I am not much of a fighting game player. I don't get hyped over new fighting games, and if i do play a fighter it's not for very long. Last game I played was MK11 which I made a thread about last year. Every once in a while I get the itch to play a new fighting game though, and it takes a certain flavor of game to get me interested. Guilty Gear and the Blaz Blu types of fighters I tend to avoid as they have an overabundance of mechanics that is too much for me to really bother with on a super casual level.
From everything i saw with King of Fighters XV however, while there are some mechanics typical to modern fighting games, it didn't seem overly complex at a casual level. So I picked it up.
Right off the bat I want to praise this game's sprites. These characters are some of the best looking fighting game characters I have ever seen, and they move with an incredibly smooth flow that makes it fun to watch even when I'm getting my ass beat in by a 50-hit combo. The levels are beautiful, the cut scenes are beautiful, it's just a really good looking game.
As far as the fighting is concerned, when I took casual glanced at it, I thought it was going to play more like a Marvel v Capcom game. You pick three different fighters for your team and that's what you take into the fights. There aren't really traditional "rounds" that you see in a lot of other fighters. Instead you have to beat all three characters on a player's team to win the fight. However unlike most games that feature three character like MvC or DBZF, you can't swap out to different characters. At the start of the match you can select which order you will use the three fighters on your team and then that's it, you fight with one character until that character looses.
While there aren't rounds like a normal fighter each time you lose or beat a character, there is a brief pause as the game loads up the next fighter in a player's roster. The winning character will gain back some health for winning, then the fight continues. So there are sort of rounds, but not really. Personally I don't really like this system, because I would have liked more flexibility in being able to swap out characters. It just makes the team thing feel a bit pointless because there isn't really a team it's just three separate fighters with a single health bar each. Ultimately it means that you can't just find a single fighter to be your "main", and must instead find three fighters to get a decent level of playabilty with, otherwise if your "main" gets beat you are shit out of luck.
There are lots of modes here which is nice, story mode is what you think it is and you can either play a custom team of 3 or an "official" team of three as laid out by KOF history I assume. The story mode also isn't very long, it's five or six normal fights against teams, then a boss who can be bullshit as fuck which is typical of fighting games like this. Seth, Devil Jin, Shang Tseng, all the same kind of thing. OH and Shao Khan.....FUCK Shao Khan.
Online has a few different modes that are pretty standard stuff, however I had a hard time finding matches. I dunno if it's just because of launch day on PS5 or what. And the matches I did find I got my ass handed to me because....well I probably shouldn't have tried to play ranked mode before I tried to learn a few characters. But it's fine, the achievement doesn't say I have to win the matches, only that I have to do them
. Like MK11 I'll just do it for the trophy and forget about it.
But otherwise yeah, this is cool. The characters are cool, except sleepy kid he sucks, but all the others are great. Game plays smoothly, looks awesome. This is going to be a nice inbetween game for a while.
From everything i saw with King of Fighters XV however, while there are some mechanics typical to modern fighting games, it didn't seem overly complex at a casual level. So I picked it up.
Right off the bat I want to praise this game's sprites. These characters are some of the best looking fighting game characters I have ever seen, and they move with an incredibly smooth flow that makes it fun to watch even when I'm getting my ass beat in by a 50-hit combo. The levels are beautiful, the cut scenes are beautiful, it's just a really good looking game.
As far as the fighting is concerned, when I took casual glanced at it, I thought it was going to play more like a Marvel v Capcom game. You pick three different fighters for your team and that's what you take into the fights. There aren't really traditional "rounds" that you see in a lot of other fighters. Instead you have to beat all three characters on a player's team to win the fight. However unlike most games that feature three character like MvC or DBZF, you can't swap out to different characters. At the start of the match you can select which order you will use the three fighters on your team and then that's it, you fight with one character until that character looses.
While there aren't rounds like a normal fighter each time you lose or beat a character, there is a brief pause as the game loads up the next fighter in a player's roster. The winning character will gain back some health for winning, then the fight continues. So there are sort of rounds, but not really. Personally I don't really like this system, because I would have liked more flexibility in being able to swap out characters. It just makes the team thing feel a bit pointless because there isn't really a team it's just three separate fighters with a single health bar each. Ultimately it means that you can't just find a single fighter to be your "main", and must instead find three fighters to get a decent level of playabilty with, otherwise if your "main" gets beat you are shit out of luck.
There are lots of modes here which is nice, story mode is what you think it is and you can either play a custom team of 3 or an "official" team of three as laid out by KOF history I assume. The story mode also isn't very long, it's five or six normal fights against teams, then a boss who can be bullshit as fuck which is typical of fighting games like this. Seth, Devil Jin, Shang Tseng, all the same kind of thing. OH and Shao Khan.....FUCK Shao Khan.
Online has a few different modes that are pretty standard stuff, however I had a hard time finding matches. I dunno if it's just because of launch day on PS5 or what. And the matches I did find I got my ass handed to me because....well I probably shouldn't have tried to play ranked mode before I tried to learn a few characters. But it's fine, the achievement doesn't say I have to win the matches, only that I have to do them
. Like MK11 I'll just do it for the trophy and forget about it. But otherwise yeah, this is cool. The characters are cool, except sleepy kid he sucks, but all the others are great. Game plays smoothly, looks awesome. This is going to be a nice inbetween game for a while.
