Some people like to go hard on this game, but I want to try to provide some context to why that's happening.
Is this a great crossover game? Fuck no. I have read that this game is the result of a cancelled project (Capcom Fighting All-Stars). All that remained from that was one character (Ingrid), and the idea of Capcom characters fighting.
The end result is a game that seemed to be rushed to the finish line, and it's sad because I feel like a great opportunity was missed here. Instead of a decently sized roster of characters, this game got a rather small roster of characters, and some strange choices were made. Essentially, the roster feels like "Street Fighter vs a few other games." Seriously, it has 4 characters from Street Fighter II, one of which is Zangief, yet again in these crossover games. I guess he has a large following in Russia...well, this game is a better fit for him than the "Marvel vs." games. Let's keep going with the roster, Shin Akuma is also representing Street Fighter II for some reason, so that's 5 characters there. 4 more from Street Fighter Alpha, and then 4 from Street Fighter 3.
13 characters from Street Fighter, 9 from Darkstalkers and Red Earth. There's also Ingrid, who is an original character that later became a Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX character (the PSP version).
This game doesn't play badly, but the roster with mostly recycled (and strangely pixelated in some cases) sprites, limited number of stages, easy final boss (if I can beat him with Chun-Li, that's not a good sign, I'm pretty bad with her), stages with lazy spritework, and the fact that most of the characters have the Street Fighter-like gameplay....all of that makes this feel like an unfinished game.
For instance, the Darkstalkers and Red Earth characters have different fighting styles...this may not seem that broken at first, but a few minutes of playing as Darkstalkers characters made me realize that they have an unfair advantage over everyone else with that combo system. Unbalanced fighting system right there. The Street Fighter characters mostly feel like their Street Fighter Alpha selves, imo, which is not bad...but I've seen this before. That's ultimately the biggest problem with this game. At the time this came out, Capcom vs SNK 1 was old news. Capcom vs SNK 2 was getting old. The Street Fighter Alpha games were already old enough to get tossed into a compilation for the PS2 (which I owned and loved).
Capcom Fighting Evolution/Jam needed to shake things up somehow, and instead, it felt like a project thrown together without a care in the world. It shook things up alright, but not in a good way.
I should mention this: it's a 2-on-2 fighter, and between rounds, you can change who will fight in the next, but that system just feels so pointless. "Marvel Vs." games let me tag out any time I wanted. Why not at least try something like that here? Instead, you could, in theory, go the entire game without using your partner at all. There will be times when the AI will just not use the other fighter on its side, which is lame.
Oddly enough, this game falls into that SVC Chaos: SNK vs Capcom territory. In a vacuum, this game is not bad at all, you may even say it's good. But this wasn't in a vacuum, there are high expectations for a crossover game like this, and it totally underwhelmed when it came out.
I know that Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite was a disappointment many years later - Disney and Marvel's restrictions were part of the problem with that title...so much so, that in fact, maybe, just maybe, a proper attempt at making a Capcom Fighting Evolution/Jam sequel could be nice. But if it's like this again? No, thank you. This game needed a LOT of DLC, and it just happened to come out when that wasn't a trend in video games...It's such a shame. Check out the soundtrack (!!!) and the intro to this game. It looks like it could be a blast. However, for me, everything went downhill as soon as I got past the title screen. There's only an Arcade Mode, Vs Mode and a Training Mode - Not even a survival mode, no color edits, just those 3 modes to play.
As they would say on X-Play, if they were to review this: "Capcom Fighting Evolution gets 3 Adon sprites in the background...out of five."