This was actually the first game I bought with my PSP a few months after the system was released, mainly because my then-girlfriend was really into fighting games and somewhat pestered me to get it. Needless to say, I’m a bit disappointed with the purchase.

Darkstalkers Chronicle is essentially all three games from the series packed into a single UMD, mixing and matching the moves, controls, and overall fighting system of each game to make it more interesting. The game includes a standard Arcade mode, wireless versus play (no Wi-Fi though, I believe), and a mode called “Tower”, in which you choose a group of characters to endure a variety of challenges to earn unlockables like artwork.

The real problem of the game is that there’s really no motivation to go back and play it after awhile. With the PSP’s small buttons doing certain moves can be a real pain in the ass, and if you’re not all that good at fighting games then you can only go so far in Tower mode before you get overly frustrated. Nothing ever changes in the game, and the only way to unlock certain items (which aren’t really worth the effort) are to complete ridiculous tasks.

In short, this port is a decent game for fans of the Darkstalkers series, but there are better fighting games out there for the PSP now, like Tekken: Dark Resurrection.