I can tell you that Fight Crab 2, developed by Calappa Games and published by PLAYISM, is just as nuts as the previous entry in the series, but with a few more features and a lot of nice QOL features to boot.
To start, every crab, weapon and power that featured in the first game has made a triumphant return in the second, as has on and offline free and ranked matches, single and co-op, and the training mode. What’s slightly different are challenges and the campaign mode. In the first Fight Crab, story mode was a series of specific challenge levels leading to the final battle against the ultimate crab. In Fight Crab 2, by contrast, there is a campaign mode that pays homage to the monster rancher series, in that your goal is to train your crab and win in order to earn the right to ascend to the crab nebula, with the option to perform one of three matches each in game “month”, usually an event match with a special victory condition like saving or protecting humans, an exhibition match with special rewards, and a ranked match that moves your chosen crab up in the rankings to fight stronger crabs and reap greater rewards. The matches that are available change each month, and certain activities can take multiple “months” to complete, so be careful not to skip over valuable training months to improve your chosen Crab’s stats.
Each match gives some form of a reward, be it in the form of a new skill, new in battle items or spells, new weapons to equip to crabs, limited use items like transformation and retry coins, as well as crab money which makes a return from the first game.
Challenge mode is much like the levels of the original game, a pre-set selection of matches available at any time. Most of these were available from the start, with only a metal crab assault still locked when I booted up the game.
At its fundamental core, the combat is very similar to Fight Crab. Crabs still have a damage counter that makes them easier to push and knock down as it rises, crabs still can smack and pinch each other, or attack with wild weapons and even wilder mounts, and crabs lose the moment they are on their backs on the ground after a count of three. That may sound like things are the same, but there’s tons of subtle differences – especially in campaign mode – that set Fight Crab 2 apart from Fight Crab.
First, let’s talk the controls. In Fight Crab you controlled movement with the directional pad and controlled each arm independently with one of the sticks. If you want, that is still in Fight Crab 2 as classic mode, but there’s also modern mode, where you control both arms with the right stick and movement with the left stick. This means you can access spells and traps much quicker as they are immediately available without need for any hotkey. You get to switch between these modes each time you start the game and you can change it in settings, so don’t worry about getting locked in. Another major change is your super moves. In Fight Crab you would collect super moves that you could execute upon filling a super bar by holding your arms in the right positions. In Fight Crab 2, the supers and meters are still there, but you only have one equipped at a time and you unleash it with a single button, making them much easier to pull off in the fast paced and frantic fights of Fight Crab 2. As for spells, you can equip up to four per match in addition to your left and ride hand weapons, and drop them on your enemies to deal damage, push them back, summon reinforcements, and other elements to change the tide of battle. Once you’ve used these up, they’re gone for the fight.
One minor change to the lore and the mechanics is that your crab has a rider now. You are the crab’s trainer and rider and while it is absolutely doing the heavy lifting in battle, you can help out in battle by hopping off and grabbing dropped weapons while your crab handles things as best it can on its own. It hasn’t been the deciding factor in many of the fights, but it’s been nice the few fights it has been.
One other notable change has to do with the shop, but it’s more than just to the shop. Crab money makes a return from the previous game, but it’s no longer used to purchase crabs. Instead it’s used to purchase weapons and items that can be used in campaign mode, including cosmetics, stat upgrades, the ability to change your crab species for a match (you are otherwise fixed to a single crab for the length of a campaign) and to buy continue coins. In campaign mode, if your crab is defeated, instead of simply retrying the match over and over again, your loss is noted and time moves on, unless you have a continue coin, in which case you can spend the coin and then you can retry endlessly until you win. You can also buy new weapons or fuse weapons together to upgrade them.
Instead of being bought with regular crab coins, crabs can be unlocked through a different in game currency, earned primarily through completing in game missions like disarming opponents, pinching their body, climbing on top of them during the three count, and more. In this way the game slows down the unlock of the heaviest and strongest crabs, giving it more of a sense of progression than the original title.
Of course, Fight Crab 2 is just about to release into early access, so there are questions of stability and updates, and on both fronts Fight Crab 2 is doing well. Nearly every day during the time I’ve had my hands on the game there’s been a patch to improve the experience but also at the same time I have not run into any glitches with the game. It’s already a rock solid game and is loads of fun. I’d say Fight Crab 2 is easy to lose loads of time in, but ironically I found that I was spending less time in the game than I thought I had because for the amount of fights I’d been in and the amount of fun I was having; I assumed I had to have been playing a lot longer than I had been. The game really respects your time. You can save and quit at practically any time in campaign mode with no penalty and pick up exactly where you left off. If you like strange fighting games, you will love Fight Crab 2.
Tim played Fight Crab 2 on PC in Early Access.
