One of the biggest problems I have with playing a lot of fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken is that it can wear out the buttons and, most especially, the D-pad of your typical game pad very quickly. This is just a fact of life, especially when you’re playing a game when you have consistently hold back to block on the D-pad and rapidly jam buttons in a strict rhythm to get your combos in.

I generally play with a regular PlayStation DualShock 4 even when I play PC games because I’ve gotten so used to its form factor and responsiveness. That’s what happens when you’ve been using the same type of controller for decades. Recently, my current controller was starting to act up and I was getting hit when I knew I was holding back to block, I knew I had to get a new one. The biggest problem is, as they are first party controllers, getting a new PlayStation DualShock 4 can get pretty expensive if you go through them at a rapid pace. So, this time around, I decided to look for an alternative controller. One that had the same kind of button layout as the DualShock 4 and was still responsive but was a little bit cheaper.

During my recent trip to the mall, I went to DataBlitz, which is one of the Philippines’ biggest gaming retail chains, to check out what controllers they had in stock. While I was impressed at how they had all sort of fighting sticks in stock, they were actually more pricey than the regular DualShock 4 so they were out of contention. I went to look at the other more compact controllers DataBlitz had and I noticed they had a good selection of 8BitDo controllers. I’ve heard good things about the 8BitDo game pads but most of them followed the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Switch layouts where the left analog stick was at the top and the D-Pad was placed in the bottom. That wouldn’t work for me. Thankfully, the 8BitDo Pro 2 fit the bill perfectly as it used the DualShock 4 layout. I got that as it was cheaper than the DualShock 4. Now that I’ve spent a good week with it, I’m ready to give my thoughts on it now.

I do have to lay out some ground rules for my thoughts. I’m only going through my thoughts when it comes to fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken, not other games like platformers or anything like that. While I know button responsiveness is important for those games, I’m more concerned on how the 8BitDo Pro 2 handles when you have to do weird directions on the D-Pad and the analog stick like quarter-circle motions or charge motions. I’m looking if it feels good doing these motions and if I had to make some adjustments to my muscle memory after switching from a DualShock 4.

Setting the 8BitDo Pro 2 for PC play can feel a little weird if you’re used to the plug-and-play functionality of the DualShock 4. Then again, setting it up is as easy as flipping a switch… literally. There’s a little lever at the bottom-center part of the Pro 2 game pad and you have to move it to the X setting to make it work on a PC. It’s simple in hindsight but it really made me feel like a dummy when I finally figured out what was wrong. Yes, I should’ve read the manual as the information is in there.

As someone who’s gotten incredibly comfortable with the DualShock 4’s form factor, I will say the 8BitDo Pro 2 does fit in my hands quite nicely. It does feel a little bit stout where the shoulder button are and the analog sticks do feel somewhat short and has a tad more stiffness to them. However, both these factors do feel like improvements over the DualShock 4. Your index and middle fingers have more of an inclination to wrap around the shoulder buttons because of the extra mass. As the analog sticks are shorter, you don’t feel the need to move them as far so the travel time from one end to the other feels less.

I do have some issues with the Pro 2’s D-Pad and the face buttons as they all feel much stiffer than the softer feel of the DualShock 4. It does feel a little less natural when holding directions like down-back on the D-Pad because you feel the need to exert more force to hold it in this position. The face button also have that same issue as well. This is actually one of the biggest hurdles to overcome as, while it does feel like your doing whatever you were doing before, it doesn’t feel right. Then again, it might just be you have adapt to this new sensation, which is why, in order to really get an adequate test of its performance, you have to play a game!

I got the Pro 2 controller just in time for Street Fighter 6’s newest DLC character, M. Bison, was launched. It turns out M. Bison is one of the best characters to test out this new controller as his special attacks are both charge motions and circular motions. So I went through some of the moves he has and went through the trials, which should give me a good mix of the aforementioned two types of motions used.

I will say performing the circular motions did take some time to get used to. With the DualShock 4, I could safely rest have my thumb on top of the entire D-Pad and I could easily switch from left to right and down to up directions quickly without moving it from its place. This also made it easy to hit diagonal motions comfortably. I can’t say the same for the D-Pad on the Pro 2. I noticed that I would need to shift my thumb to the diagonals to hit them comfortably. It was still easy to do a quarter-circle motion but I did notice more movement, which I needed to adapt to. Eventually, even doing M. Bison’s Super Arts, which involves doing two quarter circle motions quickly, was something I could to instantly.

Because of this adjustment, doing charge motions felt more tedious to do as I had to consistently keep shifting my thumb. I had to move it from one side of the D-Pad to the other and it just didn’t feel as responsive because of this. The weird thing is I had a much easier time doing these motions on the analog stick, which I don’t normally use on the DualShock 4! I assume because the movement comes off as more shallow on the Pro 2 sticks than the DualShock 4’s so you don’t have to move them as much to reach their full range of motion. This is why I was stuck on M. Bison’s last two trials as they require precisely holding the charge quickly to complete them.

Thankfully, the face buttons don’t require as much force as I thought they would. While there not exactly super sensitive and you do need a little more force for the button push to register, this does eliminate accidental button presses as simply grazing the buttons don’t cause them to activate.

Overall, I’m more than satisfied with the 8BitDo Pro 2 controller. While I will say I still prefer the feel of the DualShock 4, that’s mostly because of how used I am to its little intricacies. The Pro 2 is still more than a decent game pad for fighting games but there is still going to be a learning curve to adapt to. I’m not sure if this is going to be my main game pad down the line but I will say it’s more than just a good substitute for my needs.

Do you have a 8BitDo Pro 2? How does it handle with fighting games? Let me know in the comments section below!