King of Fighters XIII first impressions: AAAAAH THIS GAME IS THE BEST

The fighting games I'd been playing were SF4 and Marvel, just like everybody else in the fighting game scene right now. SF4 is a good enough game: it's the easiest to get matches for online, it's the game with the highest level of competition, and until Yun and Yang showed up there was nothing glaringly wrong with its balance. The most offputting flaw of the game was its insistence on anal execution requirements for simple, basic combos. Marvel was a funhouse of characters and ideas, but most of them didn't really make a lot of sense to use compared to other, vastly stronger option. Also, I often didn't feel like wins were earned because the benefits of level 3 X-Factor were so ridiculous.

I eventually dropped Blazblue because the game changed so drastically every six months: I tried to pick it up again with Noel last week but then I realized the gme would be changing again in December and I'd just have to buy a $40 upgrade disc and do all that combo learning (hours and hours!) over again.

So King of Fighters XIII has been very welcome. It's a completely different style of game, and quite frankly it doesn't have any stupid bullshit like I just described.

I personally theorize that the poorly-recieved KOFXII was the beta for this one, released to the market unfinished. Most players agreed that XII was clearly not done, and this game really cements that. More than just "better" than XII, XIII is the complete product. It feels right where XII didn't, and it completes the thoughts that game was starting to work on.

People not intimate with the genre might wonder what the hell the big difference between King of Fighters and Street Fighter is, anyway. Street Fighter is a game about spacing, first and foremost. The movement options are basic. Defense is typically favored over offense. Ryu's basic MO is to pressure from afar with fireballs, after all. In KOF characters like this exist (Athena) but they go about their business very differently.

King of Fighters is about rushing. The characters have a huge amount of movement options, and they are all fast. There's running, there are four different jumps, there's a roll move that goes through almost everything. (See the Beginner's Incomplete Guide for more on this!) It's about getting close to or even around the opponent, finding the opening and killing.

Being so rush-oriented, the game also has a really complex combo system. Basic combos are as easy as Street Fighter, but it gets a lot deeper than that. Depending on how much super move meter you have, you can typically do anywhere from 20 to 80 percent damage off just about any single hit. Of course, mastering all these strings is difficult: there's a complicated network of cancels and links and juggles. The game's tutorial does an okay job of explaining the basics, but in the mission mode you'll get a much better idea of exactly how the combo system is practically used in a match.

The combo system in this game is definitely hard-- the toughest part is the extreme speed required for many of the cancels-- but it's not anal like SF4 and the combos follow a more straightforward kind of logic that I can't honestly say applies to Arc's games. Characters will really need to be worked on in this game, and in the first couple days I've spent a lot more time in training mode than anywhere else. I am going to have to earn my damage.

And that's the nice thing about this game for a genre fan: that you have to earn it. SF4 has the Ultra mechanic for comebacks, which wasn't so bad. Then Marvel has X-Factor, which I don't think any Marvel player actually likes or thinks is fair. XIII, though, is very simple: your super meter, if you know how to use it, measures your potential to kill. I like this.

The rest of the home port is pretty nice: netplay is at about SF4's level, so not great but doable. Color edit is extensive, which is refreshing because everybody likes to charge money for costumes and leave out this feature these days. There's a story mode that I haven't been through yet, but it seems to just be a straight line with talking heads: definitely no Blazblue.

So of course you should buy KOFXIII. It's a beautiful-looking game: like all these HD 2D games, online video doesn't do it full justice. It's flashy and it's fast, and yet it's got nothing that makes me throw up my arms and yell "bullshit!".  The game is just right.

Comments

[Beyla]

wow. I was gonna skip this since SNK has broken my heart so many times, but I think you've convinced me.

[Groove-A]

The roster in XII was one of the reasons I barely played it, but this version has rectified that, though I wish classic Iori was not dlc (Did not like the redesign, not sure if it was a balance issue or something else entirely) Regardless can't wait to give it a try.

[Spankminister]

So I'll agree with you that KOFXII was not done. I'm coming in to XIII as someone who picked up the previous iteration at full price.

I wouldn't say that KOF's relationship with the Super meter is all that simple: there's still Drive Cancel, Hyperdrive activation, Hyperdrive Cancel, etc.

In any case, KOFXIII is definitely an improvement and worthy entry to the series. Most of my issues with it are personal preference and not inherent flaws in the game.