SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash 2: Expand Edition

SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash 2: Expand Edition is a sequel that came out right at the very end of the Neo Geo Pocket Color's life, which is why only a fraction of players outside Japan ever got to it. That's a shame, because it's an expansion of the first game in the best sense of the word. The framework stays the same, meaning traveling through a world of card tournaments, collecting new cards, and gradually building a deck, but the game adds a larger number of cards, a more elaborate structure of opponents, and a longer campaign. It was again released in two cartridge variants, depending on which side of the SNK-versus-Capcom rivalry you prefer.

The battles keep the predecessor's briskness. Fighters with attack and defense values clash on the table, joined by action cards that alter the rules of a round, and by managing a resource that allows the strongest characters to be played. The second entry works with a better-balanced deck-building system and offers more situations where you need to sacrifice an immediate advantage for a plan several turns ahead. The collecting layer is deeper too, since there are noticeably more new characters from both universes, some of which can only be obtained by fulfilling specific conditions or by trading over the link cable.

On the technical side, it's the same friendly drawing style with scaled-down figures, only with a richer range of motifs and a clearer interface that better handles the larger collection. The music again relies on light, catchy loops that never overpower focus on the game. At the time, the title stayed rather in the shadow of the first game, since it arrived just as the platform was practically finished on Western markets. Among fans, though, it earned a reputation as the more refined version of the same idea, and today it's considered one of the true high points of handheld card games, albeit at the cost of high collector value for the original cartridges. Anyone who finished the first game and is looking for more of the same with better balance will find exactly what they need here, they just have to deal with the Japanese text, which fortunately acts more as a minor detail than an obstacle for navigating the menus.