whether or not you attack slow, medium, or fast. That is all up to the game. Instead you have two options, high and low. This is conterproductive and is a true waste. Furthermore the R button can be mapped to an EX move of your choice. However this does not solve the problem of the controls.

I haven't been able to try network out. However they left out infrastructure so that means you can't play across the globe. This is a true let down as that function would make up for some of the force mentioned problems.

Tower mode is where the game starts to make up for its letdowns. In tower mode you try to climb the chaos tower.You pick three characters, and after each floor each character gains a minute amount of health. For each floor you fight a certain fighter. The game tries to mix it up by adding special conditions. Like for example, if you finish the round with a EX move you go from floor one to floor six. Then there are unlucky stages. They take away a certain ability. Such as punching, kicking, and jumping. Then you try to complete the round. The tower mode keeps you captivated for awhile, however the difficulty is just too steep. The game almost expects perfection in the earlier rounds expecting you to still be a tip top shape around floor twenty (much harder than it sounds.) However despite this shortcoming tower mode is excellent and keep you coming back for more.
16/20

Graphics
Alot of people have problems with 2D graphics. They prefer their games 3D or none at all. This game should change there minds. 2D never had it so good. The characters look real and the backgrounds are some of the more original I've ever seen in ANY game. There is a slight problem however. As the PSP's screen is wider than it is tall, they have to stretch the screen. As I like my 2D as close as I can get to the original, I was disappointed. However, a quick trip to the options solved this as you can change it back to original proportions. However then you have some black on the edges screen. The developers tried to compensate for this by having background's background where you can get a backdrop. A slight disappointment, but not too bothersome.
9/10

Story
There is no story! Just kidding, however in order to get the story, you must go online and look it up on wiki. It isn't in the manual for goodness sake! The minute amount of story you get is in the cut scenes. Once you clear the arcade mode you get their ending. However the endings themselves make no sense unless you know the characters backstory. However, the story that one can look up is excellent!
4/5

Music
Music ,although is excellent, is not that memorable. Something that erks me however, all the voices are in Japanese. If I buy a game in America, I expect to know what the crap the game is saying. However, the voice acting is not that important as you only here it when fighting.
7/10

Rounding all the scores up
Gameplay:16/20
Graphics: 9/10
Story: 3/5
Music: 6/10
Total: 34/45
Percent: 75%
Rounds to: 7/10

Conclusion:
Don't get me wrong, DSC:TCT is a good game. And at the price tag of 20$ who can resist it?

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/06