A Shallow Punch.
While fighting games over the past few decades have been duking it out alongside steep competition with the likes of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Tekken, there are still those that have been around for nearly as long, garnering a faithful fan base even if they are not entirely as mainstream or sales blockbusters. These include the likes of Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and even to an extent, Soul Calibur, which has been largely inconsistent in its past few entries. The King of Fighters is yet another, and while it has several memorable and well-known characters such as Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui, it’s a series that despite 15 mainline entries, and some spin-offs, doesn’t seem to get enough love.
The King of Fighters has been a long-running series ever since KOF 94 and even before then as it took characters from previous SNK properties such as Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, making its now long-running series to almost be SNK’s own Smash Bros in a manner of speaking. Since then, the roster has grown, characters have died, new characters have been introduced, but several of its past entries have largely relied on series favorites. While this latest entry sees the introduction of three all-new fighters, at least pre-DLC, its 39 included characters range from all over the series, with some, such as Shermie, coming back to the mainline series after almost 20 years. While several of the new characters featured in KOF IV are not back, apart from being included in a few ending cutscenes, KOF XV feels more like a greatest hits of the series and even features a few “back from the dead” entries.
The cast of characters is split into teams of three, such as having Terry, Andy, and Joe on one, and Yashiro, Shermie, and Chris on another. Of the new fighters, Isla, who has phantom hands alongside her arsenal, is joined alongside the polymorphic arm equipped Krohnen, and the stunningly designed Dolores who can strangely form into puddles to dodge strikes or catch an enemy off guard. While not every character spoke to me from a design and moveset appeal, I have to say, Kula Diamond is without quest my main, despite loving both Mai and Athena as my backups. With 13 additional spaces reserved for DLC characters, which includes a free offering in Omega Rugal next month, there is certainly going to be an impressive amount of fighters here to find your favorite. I will say that it’s a shame that the boss characters are not playable, which is unfortunate considering how visually impressive they are but understand that they may not exactly have an in-depth move set.
Fighting games can often be either too button-mashy or in-depth technical feats reserved for the more hardcode player, and thankfully, KOF XV seems to draw its line in the sand somewhere right in the middle. While a large portion of its special attacks, fall reversals, or evasive maneuvers are harder to pull off when you are simply pressing every button on the controller at random, the included tutorials and character missions will teach you fundamentals to get you up to speed on how you can not only pull off that character’s wealth of tricks but how to avoid and counter almost anything that comes your way.
KOF XV features a pretty simple control scheme with light and heavy punches/kicks, which are assigned to the central face buttons. You can pull off evasive maneuvers and fall recoveries by pressing a combination of light punch and kick or performing guard cancel blow-back techniques by guarding and then pressing both heavy attack buttons to counterattack safely from a guard position. Then you also have shatter strike attacks which are counter moves to leave an opponent defenseless for a quick follow-up by simply performing a half-circle forward motion with the heavy attack buttons. Combine all that with standard throws, counters, and EX special attacks, and you have a lot to master.
Also returning is Max Mode, where your character’s attack and guard crush strength is increased. As you activate Max Mode upon landing a regular attack, Max Mode Quick is activated. This also works if the attack is blocked in any way. Max Mode Quick allows you to combo directly into the next action without being vulnerable to a counterattack. The only drawback to Max Mode Quick is attack and guard crush strength do not increase. One of the best changes to Max Mode is that most other mechanics are not as directly linked to them as they were in KOF IV, meaning you have far more variety to what you’re able to pull off without being too engaged in the Max Mode structure. Also returning from XIV is Rush Combos as you tap Low Punch to start a Rush, and this allows you to easily perform combos with a single button. If you activate Rush and have one or more power gauges stored up, the next attack will vary depending on the fourth input added to the end of that combo string.
While the core fighting mechanics and roster are likely the best KOF has seen in some time, though that is debatable, the game itself is surprisingly shallow, offering very little in the way of modes or a decent story campaign. KOF XV features story, versus, training, tutorials, missions, and online play, and that is it. There is no time attack or survival modes, which have been part of previous games’ offerings before but online data likely indicated they were not being used well enough to include them. While boss rush mode is coming next month, there still isn’t much here to keep most offline players busy for too long.
The story mode here features a few of the same cutscenes between battles regardless of your characters chosen but does absolutely nothing to introduce really any of the new characters or even make any sense of its running narrative to newcomers. Each team has its own comic-style ending, but honestly, only a handful are even worth talking about. Versus allows for 1v1 or 3v3 fights, although I still find it odd that you cannot swap from fighter to fighter in a team and instead pick an order and if one fighter is defeated then you move onto your next selected fighter and so on. While this is the staple of the series, it’s still something that I am at odds with, but that is just personal preference.
MIssions are essentially combo challenges for each fighter, having you pull off moves and combos that work as a more in-depth training system than a tutorial but does a good job at showing you how to play with specific fighters. Online modes, which feature rollback netcode, has your typical offerings of casual and ranked, room matches which are group bouts, online training, and replays. Matches seemed fine for any sort of lag, and while I had one disconnection, and a few issues of finding a fight, the times that it did work it did flawlessly, even if I wasn’t terribly great against those who are clearly making this game their game.
KOF XV is a damn good-looking fighting game without being staggeringly impressive. Character models look fantastic, and the backgrounds are just detailed enough that you don’t get lost in trying to pick the fighters out from their environment. While some animations have been recycled from previous games, the sheer size of the roster certainly is understandable for a few shortcuts to occur. Special attacks and victory screens are solid, colorful, and kinetic, making for a visually pleasing experience. While there is a gallery mode, it shockingly doesn’t have a character viewer, which is a shame since the entire roster can often be just gorgeous to just look at.
From a solo player's point of view, KOF XV is severely lacking in replayability. There are illustrations to cap off some endings, but overall, the story mode is far too basic and minimal for a storied franchise as KOF is. While I don’t see any fighting game matching MK11 in regards to how to pull off a narrative campaign with its roster, I am hopeful that someone at least attempts to put in the effort. If you are keen to play with friends or take the fighting online, then KOF XV has a big enough roster where you likely won’t see the same characters on the other end of your fist too often. Your approach and expectations to KOF XV is going to vary depending on how much time you sink into its PVP modes and what you’ll want as a single player, and honestly, KOF XV is still a damn fun time despite its limited offerings.
Developer - SNK. Publisher - SNK, Koch Media, SNK Playmore USA Corp. Released - February 14th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One/SeriesX/S, PlayStation 4/5, Windows. Rated - (T) Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Tobacco, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.