VAMPIRE HUNTER 2
Original Release: Capcom, 1997, Arcade
Other Releases: PlayStation/Saturn (in Darkstalkers 3, 1998), PlayStation 2 (in Darkstalkers Collection, 2005)
One of the branches the series split into after the original two Darkstalkers games (and then later sorta reconvened in Darkstalkers 3), it kinda just tweaks the prior games and rosters and is a bit of a confusing release
Vampire Hunter 2 (Arcade, Capcom, 1997)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Oh, Capcom and your needlessly confusing nomenclature. OK, so here's how the Darkstalkers/Vampire Hunter series breaks down. The first game is Darkstalkers in the West, also called Night Warriors in Japan. The immediate sequel is Vampire Hunter. However, Vampire Hunter 2 is not the direct sequel to that game! Vampire Savior was the true sequel to Vampire Hunter, and both Vampire Hunter 2 and Vampire Savior 2 are really more just tweaked revisions of Vampire Savior rather than real sequels.
In this case, Vampire Hunter 2 removes B.B. Hood, Lillith and Queen Bee are gone in place of the characters that got booted from Vampire Savior to begin with - Donovan, Phobos and Pyron. A palette swap of Pyron also takes over duties as the new final boss from Jedah, but he's pretty limp.
While the gameplay is about as good as that of Vampire Savior, generally speaking, this version feels slightly inferior for several reasons. Firstly, the change of characters eliminates some major fan favorites in favor of characters that weren't all that popular. Green Pyron is a pretty weak final boss, definitely a downgrade from the badassedness of Jedah, and unless I'm missing some hidden secret or something the endings are extremely weak, just like some token GIFs with scrolling Japanese text. The game also seems a heck of a lot easier in single player mode.
It isn't bad in and of itself per se, but it just feels like an unnecessary tweak of Savior that went in the wrong directions. At least they were still only asking a quarter per play, which was already getting rare for fighting games in 1997.
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