Looks good. Sounds good. Offers a good range of options and unlockables. Plays with frustrating unresponsiveness.
And, sadly, the game's fate has followed it onto the PSP where it is yet again outshone by Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max. Perhaps it is some kind of Macbeth-like curse for dabbling irreverently with creatures of the night, but the series again gets edged out by its less supernatural cousin. This time around, it's not necessarily because of any issues with graphics, sound, character roster, fighting system, game modes, or secret and unlockable features. For each of these criteria, Darkstalkers--though not always the victor--holds enough of its own to remain respectable. Ultimately, the problem with Darkstalkers Chronicle comes down to the unresponsive controls.
It is simply much more difficult to control the characters in Darkstalkers than in SFA3Max, and this makes all the difference to the gameplay experience. The PSP's directional pad was never the optimal controller for a 2D fighter anyway, but at least it is reasonably responsive with Street Fighter. Make a quarter-circle motion forward and follow it with a punch button, and you can rest assured that Ryu will launch a blazing blue fireball and triumphantly shout "Hadouken!" With Darkstalkers, make the same motion with precisely as much care, and even then you will be left wondering whether or not Morrigan will have received the message to fire a Soul Fist at Demitri's smug head. She may just punch the air and leave just long enough of a gap for Demitri to coast in and perform a soul-sucking Midnight Bliss.
You have to be much more precise with Darkstalkers's controls. You have to press the buttons, as Daft Punk says, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." You sometimes have to press with the kind of controller mashing force that leaves your PSP buttons limp and exhausted. And they don't always bounce back from that kind of treatment..
Capcom tries to mitigate this problem by offering the option of a simplified control scheme: The 6-button layout can be reduced to 4-buttons, and most special moves can be executed by combining a single direction and button. While this does simplify the controls, it also simplifies the game, and for even the remotest 2D fighting enthusiast, it is no longer Darkstalkers, but Darkstalkers Lite (Litestalkers?). And who wants that? Gamers have their pride.
Darkstalkers controls are not a deal-breaker. But they interfere enough to reduce the enjoyment of a PSP Darkstalkers session
That one, very frustrating problem aside, Darkstalkers is still a great and entertaining 2D fighter, and has aged very well over the past decade (the undead are, I suppose, immortal after all). The characters are nicely varied and well-detailed and just plain fun to watch. This game collects--for the first time--all versions of all 18 Darkstalkers from the game's three major instalments. And since the game's fighters are monsters, it provides a more dramatic range of character types and fighting styles than other fighters with only human characters. You have your standard vampires, mummies, and electrically-charged Frankenstein monsters, as well as your less common, werebees, succubi, and bounty hunting Little Red Riding Hoods, each with their own sets of monster-themed martial arts moves. The music and backgrounds complement the action smoothly. And, along with the standard arcade and ad hoc versus modes, the game offers a Tower Mode, where you take 3 selected fighters up the 100-floor Chaos Tower in a mega-survival mode, unlocking Darkstalkers artwork as you climb.
Darkstalkers Chronicles: The Chaos Tower for the PSP does a fine, but not flawless, job at compiling the three instalments of what has always been considered--perhaps unfairly--Capcom's other fighting game. And, if it weren't for the lousy controls, the game might finally have had the chance it deserved to best its Street Fighting cousin.