Got this game and gave it a review
I've decided to change my opinion of this game. I initially thought it was a bad game but after playing it for a bit I'm starting to understand it a little better. I'll keep my original content below but I'm adding the positives to the bottom.
Sound
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It sounds like a damned SNES game. Some of the music sounds pretty cool but others sound like they were made by Nintendo on an Atari. The voices creeped me out at first but I soon got used to it. I'm kinda used to the old school voices and when the TV screamed like there was a guy shouting 2 feet in front of me it freaked me out. I can't really complain but it sounded weird. Not at all like a fighting game just more like some guy yelling at the top of his lungs. The sound effects are fucking terrible. In places they use white noise to make gravel sounds and some sounds sound like a washing machine on full spin. And don't get me started on the fire sound effects. In places it sounds like some dude growling into the microphone.
Yeah, the sound sucks. I can't add any positive comment about this but in its defense you don't notice it all that much while playing it. The sound is rather sharp and harsh and very crackley and the voices they chose for the characters could not be more wrong. The voice acting is terrible it sounds like a bad impersonator or something and I swear Adelheid's voice actor forgot his lines. A lot of the sounds in the game are way too quite or soft for the sheer whollop the characters are getting. One of the quietest moves takes off half your health. I can't defend the sound in this game it is just awful. And it's really off-putting too. You can't tell how badly you are getting hurt and it's difficult to tell if you've been hit at all.
Graphics
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Yes the backgrounds look really pretty in 3D but my god the sprites look like ass. Now I am a veteran of all the old SNK arcade games so I've seen some shit but I think I can say with justification that this game has the cheapest looking sprites of any SNK game I have ever seen and I've played almost every one so far. The character portraits and cut scenes look very nice even if the art style is a little strange. But why spend so much graphics on animations and make the actual fighting look like shit. Seriously it is bad and you don't realize how bad until you start playing it.
In its defense you can see where the characters are really easily I find. It is a lot easier to play for a beginner that way. I can see everything very clearly even if it does offend my eyes. I guess the graphics is better from the perspective of playing it rather than viewing it.
Characters
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Most of the decent characters are there so there's not much to complain about here but some of the new characters look and act like they were designed by children. They look stupid, they play stupid and they act stupid. I'm not that bothered though because at least they did a half decent job here unlike Capcom, Tekken or Soul Caliber has done with their game series. I guess you have to take the rough with the smooth.
Everything I said there is true. I can't add anything more positive neither say anything against it. New characters are stupid but at least you get to play all the old characters still.
Gameplay
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It plays OK there isn't anything wrong with it and in today's word that's a Godsend. All the old characters play the same and they have screwed around with their moves, their controls or their timing like every other fighting game has. Essentially SNK know when they have a good thing and they know that if it aint broke don't fix it. A strategy that meant that SNK has had very few bad games but many games that just aren't great. Most of their games are above the competition but if you look at the competition it's more of a case of every other series has got a lot worse and KOF has stayed steadily the same for years.
I cannot add to what I have said here. The gameplay plays like any other KOF game in that it just works without any annoying new features or half-baked ideas. And as always the dodge system on KOF and its unique countering system make the fights tough, fun and great for practicing advanced skills. I'm not a marketing guy and I've not been told to plug this game series. King of Fighter's fighting system just works plain and simple and I think it's a model a lot of other games could learn from, especially Street Fighter.
AI
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I originally this part when I played it on easy and gave it a bad review. On hard it couldn't be any more different. So I've rewritten this section accordingly.
Easy difficulty plays like Street Fighter. At some points my character was being mashed into a bloody pulp in the corner of the screen and no amount of counters or dodging would help, but the worst part was that after pressing continue the difficulty swung so far in the opposite direction I could put the pad down and the enemy would just jump around the screen and leave me alone for the rest of the time even when I'd almost perfected them.
However on hard it was fucking awesome and the matches lasted right up to the bell with both of us dodging, countering and performing specials like the world was gonna end and we were the ones to end it with our epic battles.
On easy the mid-boss just stood there and every time I tried to get close he would hit me away with his weakest special. It got really annoying as he slowly chipped away my health of all three of my characters.
When I bumped the difficulty up to hard I got a lot fairer enemies. Not only was it tougher to hurt them, it was tougher for them to hurt me. I dunno why but easy plays like Street Fighter and hard plays like some souped up Dragonball Z shit. I was literally having countering battles that went on until the time ran out, seriously. This game is hardcore but only on hard.
Anyway, there's an option to reduce the difficulty when you lose. Somehow they fight a lot fairer and somehow a lot tougher when you use it, go figure.
My guess is that they couldn't adapt anything they already got without making things worse so they kept the things they knew worked and added some 3D graphics to shut the fans up but at the expense of the graphics in the foreground. I also think they tried to rerecord all the voices with their new tech but did a really bad job at it and they tried to make some new characters but didn't really try that hard.
At least they kept the important stuff in the game and didn't screw around with it. I really enjoyed playing the game and I'd much rather play it than Street Fighter 4. For anyone who likes Street Fighter, don't get this game, it's not a button-masher but for those that like skillful fighters like Kengo you'll love this.
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