I love picking up a new fighting game for the first time. Hitting the lab with all the new characters to see what they can do, working out how to use, abuse, and combine the game’s core systems, then putting it all together to figure out ridiculous combos… it’s all just so satisfying, and I can lose myself in training modes for hours before even looking at the other options on offer. That worked out really well for my early impressions of The King of Fighters XV, as it meant it was that little bit longer before I really clocked just how little there was to do in this game in terms of single-player content, with online competition really the only thing to offer this latest KoF any kind of meaningful longevity. I’ve not been able to try out too much of the online stuff yet either, so between that and the fact that a few days isn’t nearly long enough to gauge character balancing with a roster this big, we decided to run this as a first impressions piece rather than a full review. So let’s dive into it!It’s probably best to start with basic systems, as King of Fighters XV has tons happening on that front. The initial tutorial is pretty lengthy but not especially engaging or informative, particularly if you’re new to or fairly inexperienced with the genre — sure, it gets you to do the four different kinds of jump, but it doesn’t exactly do the best job of explaining why there need to be four separate jumps in the first place. Other fighters have done this kind of thing way better by teaching via practical examples. That makes them feel like much more valuable systems, whether it’s showing you how quick hops might be able to catch crouch-happy opponents napping with a fast overhead or to punish unsafe moves that knock back, or how you can sometimes hyper jump over zoning plays, traps, and screen-filling super attacks. Same goes for the emergency moves, which come in offensive and defensive flavours, but a rookie isn’t going to know when to use which — it feels like the devs are assuming a degree of knowledge and skill here, which, for the 15th mainline game in the series, might not be unfair. Still, all it would take is a quick demo scenario where players get to see both versions of the Get Off Me Button put to practical use and suddenly, everyone is on the same page. The tutorial as a whole feels pretty bare-bones, and sadly, it’s not the only element at which this criticism can be levelled, but more on that in a bit. We’ve still got mechanics to talk about!Max Mode returns from previous games, although it’s had a slight rework here. The two versions follow the same basic rules in that Max costs two bars to activate, but they serve different purposes. The regular version has to be activated from neutral, so while it does buff damage and open up some insane combos, it’s also going to put your opponent on the defensive for the duration which will make it that much harder to actually make use of it. Quick mode, on the other hand, can be used to interrupt most normal attacks, effectively giving you a version of Max Mode that you can hit confirm into, albeit at the cost of halving the duration and missing out on the damage buff. You still get the rest of the benefits, though, so EX special moves, supers, and other meter spenders only cost chunks of the Max gauge while active, and the big ones (level two and three supers) each only cost one further bar, though those big level three Climax moves do end Max Mode on use. Still, combine this system with Advanced Cancels and Climax Cancels (effectively both ways of chaining a character’s different supers together) and you can throw out silly numbers — during regular Max Mode, many characters can go from a standard combo into a super in the EX version of their other super, then into their Climax for four bars of gauge total. It’s not especially practical as the first hit would need to land very quickly after activating Max, though if you do manage to land it, it’s almost certainly going to win you the round.As usual, King of Fighters XV is a 3v3 affair, but not like the madness of Marvel. Instead, fighter order is secretly selected ahead of each bout, with each character staying in until they go down and recovering a little health after taking out an opponent. Characters come in sets of three as themed teams, though there’s nothing stopping you crossing the streams and just using any three you like, so long as you can find a trio that can slot into the point, middle, and anchor roles fairly interchangeably to help you deal with bad matchups. Strong point fighters tend to be versatile and able to handle most matchups decently without having to spend too much meter to dish out good damage, anchors want to be those characters with which you’re strongest and who can put in work when they come in as the last line of defense and likely have a decent chunk of meter to burn, and your middle for any given round will just be whoever is left based on who you’re up against. Super gauge capacity also extends as you lose fighters, starting at a cap of three stocks and increasing by one after each loss, with a free bar awarded when the new person comes in. This is a really tidy comeback mechanic in that doesn’t give you too much and it still requires skill to get mileage out of it, though it does mean that point characters will never be able to do anything overly crazy in terms of single combo shenanigans, while late arrivals might just be able to go for a touch-of-death combo if the opponent lets their guard down.3v3 is the main format for both solo and online play, so if you want 1v1 competition, your only options are single matches against the AI or another local player, or setting up a dedicated space online via a singles Room Match. The main issue with such a heavy focus on 3v3, especially for the Story mode, is just how much more dedication it places on players to get up to a decent standard with not one but three fighters, at least one of which they may not even enjoy using. Story mode is, in the spirit of everything about this game beyond the excellent actual fighting, very basic. It’s just eight fights — six standard bouts against stock teams, then two bosses who, while not quite as gross as a lot of other SNK fighter bosses, are still SNK fighter bosses so pull some pretty dirty tricks. The narrative does change slightly if you use particular prefab teams, although as mentioned, that’s going to require a bit of the time in the lab with three characters to see each new twist, unless you fancy just trying to button-mash your way through. On the plus side, there are some really cool unique character intros depending on your matchups, from Ramon trying to score a date with Vanessa if he can beat her to Terry casually chatting with King of Dinosaurs about his past as Tizoc in a Garou callback that got me good. Finishing Story mode with specific custom teams will also unlock a wealth of tunes from previous games in the series and while it’s awesome to see so much classic music freely up for grabs in-game rather than being tacked on as DLC, listing the last of the three fighters needed as ??? in the unlock requirements is sort of a dick move. Outside of Story mode, though, KoF XV has next to nothing to offer solo players. Sure, there are Missions, combo challenges for each character, but these number just five a head, with the first couple usually being so simple that you’ll knock them out first try and the rest just being complex, often impractical Max showboating strings or idiosyncratic character-specific combos… again, dozens of fighters have done this better. There’s not even any sign of the staples that Street Fighter V was lambasted for lacking six years ago, with no arcade, score attack, time attack, or survival modes, or anything else at all for that matter. Story, single AI fights, Missions, and labbing it up in Training… that’s your lot. The online suite is similarly simple, although at least having a slew of different opponents will help keep things interesting there across Ranked, Casual, and Room play. I’ve barely been able to test these yet, but reports from the betas suggest that the rollback netcode is pretty solid, so I’m looking forward to getting involved properly once the game is out in the wild and I can finally settle on a team. I’m a sucker for grapplers so King of Dinosaurs feels like a shoo-in, Vanessa is on lock as SNK’s answer to my Third Strike main Dudley, but that third spot is still up in the air… I’m running Ramon at the moment as his lucha stuff is really enjoyable to string together, but I feel like I’m lacking some ranged pressure so will probably sub him out for B. Jenet or Rock when the first DLC drops. It’s a modern fighting game, so of course there will be plenty more characters coming as paid extras, and while it would be unrealistic to expect a series with a roster this large to bring everyone back every game, seeing a dozen greyed-out slots on the character select screen when the game isn’t even out yet is still a little disheartening. I haven’t talked too much about the characters themselves, so let’s fix that. King of Fighters XV comes with a starting roster of 13 teams of three, so 39 characters total. Which, for a fighting game on day one in 2022, is loads. There’s plenty of variety too, with rushdown characters galore, slow heavy-hitters, grapplers, zoners, and more or less everything in between. There’s also a mix of returning characters and new faces, with the latter in particular providing some wonderful oddballs. Meitenkun has almost a drunken master fighting style, but rather than being boozed up, he’s just really tired; Kukri is a mysterious hooded figure apparently made out of sand; Dolores fights with ‘holy soil’ (it looks a lot like water) and has lots of teleport trickery going on. It does feel like there’s a fair bit of power creep at play here, not in terms of balancing (too early to say) but in terms of the implied capabilities of the new fighters versus the old ones. Shun’ei and his magic phantom hands joined in the last game and he is here met by a female rival with similar abilities (and similarly disastrous dress sense) in Isla, but these jokers just feel a bit out of place compared to many of the returning folks that fight relatively normally. Their outlandish designs make this stand out even more — compare the clean, cool designs for the likes of Terry, King, Robert, and Vanessa to the newcomers and the difference is night and day. That leads beautifully into one thing I haven’t touched on yet and really should, actually. XV’s glow-up after the graphical grossness that was King of Fighters XIV is worthy of a shoutout, and returning characters benefit not just from the naturally cleaner art style and some crisp new designs, but also from subtle changes to things like stances and animation sequences that make them feel closer to their sprite-based counterparts from back in the day. XIV was downright ugly, even if it was a decent game, but this does most of the characters justice and actually looks pretty good… it’s not going to blow anyone away, sure, but for a fast-paced fighter with tons going on at any given moment, the vastly improved visuals help make everything that much more readable, help give characters that much more personality, and help make those flashy Climax supers something you’ll want to see time and again, especially when they’re about to win you a close set. There’s not much to say in terms of achievements at this time as we havn’t seen the full list yet — I’ve grabbed just 13 so far but would assume that the majority will be tied to online competition since that’s clearly the game’s focus. No doubt there will be some for the various Story bonus scenes and for feats of skill there, too, but in a game this clearly focused at the online scene, you just know that’s where most of the meat is going to be. I’m very much enjoying King of Fighters XV, and its core systems are loads of fun, letting you string together crazy combos for massive damage or turn battles around with one well-timed defensive play. But if you’re the kind of fighting game player that looks for at least some degree of meaningful solo content in your games, this one just isn’t going to cut it unless you’re already heavily invested in the series and running Story mode over and over to unlock some old music sounds good to you. If you aren’t someone who lives for online competition, King of Fighters XV is going to be a hard sell. It’s a great fighter, no doubt (we’ll need to see how balance shakes out, but nothing immediately leaps out as being broken) but the options and modes just don’t stack up to the quality of the actual fights, which feel fantastic. If you need me, I’ll be in the lab until launch day…
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