Cleopatra Fortune is one of my favorite puzzle games, and I think you should play it. I think it's an incredible game with a lot of interesting layers both the solo arcade mode and the versus mode. This version isn't the worst, but it's also far from the best and has some issues. I recommend you play it, and if you have no interest in purchasing a second hand copy, this is probably your best bet. However, I do have an incredibly long series of issues with it, and would like to let you know that the Playstation version is still broadly available in America for like, under 20 bucks, sealed.
It's basically a reheated Saturn iso with very few additional features.
I haven't tested it against every controller, but it does have the option to remap controls, and remapping is surprisingly quick and easy.
All the quirks of the Saturn version are here, like the deafening sound effects, the retuned versus damage, the puzzle mode...It's *functional* in English but some things have gotten lost: specifically, the language in the in-game manual is confusing or incorrect, and the clear conditions for the various puzzle stages are notably not in English, which is going to make some levels very confusing.
Notably, depending on how and when you load the game, the audio is emulated incorrectly, and causes the music to be played choppy and slow, while sound effects are played half a second too late, which is kind of irritating. I don't know exactly how to reproduce this bug, but since it happens roughly a third of the time I launch the game, it clearly isn't something too hard to do.
Arguably this port's best feature is the savestate and rewind features, which you should use to practice counterstopping...but this is also a feature users had access to in an emulator.
Basically anything that required City Connection to do any work on the game itself did not happen, so there's only one rotate button (despite it being a common romhack for games like this), and no leaderboards here on Steam, or one operated by City Connection. There's no Caravan mode, but since the counterstop can be performed in under five minutes, I suppose there's no reason to include it without actually addressing the counterstop in the first place.
There's no netplay!!! For versus!!! Even though you can do that!!! On the internet!!! Right now!!! For free!!!
As a turbo megafan of this game, it's been a bit of a disappointment, but if this is literally your only way to play, it'll do in a pinch. I suppose this is probably the most convenient way to play CF in person at home or in a tournament setting without buying aftermarket software and hardware, but given the ongoing pandemic, this was not an urgent problem for people playing and competing in CF.
