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Review: Sango Fighter [PC] |
For the PC fighting game fan, it’s always been a tough time finding decent
titles for the computer. What few fighting games have come out have largely
been overlooked, most notably because they’ve typically been relatively hard
to come across.
So it’s no wonder that the Taiwanese import “Sango Fighter”
didn’t stand much of a chance of being seen at all. It’s developer was Panda
Entertainment, who in the end only ended up producing five games in total.
And while not spectacular achievements of gameplay or innovation, their
titles were nice little gems for the avid PC player to add to their
collection. Made back in the early days of fighting games, their first game
“Sango Fighter” was an especially appreciated addition to the almost
non-existant PC fighting game market of the time (the english version came
out in 1994). But the playable demo only enjoyed a rather limited release in
shareware form, and the full version could only be ordered from the
company’s US outlet directly. In other words, this isn’t something you’d
have found lying around on the shelf at your local software store.
So what was this game about? Coming from Taiwan, Panda used the legend of
the Eastern Han Dynasty of China as it’s setting. Basically, it’s about a
civil war between two main factions (and several other minor ones) for
control over China. It has a lot of basis on factual events, but the
characters have been highly mythologized here, so this game should hardly be
considered an accurate historical simulation by any account. But the result
is a fascinating account of Chinese history, blending elements of fact and
fiction together to provide an elaborate and entertaining account of the
conflict between opposing warlords and generals in ancient China. As for how
this played out as a fighting game, Sango Fighter was kind of a mixed bag.
I’d call it rather playable and enjoyable overall, but it’s certainly not
without it’s flaws. In fact, it has such a visible split of failings and
accomplishments that it’s hard to look at this game and clearly say it’s a
good or bad game without adding some explanation about what’s specifically
good and bad here. So with that said, I’m going to list the specific areas
of relevant interest about the game seperately.
GRAPHICS
One of the first things you’d probably notice about Sango Fighter is that
it’s very colorful. I’d also go on to say it’s fairly well-drawn, but that’s
more of a subjective opinion of taste. And although I like the look of the
game overall, it is a bit on the simplistic side. Even Street Fighter II had
more elaborate background and character graphics than you’ll find here. The
animation is quite limited when comparing the games as well. There are a lot
of moves that only have maybe 2 or 3 animations to them. It’s not a big
problem, but it certainly doesn’t have the graphical “wow” appeal that I
remember Street Fighter II did when it first hit the arcades. The characters
look fairly cool though at least, and I like the artwork style of the game
in general, so the sub-standard animation was never too much of a big deal
for me.
SOUND/MUSIC
The voice department is what really stands out here. The characters shout
out moves in Chinese or make assorted grunts when performing special attacks
and throws. And the voice acting for the sound effects is pretty decent,
with each character having his own unique voice. The strange thing is that
there’s really no other sound effects in the game. When people get hit I
can’t ever remember there being any audible contact noise. Fortunately these
guys talk enough so that you won’t really notice the absense of sound
effects too much, and they’re typically yelling so much they’d probably
drown out any subtle effects they threw in there anyway. The music was
relatively decent sounding for it’s time, but a lot of the tunes were fairly
simplistic and sounded fairly alike. You’re certainly not going to be
humming and of these tunes in your head after playing the game or anything,
but the music at least wasn’t annoying either. Overall the music didn’t
really add too much to the game, but it didn’t detract from it either. It
just did it’s job of filling the role of an expected element that a game
should have, and nothing more.
GAMEPLAY
Here’s where a lot of different considerations come into play (both
literally and figuratively). First off, there’s a few different game modes
to mention. The basic one or two player mode is fairly straightforward. You
pick one of the characters and fight through everyone in the standard
3-round matches until you’ve defeated them all. Unfortunately, there’s not
really any seperate endings to see in this mode. You just get to see your
character standing there triumphantly with lots of people cheering for him
at the end, and a bit of text giving you the obligatory congratulations. As
usual, a second player can join in at any time and do battle against you.
There are a couple of rather imaginative bonus rounds along the way where
you ride on horseback and have to hit birds out of the sky with your bow and
arrows in classic shooting gallery style too. Not too overly exciting or
revolutionary, but I thought it made a fun idea for an intermission
sequence. The campaign mode is a little more elaborate, but not really all
that much. In this mode you get control over the five “good” generals, and
have to fight through the “bad” generals (ie. all the other characters). In
elimination method, you pick one of the five guys to battle before each
match, and then, win or lose, you or the computer’s general is tossed out of
the lineup. If you lose a general, you can’t use him anymore, and have to
re-do the match with one of your other generals instead. Unlike the mostly
random order of the one player mode, the campaign mode has a set sequence of
enemy generals that doesn’t change. This let’s you choose your fighter based
on who you’ll face next, assuming you’ve played through before and remember
the opponent lineup. An interesting addition in this mode though is that you
have to fight through one or two grunt soldiers before you get to the
general in each fight. These soldiers are really weak and don’t really pose
much of a threat on their own, but they serve the purpose of trying to make
your fight with the general a little tougher by taking off some of your life
beforehand. After finishing this mode you get a bit more elaborate ending,
but there’s only one for the whole team, rather than seperate endings for
each general. Overall I’d say the one-player mode is clearly more fun, but
the campaign mode is a nice extra feature to try a few times. In the
one-player mode you get to fight through more opponents (and without
trudging through the tedius and pointless soldiers every match), the bonus
shooting rounds are only available here, and it also keeps track of your
score and permanently saves it to the ranking list in this mode, effectively
giving you something to aim for even in the absense of ending sequences.
CHARACTERS
On a good note, there are a lot of characters in this game, and they’re all
playable in the one and two player modes. There are 12 in total, which was a
pretty impressive lineup size for it’s time. The only character you can’t
ever play as is the grunt soldier from the campaign mode, but you wouldn’t
want to play as that anyway, trust me. Thw weakling soldiers aside, the
characters are all surprisingly well balanced for the most part. There are a
few powerhouses, but not to the point of one character’s chances against
another ever being anywhere near hopeless. But one down side that I think
allowed this balance to take place is the fact that the characters have so
few moves. There are only two buttons used, Punch and Kick. So to start out,
characters basically have one standing, one crouching, and one jumping for
each button, making only six normal attacks in total. Then they have special
moves, usually three or four each. Add in a throw for everyone and you’ve
got maybe 11 or 12 moves maximum for any given character, which isn’t really
very much to choose from. I suppose I should mention that there are super
moves as well. Well, not really super moves, but enhanced specials or
throws. You have a super bar that raises as you block or just hold Back,
strangely enough. When it’s maxed out you can perform a super throw in place
of your regular throw, or use a more powerful projectile in place of your
regular one if your character has that ability. But it doesn’t do too much
more damage, and the bar takes way too long to charge up to make it worth
worrying about. On top of that, being struck lowers your super bar
significantly, meaning you often have to start charging it all over again if
you’re hit with anything when it’s partially charged. So it’s really hardly
even worth mentioning, although some of the super moves do look pretty cool
(see Lu Bu’s super throw), and you might want to try using them just because
of that. But generally, the gameplay becomes a bit simplistic because of the
limited moves you have available. The special moves are also rather similar
for a lot of characters too. You’ll be seeing a large assortment of
projectiles and uppercuts here. The moves have their own slightly different
traits and ideosyncrasies that do add some diversity and strategy to the mix
though. Some projectiles travel along the ground while some float above it,
for example. A character with a sliding move might be able to go under a
floating one but not a ground one. Or someone with a hovering dash attack
might be able to use it to avoid the ground one but not a floating one. I’m
sure you get the idea here. It really isn’t enough to make it feel like
you’re playing significantly differently with different characters though.
And on that note, another gripe I have is with the artificial intelligence.
On the hardest of it’s three difficulty settings, the computer is still
quite stupid and predictable, and acts noticably the same with every
character overall. It tends to counter well in some cases, but can often
easily be tricked into falling for the same traps over and over. There’s so
little randomness here that I eventually began to tell exactly when the
computer would throw a projectile with some characters, anticipating it’s
action by flawlessly jumping in and punishing without fail, often even
before I saw the move start to activate. Overall the characters aren’t
necessarily badly made, but just feel somewhat limited due to their lack of
moves and too many similarities. Still, with 12 of them to choose from, and
not all of them falling into the model of projectile/uppercut characters,
there’s enough diversity to keep you interested in some of them for at least
a little while.
CONTROL
Now here’s where things start to get a little strange. Moves generally come
out okay, but there are times when weird stuff starts to happen. As an
example, if you’re sitting on the floor crouch-blocking for a while (a
sure-fire way to get the computer to jump at you for a free anti-air),
sometimes your character will get stuck there for a moment, as if it’s
trying to compute just how long you’ve been holding that Down button.
Likewise, if you’re holding Back for a while and then try to do a move
immediately, it sometimes pauses for a second beforehand. There are ways
around having this interfere too much, like letting go of the Back direction
a moment before inputing the move. Chances are your character will stay
blocking for that time anyway, due to it apparently thinking you’re still
holding it. But this whole bizarrity can be rather disconcerting for a while
until you get used to dealing with it. This aside, special moves are
thankfully easy to do and come out reliably. Just two directional motions
and a button are all specials ever take in this game. Although some of the
combinations of directions you press are a bit non-typical for a fighting
game to use (Back, Down, Punch is a common projectile command, for
instance), it’s an easy game to control after you get used to it. Combos are
basically non-existant here, although you can do some strange stuff like
chain a jumping attack into a throw. But mostly you’re going to be hitting
once or twice at a time and then backing off. Four consecutive hits (of
anything) equals a dizzy, so as you can imagine there aren’t too many huge
multi-hitting specials here. Throws often take absolute priority in close
anyway, and the computer will throw you over risking leaving itself open
with a hit. And since normal moves for the most part don’t seem to cancel at
all, combos are often limited to the occasional double-hit special attacks.
The control’s quirky aspects can make this game feel like more work to play
than it should be, but it’s not terrible to the point of being non-playable
by any means. Although the game engine is somewhat limiting, it’s something
you can get used to and still derive some enjoyment from.
MANUAL
I just have to mention as an extra comment that the manual to this game is
fantastically done. The translation didn’t go over quite as well as it could
have, but it still makes sense for the most part. There are actually more
spelling errors than grammatical ones (Section VI. in the table of contents
reads as “How to openate”). There’s just SO much writing in this manual
about the background behind the game though. It starts out with a nice
introduction that gives an overview of the Han Dynasty, and then later has
more detailed page-long descriptions of each character that go into a lot
more depth about them individually. It really does a great job of adding
context to this game that I have yet to see any other fighting game manual
manage to do. On top of this, the manual is beautifully illustrated, with
several anime-like drawings of each character on their biographical page,
and other illustrations throughout the rest of the book. For the special
moves, it has screen shots showing each characters’ attacks in action, a
name and description of each move, and shows you how to perform it. Overall
this is the single best manual I’ve ever seen packaged with a fighting game,
and even with the translation being less than perfect it’s a fascinating
read. It’s just a shame that it almost makes it seem like they put more time
and energy into the manual than the game itself by comparison.
Sango Fighter was a commendable achievement for it’s time overall, but
possibly not enough of one to justify going through the elaborate hunt that
was required to get a hold of it. Panda Entertainment went on to create a
few other games, but this was regrettably the only one that got translated
(almost) into english and officially distributed to the North American
market. This unfortunately made it even harder to come across the excellent
“Sango Fighter II”. In what’s considered their finest achievement, this
sequel featured even more balanced gameplay, cancellable attacks and combos,
and individual character endings in the one player mode, and a brand new
team of fighters joining the ranks of all the returning old ones. But the
most notable improvement was a totally revamped campaign mode that actually
let you choose your team, organize and manage an army of three types of
soldiers, and invade and conquer the other teams’ territories by pitting
your generals against theirs. This new campaign mode managed to combine the
elements of a turn-based wargame and a one-on-one fighting game together
with amazing success, creating an innovative and entertaining gaming
experience that distinguished this title as a true classic in the fighting
game history on it’s own. But it can still be said to owe it’s existence to
it’s predecessor being a good enough game to warrant looking into making a
sequel in the first place. And although Sango Fighter may not have been a
truly outstanding game, I’d say it was at least good enough to justify
deserving that look.
- SAL
