This was probably as good of a Buffy game as it was possible to make in 2002.

It captures the spirit of the tv series perfectly. The dialogue crackles with silly one-liners and banter (which you will hear repeated again and again). The plot feels like your average Buffy episode, just stretched out to 6 hours. Hell, there is even a subplot about cheerleader tryouts that bookends the story. This is one Buffy-ass videogame.

The voice acting is top-notch. Most of the cast of the show reprise their roles, their performances ranging from disinterested to reasonably engaged. Charisma Carpenter is especially good, while James Marster occassionally sounds like he is reading his lines for the first time. Giselle Loren stands in for Gellar as Buffy. She isn't indistinguishable, but provides a performance that is professional and captures the character perfectly.

This is an action game and the combat system is surprisingly deep and balanced, yet still accessible. There are a number of different enemies including vamps, headcrabs, zombies, a couple of different demons, and a handful of bossfights. The combat can get a little repetitive after a while, but is mostly enjoyable. Some of the enemies even have some great fighting techniques: vamps will do silly windmill punches, while zombies will dive at you like Superman.

There are a variety of weapons like stakes, a crossbow, holy water/demon's fire gun, and the Reaper blade which is kind of like Krull's glaive.    There are also some temporary weapons found in-level like shovels, rakes and sledgehammers. The first time I picked up a shovel I was punched until I dropped it. The vamp then picked it up and beat the crap out of me. It's a pretty neat game sometimes.

The levels themselves border on generic. There are a lot of corridors and warehouses, as well as obvious locations like Sunnydale High. This is an accurate representation of the series, but doesn't make good use of the change in medium. The major exception is a sunken church in a huge underground cavern. There is lava and demons. It's pretty cool. The last hour and a bit returns here and it has a sense of scale the rest of the game lacks. It is more Tomb Raider than Buffy, but I would have liked to have seen more interesting locations.

There's a little bit of platform traversal that never feels good. Her clinging and climbing animations are too slow, and she won't consistently grab a ledge. It doesn't help that dying means having to restart a level. Most of my deaths were from falling into pits or off ledges. It feels like something left over from an earlier version of the game when it was probably a Tomb Raider clone.

Buffy isn't a great game, but it is remarkably solid and true to the licence it's recreating. As much as I would love the open-world Sunnydale game I've always dreamed of, this is an adequate replacement for the time being. Standing in the library between levels, chatting to the Scooby Gang, this really is the Buffiest game 2002 could have allowed.