Fight! 2e does one thing, but does it just great. The amount of special attacks and combos possible is insane. .as befits thd fighting game genre. And you can run the "adjacent" genres like arcade games sith it, too, dud to the rules for minions. Thus 5/5 it is!

Short Answer: This system does one thing and it does that one thing VERY WELL! But unless you are playing in the very narrow and specific game focus that FIGHT! is designed for, playing Street Fighter/etc with Dice, you will probably be put off. 4/5

This is easily one of the more unique Rule Systems that I have seen. Which is to be expected considering the unique itch this game system is trying to scratch.

Character creation is completely open ended. Which is appropriate considering the wide veriety of characters that appear in Fighting Games.

But the focus on creating a character in a "Fighting Game" is both a strenght and a weakness. You have to carry over a lot of assumptions from 2d Fighting Games and carry them over to a Tabletop Roleplay game. Which works if you are having a one on one dual, but starts to break down when you do anything else.

There is also the issue that there is a huge disconnect between what a charcter can do in combat and outside of combat. The system also doesn't really have rules for things such as crafting, down time, or things of that nature.

BUT why should it?! You are a FIGHTER, not an Inn Keeper!!!

What the system does well, it does VERY well! If you have a very specific iche that you want scratched, this is the game system that will scratch that itch. If the system was a little more flexable, allowed for more variety of character design instead of being a Fighter, or had better rules for everything OUTSIDE of combat, I would give this a perfect score.

But the out of combat rules are very bare bones. Which is fine, this system is even more laser focued on combat than most other systesm. With better rules for out of combat/etc I might give this a perfect score.

As it is, 4/5

I'm a pretty big fan of the first edition of Fight! (I ended up backing this edition, after all). It's not really the first fighting-game-inspired RPG I've tried, but it's certainly the one that clicked with me the most. The game essentially didn't try to translate a fighting game into a traditional roleplaying game (as say the Street Fighter Storytelling Game did), but rather used roleplaying game systems to emulate a fighting game (if that makes any sense). This 2nd Edition effectively takes everything I loved about the first edition and refines it. I'll split this review up into two parts. One talks about the changes from the last edition, while the other part will be more geared towards newcomers.

But first: Possible Misconceptions.

There's a bit of a "myth" regarding Fight! about int only being about 1-vs-1 fights. Truth be told, that's an easy assumption considering the source material (and the 1st edition itself didn't really talk all that much about multiple combatants), but trust me that this isn't the case. Besides tag team rules, there really isn't anything preventing fights involving multiple characters at the same time. Really, if there's a fight you can run in say D&D, you could probably also run it in Fight!. Mind you, the fight itself will probably involve more air-juggled Kobolds than most grognards would approve of, and will likely end up looking more like Dragon's Crown or those D&D arcade games made by Capcom...

What's New

The first thing that springs to mind is the layout. Being a full-color book with spiced-up formatting gives everything a clearer and more professional look. This time around, there's only a single artist for the whole book: Royce "FooRay" Southerland, who previously did the covers for the two Unlockable supplements. This not only gives the art a more consistent look, but was a good chocie overall because FooRay's art is absolutely gorgeous. The characters are highly dynamic and oozing with personality. My favorite bits are easily the amazing two-page-spreads before each chapter, most of which are done to resemble screenshots from a hypothetical fighting game. The characters aren't pixelized for a more "authentic" feel, but that's about the only complaint I could possibly bring up (except I won't because I love the art too much).

The rules themselves aren't a drastic change from the previous edition, and a good chunk of the changes are dedicated to the various Elements that serve as the building blocks for your character's Move (which makes sense seeing how the chapter on Elements has always taken up the biggest chunk of the page space). Some Elements have been dropped, new ones have been added, and the rest has been adjusted. Special care has also been taken to better explain and clarify how an Element interacts with things like combos or multiple opponents, making the rules overall less ambiguous. The new core book also incorporates many Elements that first appeared in the Round 2 supplement. It doesn't contain all of that supplement. Then again a good chunk of Round 2 was about various optional rules and adjustments to emulate specific fighting games like say Mortal Kombat or Guilty Gear, all of which is still compatible with the new rules.

Two of the biggest changes are the introduction of Keywords (a series of tags that serve as a sort of summary to a Move's Elements, which helps keeping track of things like how the Move interacts with combos, or if there are any special effects to worry about), and a complete overhaul of Style Changes with a system that is much more sensible and less confusing than the previous iteration.

Character generation and advancement has also been changed up a bit. Thinks like the capability to use ranged attacks or whether or not you have multiple styles are now choices you have to do at character creation. There's nothing too gamebreaking about allowing both later down a Fighter's career, but it definitely helps having a clear vision from the start. And don't worry about characters like Sean from Street Fighter 3. You can still have ranged Super Moves if you can't pull off regular ranged attacks. Super Moves are now less restricted in general. There's is now also a better support for characters that didn't spent too many points on ranged attacks or a high combo count. Want something like Potemkin from Guilty Gear who can't do fancy combos but instead just hits really, really hard? Or someone like Ken from Street Fighter whose uppercuts have better anti-air capabilities than his colleagues? Both are now better supported.

Combat has also been spiced up. Fights can now take place on a 2-dimensional grid for something less abstract and more traditional. Rules for Environmental Hazards (like walls and ring-outs) have also been overhauled (the old rules could get very confusing, especially if there were more than one hazard around). Another fun addition are rules to scale up Thug groups, in case your idea of Thug Thrashing looks less like Final Fight and more like Dynasty Warriors.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the book turned out. It changed what needed to change and refined the rest, overall ending up exactly how I'd imagine a second edition to be.

Fight! in General

Fight! tries to captures the essence of fighting games in tabletop form. Combat therefore makes heavy use of things like combos, hit stun and Super Moves. The "arenas" where the fights take place are handled very abstract, with the distance between characters being more important than what this distance actually translates to in-game. Are they just fighting in a simple tournament ring? Or does the fight take place on the roofs and/or walls of several skyscrapers? It matters not.

There are no predetermined classes, fighting styles or weapons for characters. Everything is defined by a character's move set, which is build in an effects-based way using Elements and Liabilities. For easier conversion from the source material, the Level of a move (higher levels having a higher starting number of Elements) can be based on the move input it would have in a video game, which is a pretty ingenious idea. I also love how high-level moves are balanced by being harder to pull off during the actual fight, which elegantly prevents situations seen in other effects-based systems where a clever player just pours all points into a single power to rule them all.

At its heart, Fight! is a toolkit, meant to be shaped to emulate whatever fighting game the group likes the most. Want combat to feel more like Tekken than Street Fighter? That's an option. Want something like Guilty Gear or BlazBlue where (almost) everyone can double jump and air dash? That's an option. And how does Super Energy work? Does the campaign even have Super Moves? It's all for the players and GM to decide.

The game even comes with different combat systems for different tastes (which you can even switch during a session): The standard system is the closest emulation of a fighting game, with characters building intricate combos on the fly to juggle each other. This system is also the most unorthodox for a roleplaying game (and easily the combat system with the most crunch in this book), but the learning curve isn't too steep. But what if your group's idea of a fighting game RPG is less like Street Fighter II and more like Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie?. That's what Dramatic Combat is all about. Moves are a lot less spammable, and characters can now make use of their Skills during combat to get the upper hand on their opponent. This system is overall more streamlined and more in line with a regular tabletop RPG. But Fight! can do more than just fighting games. The Thug Thrashing rules are an optional add-on for both combat systems that allow the players to fight their way through waves of cannon fodder, similar to Final Fight, Streets of Rage and other beat 'em ups.

And I dare say Fight! is even more versatile. The toolkit approach of the game make it a good candidate to capture the feel of various action titles, with Devil May Cry and pretty much everything made by Platinum Games being good examples. Things like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter aren't too out of the question as well, though they'd probably require more house rules.

Naturally, it's easy to think the game is mainly to play out tournaments, but that's kind of like saying D&D is mainly for gladiatorial combat. Players aren't at all limited in the type of adventures they can have. Even if genre covnentions will probably result in violence being an even more common solution for every problem than is usual for tabletop RPGs.

Overall, the game can feel like an unconventional blend of abstractness and crunch at times, but it's a wonderful engine to emulate video game action with all those combos and juggles kept intact.