Vampire Savior from PowerUp 2011

I finally got around to watching these matches from a few weeks ago, only to realize that I've made a terrible mistake: I've neglected Vampire Savior for too long. It's a hopeless realization, because now is definitely not the time to be picking up an obsolete fighting game. However, watching the game played at a high level (e.g. Kajoq's Lei Lei) makes me realize how exciting and offense-oriented the game is. It seems to be fairly comparable to Third Strike, which may be my favorite fighting game of all time. How did I let this game pass me by?

Long ago, I decided that the Vampire games were not for me. I played very little Darkstalkers and even less Nightwarriors. Within a few games, I came to dislike what I thought was an emphasis on animation over gameplay. It seemed to me that too many moves in the game caused some sort of protracted knockdown accompanied by flames, smoke, or electricity. The pacing of the game was somehow off. When Vampire Savior came around, I barely noticed its existence. The game doesn't have the issues that bothered me in the earlier games, yet I never paid it any mind. As far as fighting games go, I'll now think about Vampire Savior as the one that got away.