It’s business as usual in the factory of fighter dreams. Depending on how long you press “up” to jump depends on how far you jump. You can roll past your opponent or dodge projectiles by pressing both ‘Light’ buttons together. There’s no pesky “medium” to tackle within this one. Standard attacks are mapped to the face buttons on your pad and are light and heavy punch and light and heavy kick. This means that you’ll have to be handy with the quarter circle, full 360 directional input, and holding directions for a few sections to perform special attacks. Traditional fighting game controls apply. Then you move on to the next character until one team is defeated. Instead, you choose your character order and stick with them until your health bar is depleted. Now while the game is focused on teams, there isn’t a tag element like other team-based fighters. 3 Vs 3 in fact, though it’s possible to just do 1 Vs 1. The King of Fighters XV is a traditional 2D fighting game that has the hook of it being team-based. In this resurgence of the “Fighting Game” genre we have to ask, does it offer enough of an alternative to getting people off of Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, or whatever anime fighter is the flavor of the week? Gameplay is King when it comes to The King of Fighters XV. With that said, after it was promoted so prominently, I expected a little more from it. I’m one of them, but I’m well aware they are mostly window dressing so I won’t judge the title too much on the lack of story content. There is a special breed of gamers that goes into fighting games for the lore. Aside from that, anyone expecting a more cinematic experience similar to NetherRealm Studios’ output will feel a little short-changed. You’ll get character interactions in well animated but brief cutscenes and the game has the longest character endings in the series history. While the story premise is quite an interesting one and should see fans of the lore invested, the actual presentation and story content is quite thin in what’s presented to you in-game. This only furthers the mystery of what is going on in King of Fighters. To further complicate matters, fighters who were presumed dead or taken out of time like Ash Crimson have reappeared. The leader of the Ikari Warriors has bundled in with newcomers Dolores and Isla, the latter of which has a similar power to the protagonist of this saga. Previous protagonists Iori and Kyo are teamed up with Chizuru to also investigate this. Their mission: to find answers about Verse and the mysterious backer. The previous game’s hero Shun’ei teams up with Benimaru and Meitenkun to enter the tournament. Set after the events of the 14th tournament where a being called Verse appeared and leaked souls, invites have been sent around the world for the 15th tournament by a mysterious new sponsor. Naturally, this excludes handheld titles, spin-offs, and standalone titles like KoF NeoWave and Maximum Impact. The King of Fighters XV is, funnily enough, the 15th installment of the main franchise. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for King Of Fighters XV. While output on the franchise has slowed, the flame of a fighter burns bright. The King of Fighters is a franchise that was once considered a worthy rival to the goliath that was Street Fighter.
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