King of Fighters XIV Debuts at E3 2016

King of Fighters XIV Debuts at E3 2016

The King of Fighters franchise has not always been the most popular fighting game series in the United States. Despite its small fanbase KoF XIII was widely praised for both its gameplay and art direction and became well known in the the fighting game community. That was nearly six years ago and now we are getting a new game in the franchise but some had reservations for the new entry in the long standing franchise.

There were a lot of negative reactions to its reveal last year at Tokyo Game show. The graphics, both the fidelity and the art style turned many people off. I was one of those people who didnt like what the game looked like especially after having beautiful hand drawn sprites for the last game. The graphics have improved a lot over the past year and the build shown at E3 was no exception to this trend. I wouldnt call the the game astonishing but a lot of improvement can be seen.

I was able to try the game hands on for the first time and I am very impressed. To be blunt the game feels a lot better than it looks. Classic KoF feel is there including guard cancel rolls, short hops, super jumps, and classic special move motions. The game also very responsive. Everything feels right and characters react quickly to your input. The best way to describe the game feel is snappy.

The meter system seems to be greatly simplified from KoF XIII but I dont think that this is a bad thing. KoF XIV has a single super bar that fills up multiple times depending on the remain characters you have. KoF XIII had a similar super meter system but had extra mechanics on top of that. The systems in Kof XIII such hyper drive mode, Neo Max and HD cancels were great to watch as a spectator. It allowed players at a higher level could do long interesting combos that did a large amount of damage. The issue with the system is that newer and lower level players found the systems complicated especially since there were multiple bars to consider at all times. At a high level this could also have an impact since it promoted long combos which forced less player interaction since one person would spend a third of a the round doing one long combo that could just end up being a touch of death any way. From what I saw at this early stage people can still do damaging combos when they expend bar but it doesnt take as long for a combo to end so both players get to play more.

I like the new direction they are taking with KoFXIV. They are trying to keep the complexity that veteran players enjoy from the game but these new changes lower the barrier of entry to the newer players to start enjoying the game.