Darkstalkers 3 (1998)

Having now played through the entire Darkstalkers franchise, Darkstalkers 3 is, for me, the title where everything in this series starts to click. Everything just feels right, and it starts to play more akin to Street Fighter Alpha, which is a welcome change. I can't really put my finger on it, but Darkstalkers 3 feels the most "correct" as a fighting game. With the first game, it sort of felt like the series was trying to intentionally move away from what Street Fighter II was doing, but by this point, they've settled in and found a mixture of doing things their own way, while not minding falling into some of the more standard choices that would become commonplace in fighting games.

I also think this has the most balanced roster in the entire series. Gone are Donovan, Huirzil, and Pyron, weighty characters who always felt a bit off, and instead, we get a cast of lighter characters to balance out the tank-ish characters that the roster was full of. Lilith is a fun take on Morrigan, Q-Bee is so odd, but plays great once you latch onto her vibe, and Baby Bonnie Hood is a great addition that fits the theme of the game better than pretty much any addition the game had to the original cast.

And this might be a simple thing to love, but I think Darkstalkers 3 really nails the idea of having a larger cast, while also ensuring that you don't have to fight every single character when trying to beat the game. For example, there are 15 fighters here, but you only have to face off against 6 characters and a boss. It's such a perfect balance, and it makes me excited to actually try out each character, as opposed to being exhausted by trying to beat the game with each character.

I also tried out the other variations of Darkstalkers 3, with Vampire Hunter 2 and Vampire Survivor 2, and they just didn't click the same way for me. The roster was never as good as what Darkstalkers 3 is doing, and it almost felt like playing the Turbo/Championship Edition version of Darkstalkers 3. Which is fine, but I think they did the original version so well that it didn't need these additions.

As someone who never quite latched onto Darkstalkers as a kid, Darkstalkers 3 is the game that made me finally appreciate this series at its best, and made me desperately wish that Capcom would bring this series back in the modern day. There's a lot of great ideas here, and they finally figured out how to balance everything perfectly, it's a shame that this was pretty much the end.

9th Game Completed in 2024

This one's gonna be hard to evaluate, because I beat the arcade version, which only has an arcade mode, which I beat primarily by button mashing so uh... Point form?

• Anakaris is my favourite character, and his ending was freaking excellent.
• I have Capcom Fighting Collection, and tried the first two Darkstalkers games before this one... Did not really enjoy them, but this one clicked!
• Really great visuals, I seriously adore the theming jn this game.
• I think I simply just don't like Capcom fighting games that much. I know they're the OG, everyone loves them, but for my money, I'd much rather have Tekken, Mortal Kombat, BlazBlue or Killer Instinct.

Don't really know what else to say. XD I completed arcade mode in 30 minutes.

"Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire" was the title of the Japan-exclusive Sega Saturn port which remains arguably the best version of it aside from the arcade release.

This version contains all 15 characters from the original Vampire Savior as well as the three Night Warriors characters (Donovan, Huitzil, and Pyron) who were left out of the original arcade release and brought back in Vampire Savior 2/Vampire Hunter 2.

Vampire as a series was where the Capcom devs and artists were at their most creative. New ideas and concepts were all tried out and many of these mechanics would work their way into the Street Fighter franchise much later on. It remains a sorely underappreciated series.

No loading times are perceivable with the 4MB RAM cartridge. The sound is top-notch and there is even a 'Saturn mode' for properly matching the native resolution of the Saturn (as opposed to the CPS2 arcade resolution which is rather funky).

Once you beat the game with no continues, you can also unlock the English translation in-game (via a code). So in some ways, the Saturn port is preferable to playing the arcade PCB.

Unfortunately, the later releases were almost all relatively poor. The PlayStation port available in the west was cut to shreds (in terms of animation).

The Dreamcast port was decent (but didn't work with RGB if I remember correctly) interestingly that port allowed you to pick from various 'versions' of the lineup. The PS2 port was probably the best 'collection' other than the Dreamcast release.

But the more recent ports for the PS3 and 360 opted to ruin the graphics with an awful 'high res' UI and sprites that simply look awful imho - (IMO they should have simply integer scaled the original resolution and it would have looked significantly nicer) they also marketed it as net-play, but the net-code was pretty awful.

I still plug this in and play it against friends and if playing it online, I opt for Fightcade over any official release.