The King of Fighters XV – Let me slap you in the face!
- Developer:SNK Corporation
- Publisher:Koch Media
- Release date: 17th February 2022
- Genre: Fighting Game
- Platforms: PS4/5, Xbox One/Series X|S, Microsoft Windows
- Reviewed on: PS5
- Game Supplied by: Publisher
The King of Fighters XV – Review
I’m fifty years old and slowing down – I’ve never really done much more than dabbled with a few fighting games such as Mortal Kombat, BlazBlue and Dead or Alive. Surely, for a game that requires players to have incredible twitch reactions and skills, there is nothing here in The King of Fighters that an old fart like me can get out of it and dare say enjoy it? Well, slap me silly. Yes, I can! I love it! I’m awful at the game on anything other than the easiest of levels, but my goodness this is brilliantly entertaining fun!
Simple and effective
As someone who enjoys the hack and slash genre, the thing that sets those games apart is the game’s mechanics that allow players to express themselves on the battlefield with ease. Although a different genre of game, this is exactly why I enjoyed playing The King of Fighters XV.
I was fearful that the game would inundate me with a multitude of hard to remember combinations, and although you will still be tested, there aren’t ridiculously complicated movesets to learn. All of the attacks are either from button prompts and/or movements of the left stick. What made this even better was that the game facilitates custom button assignments, so combinations of buttons can be assigned to just one input. For example, combining a light and heavy kick that normally takes two buttons could be assigned to just one, like R1 or L2, if you so chose to do so.
My only issue with the controls was that I struggled to perform any move sets that required ¼ or ½ turns of the controller joystick alongside button presses. I had a rubber extension on my PS5’s thumbsticks which hindered me, so taking this off to shorten the stick length back to the original size improved my ability to perform these moves.
It was still difficult to pull the power moves off, but the game is designed to be this way. If it was easy to pull off your character’s most powerful move each and every time then players could just spam them and ruin the balance of the game. The satisfaction of building your metres up to full effect, and then pulling a difficult power move off is rewarded, in the right circumstances, by literally destroying an enemy’s full health bar in one go. The high damage dealt gives an indication of its difficulty to perform.
The complete move set of each character is mostly the same, apart from each character also has a limited number of unique moves for players to learn. That’s not to say each character plays the same, as the base punches and kicks felt different for each character, and they all differ in speed, reach and effectiveness. Learning and adapting to these variations was tremendous fun, as I then had to match these to my own personal style.
As you fight, you build up bars on a meter. You can build this up to five full bars, but at any time you can use these bars up to perform evasive techniques or special moves. I often found myself thinking, do I take this punishment to save my bar towards a match-winning power move or use it up a little to get out of this situation? Many times I found myself waiting for my bar to completely fill, but lost a round in the process. It’s an extra level of strategy that can sometimes be amiss in fighting games.
There are five levels of special moves ranging from a simple Max-mode attack to the Climax Super Special Move. However, once you know and learn what these attacks look like, there are also counter moves to negate them. For those who struggle with achieving the more complex modes, Rush Mode is a simpler special attack, as it simply requires four quick successive button hits to initiate a powerful shot.
The game does come with a story mode, which carries on from where the story left off in KOF14, however, in typical fighting game fashion, calling it a “story mode” is being generous. The reward for completing the story was a short film in the movie section; Completing the game with different teams unlocks different film endings.
Combat.
The game is based around teams of three, whether in the story or offline/online modes. The teams do not tag in and out, rather they have an order and will keep going for as long as their health lasts. That means that if your starting fighter of three wins the first match with half health left, then that’s what they will start round two with.
This system leads to a tactical element when choosing the order of your fighters. On occasion you are given a predetermined set of fighters to use, so knowing the pros and cons of each fighter helps when deciding in which order to use them.
KOF XV has 18 stages, and each is varied with interesting backgrounds, but unlike some other fighting games there are no environmental interactions that you can use in your fights. It’s all about facing the person in front of you, nothing else.
Graphics and Audio
The colour and artwork is something that doesn’t always get mentioned in games, but it most definitely should be here; The movement and graphics really make this game something special, and I loved seeing each character’s moves, and the interplay with one another, amongst the gorgeous locations.
The clarity of the characters on next-gen consoles is gorgeous, as everything has a sharpness and a smoothness to it. One of my concerns when playing a fighting game is losing sight of my character in the middle of a sequence or spectacular finisher so that I couldn’t see what to do to either carry on or react. Although there are some amazing, bombastic and over the top visuals, I could always tell where my character was. Even during the most testing of visual times, the tight responsive controls meant the act of fighting was a joy, as I always felt in control and not “lost” on the screen somewhere.
The visual excitement is complemented by the excellent soundtrack and audio. The authentic sounds of the kicks, punches, and exertions of the characters while they perform their moves is intoxicating. Over time, I started to understand what each character was doing not just by their movement, but also by the sound of their effort. It wasn’t just about learning the move set of a character, it was adapting to the visual and audible clues too.
Online, it’s all about online!
The longevity of the King of Fighters XV will depend on the multitude of online modes, couch co-op, and how well the game actually works online.
Most of the online modes are self-explanatory, but the most interesting is Room Match. In Room Match, you host your own lobby, and you and your friends can invite or join other people online and fight together. Rather than all fighting at once, you can spectate matches and watch your friend destroy an enemy, then they can watch you get pummelled in your fight. It’s a very sociable way to slap each other around!
It was hard to actually find players to play against for the review, but by expanding the search to any region, with any quality of netcode, I did manage to find some. For the most part, and remember this is before any day one patch, even when expanding my search outside of my region, it worked flawlessly. Only on one occasion did I notice the game stutter or not work as though I was playing offline. It’s a credit to the team, who have specifically made an effort to work on the GGPO rollback netcode, that it runs as smoothly as it does.
When you put it all together.
I’ll be honest. Whenever I’ve fought against another human opponent, I’ve had my arse handed to me time and time again. The thing is, though, you always have counters available to whatever attack you are facing, you just have to learn them. Once I understood this concept, I found that with each fight I was learning more about myself and my characters, and started to get just a little bit better each time. The game, although brutal if you are on the receiving end of being hammered, is still fair.
In contrast to online play, where your skills (or lack thereof) are crucial to winning or losing, playing offline is much more accessible. There are many gameplay options available to tweak the game, so even noobs like me can enjoy the story mode and offline fighting and still feel like a powerful badass.
Summary
The King of Fighters XV on its surface is a very shallow game. The story mode is over before you know it, the tutorials don’t fully explain all of the systems, and unlike other fighting games that have evolved their single-player offerings, it feels very limited. However, for those that love the series, The King of Fighters XV is an excellent refinement of an already winning formula. The depth to be found learning the nuances of each character, alongside the brilliance of the simple but hard to master mechanics, ranks KOF XV as one of the best yet. To get the most longevity of the game you’ll have to take it online, but thanks to the excellent rollback netcode, matches play out smoothly. This King should be alive for a long time to come.
