Savage Reign

When Savage Reign released in early 1995 it didn't generate too much buzz. In the four years since the release of Capcom's Street Fighter 2, the market had become flooded with fighting games both 2D and 3D alike which led to eventual genre fatigue not just from game critics of the day, but also the general consumer. What with the excellent King of Fighters 95, Fatal Fury 3, and Samurai Shodown 3 all being released the same year, SNK competed with themselves during this era just as much as they did with their main rival Capcom...not to mention the dozens of other publishers fighting for their pugilistic presence in the hearts and minds of gamers. Basically, Savage Reign had an uphill battle to climb for fighting game supremacy during the mid-90's. Still, it saw some success and would lay the groundwork for a much better game that would release the following year. 

Despite the wildly popular Fatal Fury 3 coming out not quite a month earlier, Savage Reign performed well enough for SNK in game centers during its launch window with the Japanese arcade industry publication Game Machine siting the game as the seventh most successful game in Japanese arcades by June of 1995. Sadly, there are no long-term sales numbers to go off of, but one can assume that Savage Reign just didn't have the chops to compete against the genre's very best given it's barely remembered today outside of arcade and SNK game enthusiasts. While it saw a release on the Neo-Geo AES and Neo CD both in Japan and western territories, it did not receive home ports to any of the popular home consoles of the day further hurting its longevity. Thus, this unique but flawed fighter was relegated to the arcade and expensive Neo-Geo hardware for the better part of a decade before it finally saw a port to the PS2 toward the end of 2005 in a combo pack with it's sequel Kizuna Encounter. 

As SNK's second weapons-based fighting game series, Savage Reign isn't quite as methodical as Samurai Shodown due to the interesting mechanics pulling much of their inspiration from Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. Given that the events in Savage Reign take place in the same setting as the other two games, it makes sense. The main gimmick in Savage Reign is an evolution of the line-sway mechanic from Fatal Fury paired with the huge character sprites and screen-space scaling the Art of Fighting games were known for. Let's dig in. 

Savage Reign is a part of what I call SNK's South Town Canon. The events that take place in Savage Reign happen in the 21st century well after the events of SNK's flagship Fatal Fury series. This is the far future, and South Town has changed considerably. In the absence left by local crime lords like Geese Howard, a new menace has risen - King Lion. Set to find the strongest fighters around, he holds a tournament called the Battle of the Beast Gods where nine combatants vie for fame, fortune, and ultimately a chance for revenge. The lead character, Hayate, wants to prove his fighting style called Fuun-Ken (boomerang arts) as the ultimate martial art while the rest of the cast has their own revenge-based agenda against King Lion.

The nine main combatants are a mixed bag of designs that don't quite have the level of "SNK Cool" the company was known for. Actually, they are kind of generic overall - especially characters like Carol the Gymnast and Nicola the...wiz kid? That said, there are a few decent designs that would be fleshed out in the sequel like Chung Paifu who is said to have received his ballcap from a certain "Legendary Lone Wolf" in his past. While the designs leave a bit to be desired, the input commands for their special moves are less than traditional. 

Much like the Art of Fighting series, Savage Reign is a four button game with three action buttons where the strength of the attack will depend on how long the button is pressed. 

• A = Punches

• B = Kicks

• C = Weapon

• D = Line Switch

What's interesting is that this is one of few Neo-Geo games that allows you choose a predetermined button layout in the options menu when running in AES mode. This is one game that I highly recommend playing with an AES bios if you're playing on emulator so you can choose the second control option as the first makes little sense. 

Along with your normal attacks, there are a bevy of weapon throws you can perform and numerous line-sway options that change up your attacks when you're about to jump to the back plane - which could be either a pole you hang from or an actual platform to stand on. Unlike Fatal Fury where the second plane is always directly behind the player sprites, the second plane in Savage Reign is always on higher ground so you'll need to account for not only horizontal placement, but vertical trajectory as well. 

While the line-switch mechanic sounds cool in theory, and it works okay in game, it makes the actual bouts rather slow paced and it does become cumbersome chasing your opponent around the screen. It's an innovative mechanic to be sure, but it doesn't have the finesse of the implementation in the Fatal Fury series. 

I'm all for unique control mechanics in fighting games. Lord knows that in 1995 anything that didn't play exactly like Street Fighter 2 was uncommon. Still, some of the special move inputs are absolutely horrendous to try to execute in a match. For example:

• Gozu's Mudoh Goenha is performed by doing a quarter circle down, then pressing up and either A or B. 

  • Basically, it's a backwards Hadoken (fireball motion) with an additional input at the end. Because games of this era had rather strict input detection, that final input had to be on frame or you'd jump. 

  • To pull this move off consistently you either need to jump in and buffer the first part of the move in the air and risk an empty jump, or you could quickly perform it out of a blockstun when you can't jump. 

While many of the inputs are fighting game standard like half circle sweeps and the like, you have an odd mix of other inputs that are not intuitive to pull off in a match. The crux of this is that you'll rely more on your normals, footsies, and universal weapon attacks rather than your special moves by and large. Outside of some jank, there are no intuitive combos to speak of, like simple two-in-ones or links, that had become fighting game staples by this point.

Savage Reign has a variety of interesting movement and defensive options that were uncommon for the era. Rather than having access just to a simple forward and backward dash, you have the option to create longer dashes by pressing down back or down forward before the dash input (forward, forward or back, back). Like most mechanics in the game, it works well in theory but is cumbersome to use in practice as it makes crouch blocking a risky move to dash out of. Again, aping mechanics from Fatal Fury, you can parry an opponent's attack by pressing forward + A on the frame just before their attack connects with your hit box. 

All in all, the general gameplay in Savage Reign is innovative but sloppy. That's not to say the game does not feel good to play as every strike and animation is expertly crafted to provide generous feedback to the player. Taking the time to really "git gud" at the game is a hard recommendation these days as there are very, very few people out there that can actually play the game at a high level. Playing against the AI is also a lesson in tedium as it retains the signature frame-perfect counters by the computer on any difficulty level that these classic SNK games are known for. Thankfully SNK fixed this shoddy AI algorithm in 1996 for the vast majority of their titles. 

So, if the actual gameplay feels good but is sloppy in its execution, how does the presentation hold up? Not much better. As mentioned before, the character designs are a mixed bag ranging from just okay to terrible, with no one character really having that level of "cool" SNK had become known for. The sprites are no doubt well drawn and full of detail, but it's the actual designs that lack flair and cohesion. For a game of this size with so few characters on order, the animation is choppy at best - being marginally better than the first Art of Fighting that released three years prior. 

Thankfully, most of the stage backgrounds are beautiful works of pixel art with an obscene amount of depth and detail. Chung's Chinatown stage, while a bit of a rip off of Chun-Li's classic background from Street Fighter 2, is packed to the brim with interesting things to look at that never distract from the gameplay. That said, not all backgrounds are bangers, but they are the most interesting part of the visual design overall. 

The music in the game is...dire? It just doesn't have the up-tempo beats and groovy, innovative genre mashups you'd expect out of SNK's sound team by this point in the 90's. It's not bad music, just not exactly the best tunes to fight to. Still, the game has a centralized theme (Hayate's theme) that is prevalent in both this game and it's sequel. Sound effects are great, though, with good impact effects and bass behind every attack. Voice overs are well done as expected in an SNK game from this era, though it does feel a little spartan compared to other SNK fighters. 

At the end of the day, Savage Reign isn't an unplayable game and is quite innovative all things considered. But the execution of that innovation is sloppy at best and often times gets in the way of your enjoyment. The Savage Reign series is a test bed of ideas for SNK, so each game in the series plays completely different from not just each other, but every other fighting game SNK released. There is nothing else like it, that's for sure. But in Savage Reign's case...that's not necessarily a good thing. 

Prices on Savage Reign are more than what I'd recommend you pay for a copy in the modern world we live in. In 2023 you can snag a complete Japanese AES copy for around $500 if you land on a good deal. The US edition is far, far more expensive and not at all worth the price of admission unless you're an ardent shelf collector. MVS and CD editions are both under $100 and that's where I recommend you put your money if you simply must have a physical copy for your Neo-Geo collection. 

The only port of the game is on the Fuun Super Combo pack on Playstation 2. You can snag this double pack physically on PS2 or download it in the modern era on your PS4/5 for just a few bucks. It includes both Savage Reign and its much, much better sequel Kizuna Encounter. Rather than use emulation on the back end, these are true ports and stay very true to the Neo-Geo originals. Both games also include arranged soundtracks, which is notable as Kizuna Encounter never received a CD release so it's the first instance of an arranged soundtrack for that particular game being available. 

If you're just getting into Neo collecting, give Savage Reign a hard pass. It will be fun for the first few minutes you play it and you'll think, "this is a smashing good time!" Unlike other maligned fighters on the hardware like Visco's Breaker's Revenge or Data East's Fighter's History Dynamite, there just isn't enough finesse to make Savage Reign something you'll play too often. Even on Fightcade (a PC centric emulator client) where the very best fighting game players in the world thrive in our modern era, there is nobody that plays this game. 

While I would recommend picking up Kizuna Encounter instead and calling it a day, all versions of that game on Neo hardware have become impossible dream items for even the most ardent of collectors in the modern era and will cost you multiple thousands on AES or hundreds on MVS. Check out my Kizuna Encounter review for details on this legendary but obscenely expensive game.