The King of Fighters is back with SNK’s The King of Fighters XV (KOF XV). Nearly thirty years since the series began in ’94, the developers intended to make KOF XV the crowning achievement in the franchise. Let’s have a closer look.
KOF is one of those franchises that’s so deep, and so wide, you could really write a book on it. I have played, at least for a few minutes if not many hours, every entry in the series since the late 90s. Each game was always deeper and more technical than I ever cared to try to master — the half circle and diagonal movements required to pull off the special moves and so forth still give me fits to this day. Hell, I couldn’t even fully complete the tutorial in KOF XV because I simply could not execute a hyper hop, haha. I knew that my skill set for KOF XV would be just as limited as it always has been because of what they expect you to be able to do with the left joystick. I have the same issues in most other Japanese-developed fighting games, like Street Fighter and BlazBlue, for example.
Anyway, KOF XV brings with it thirty-nine characters out of the proverbial box, with more likely to come with paid DLC. This is a potential slippery slope, though, as we saw with the multi-year, very expensive Tekken 7 rollout that culminated in the $120 Definitive Edition. Hopefully, SNK doesn’t go that route, but time will tell. Regardless, thirty-nine characters to start is pretty good, and it’s enough to make thirteen three-character teams. As you may know, KOF is played 3v3, but you cannot tag your characters in-and-out during the course of a match. Instead, players must select your first, second, and third fighters before the match launches. The inability to tag is interesting, I’m not sure why SNK does not prefer that kind of design.
Still, the game is a lot of fun. I took my favorite trio of the bunch — Kyo, Joe, and Terry, though I wish Kim were available — and ran through the Story Mode in about an hour. I spent almost twice as much time on the final boss as I did on the half dozen or so matches leading up to the final boss (not losing any of them, but almost), which to be honest, was frustrating. After about the twelfth try on the final boss, Otama=Raga, I caved and used one of the Continue services that was offered, which reduced the final boss’ health to 50%. I didn’t really care about the story or the characters, so cheating a bit there didn’t both me.
That said, The Story Mode was surprisingly brief, in my opinion, and it wasn’t great. Much of it is centered around a over the top on-air broadcast format, which is just plain cheesy. You have a reporter character, a big crowd cheering in an arena; I didn’t care for this type of atmosphere and personally prefer a more serious and less zealous atmosphere. Be that as it may, the Story Mode was serviceable, with a few cutscenes in between some of the matches, but in general I found it fleeting and totally uninteresting. If I recall correctly, KOF XIV ended with a strange character named Verse destroying the old KOF arena. That entity returns, sort of, in KOF XV. I’m not up on the history of KOF stories, but KOF XV, I believe, puts a bow on some of the previous story arcs that include the Orochi, NESTS, and Ash sagas. For series enthusiasts that know their KOF history, there’s probably a lot more fan-service here than I was able to recognize. Anyway, the game has a lot bigger and more robust multiplayer section, which is where I believe SNK is steering players.
Multiplayer has worked very well for me, and features the rollback netcode that makes latency and delayed input much less of a problem. In my limited testing, I didn’t run into any problems at all. It’s not a mode I will stick with, as I don’t care for online multiplayer with randos, but at least this major element to the game seems to be working completely out of the gates, which isn’t always the case with new game releases. Bravo to SNK there, too.
Local versus mode is included of course, and there are lots of various unlocks and things to explore with KOF XV as well. A large Gallery features movies and voices for fans to check out, and the DJ Station packs over 300 tracks from various SNK games, including past KOF games and other SNK franchises. You can customize the soundtrack to the game with these tracks as you go, and that’s pretty cool. Side note, I really liked the bombastic menu song in KOF XV. It takes about twenty seconds to get going, but it’s a treat once that bass hits. The menu, by the way, is easy to navigate and well thought out.
As far as gameplay mechanics go, KOF is plenty deep, with the newest mechanic (and I think only new gameplay mechanic, actually) being Shatter Strike, a massive single-attack move that can turn the tide of a match. Besides that, you have a lot of other mechanics that were previously in the series, like Super Cancels, Blow Backs, EX and Super moves, multiple Power levels, and quite a few more. If I’m honest, I don’t understand a lot of these, and given my persistent struggle with controller inputs, I never got to use (with any reliability anyway) many of these mechanics. I did like the ability to evade with L1, which allowed me to roll towards and away from enemies, making or closing gaps as needed. For the final boss, by the way, creating any kind of distance seemed like a mistake, thanks to its instant, full-screen reaching attack. Anyhow, outside of my own struggles with the controls that happens in every Japanese fighting game, I liked what KOF XV had to offer in terms of special moves and mechanics.
KOF XV is a heck of a fighting game that spans a massive, rich history. Personally, I would have loved a bigger focus on local play, and less-to-no focus on online multiplayer, but I get that it’s 2022 and fighting games can’t survive that way. As is, the local, offline offerings are pretty slim; fun, and serviceable, but pretty slim. Netcode and presentation are solid. I thought the graphical choices SNK went with for KOF XV were great. All-in-all, there’s a lot to like about this release. I’m not sure what SNK plans for paid DLC, but suspect there will be more than thirty-nine fighters in the roster when it’s all said and done. At release, KOF XV is technically sound on all fronts and fun to play. It’s great to see this series still getting serious attention from SNK, and hopefully the fighting community will be moved to support this classic franchise.
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