Note: This was a playthrough of Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold on the Alpha Anthology for the PS2 (which is somehow not listed on the Release list??)
Street Fighter Alpha 2 feels like a mild step up from Alpha, iterating and adding five new characters. While the flashy new additions for mechanics, characters (and a hidden stage) look like a big step up, they don't quite replace the original game's appeal and I found myself torn between the newer and older versions.
As an interim between Alphas, Alpha 2 is in an odd place for story. Retconning, overwriting, and tweaking stories as well as adding new ones for the added characters - Zangief, Dhalsim, Gen, Rolento, and Sakura. Sakura and Rolento are the most welcome additions as their movesets are a huge step up over the rest of the cast. The game features all the bells and whistles from the first Alpha (3-section meter, rolling recovery, Alpha Counter, air block, chain combo, etc) as well as a new type of Custom Combo mode that cancels recovery animation of normal and special moves, allowing a whole slew of neat combos. That said, if you're not super combo-savvy past a few strikes it can be very difficult to get much damage out of it, leaving Supers as the main way to go unless you're dealing with characters with really bad supers.
The balance of the cast is very much balanced towards a handful of characters at the top versus the rest - for struggles with the mid the low tier it came down to execution (charge moves felt IMPOSSIBLE in this version, 270 was surprisingly doable) and this iteration is still fairly strict so using input windows for training didn't help too much. Most struggle with solid moves/matchups until players start hitting shoto characters, followed by some unique and satisfying movesets with Rolento and Rose. There are plenty of advanced and unique mechanics/interactions as well as additional moves, but for players attempting the arcade mode there are a few options to reduce difficulty and speed since Turbo 2 as a default can be vicious to start out with.
Presentation was somewhat lacking compared to its predecessor - the anime portraits and colorful stages are still there (varying from USA to China to Japan to more Japan) and the addition of the background stage from the movie is exciting fanservice but it doesn't feel too distinct from the first Alpha. Music is also somewhat bland, save for tracks that hearken back to SF2 themes or the big exception: Sakura's extremely peppy and memorable theme song.
Alpha 2 adds more characters and the Custom Combo mechanic to pump up the original, but I tended to struggle a lot more with enjoying this one. Perhaps it was because it was too similar to the original Alpha so the excitement of the original's foundation has worn off but Custom Combos didn't quite replace Supers for usefulness and a large amount of the cast is still pretty unwieldy. That said, this did give me Rolento and I do love me some Rolento!
