The King of Fighters XV

Listen to this post:

Remember arcades? Yeah, me neither. Apparently they were smoke-filled, dark chambers where video games lived in giant, heavy cabinets. You had to pay per play instead of paying to pull lootboxes! Absolutely insane. There’s still some remnants of those days around in the modern world, of course, such as the beloved fighting game genre, and which arcade fan didn’t at least try an entry of The King of Fighters back then?

Well, some time ago that series made its way to consoles and PC, and the latest entry The King of Fighters XV is primed and ready for your enjoyment. You won’t even need quarters this time around to play.

via YouTube

We’ve got our usual KOF-style setup here: the tournament’s being held yet again and teams from around the world are coming together to determine who’s truly the King of Fighters. Naturally, that means that everything’s got a shadowy, mystical undercurrent going on in the background. The winning team’s going to discover that they’ve bitten off a little more than they can chew…pretty much like they always have. One wonders why anyone joins this tournament at this point. Still, someone needs to beat up the supernatural threat of the week and it might as well be you.

You’ve got your Story Mode that covers the above, a selection of online and offline match modes that allow you to set up fights to your liking, a tutorial and some missions. Regarding that first one, don’t expect anything as impressive as the stories from the modern Mortal Kombat games or even post-patch Street Fighter V, but it’s passable for what it is. Watch some cutscenes, fight some dudes, get your rear end handed to you by the crazy crystal twintail lady that’s the horribly difficult SNK Boss of the Week…it’s KOF, alright.

How does this all pan out, though? Well, you’ll organize a team of three from around 40 characters and get to punchin’. Your characters have their own individual fighting styles, from grapplers like the King of Dinosaurs to airborne specialists like newcomer Isla to balanced characters like hero Shun’ei, so balancing out your team to suit your needs is essential. If learning a single character in a game like Guilty Gear Strive sounds tough, imagine having to learn three! Good luck with that.

The cast includes mainstays like the Fatal Fury crew of Terry, Andy and Joe, Art of Fighting pals Robert and Ryo, idol/psychic Athena, and everyone’s favorite well-dressed ninja Mai. There’s a few newcomers as well, such as personal favorite Dolores, who can best be described as “Mud Bayonetta.” She’s fantastic, trust me. If nearly 40 characters aren’t enough, there’s DLC on the way, so Rock Howard fans won’t have too long to wait.

KOFXV’s fighting engine is rock solid, landing the basics without focusing too much on silliness like comeback mechanics. There’s a super meter that fills up over time and as your characters are defeated which can then be spent on enhanced special moves, desperation attacks and a guard break. Learning basic moves, specials and combos is one thing, but KOFXV offers a surprising amount of depth that allows dedicated players to take the experience as far as they’d like.

Let’s touch on two of the more pertinent concerns for the genre: KOFXV’s presentation and its netplay. Presentation-wise, we’ve got something more akin to Street Fighter than Guilty Gear, so while there’s some hard anime style going on there’s not really that 90s-style cel shading. Don’t worry, everything’s beautiful regardless and the fighting’s smooth as butter.

Speaking of which, KOFXV’s netplay is rock solid in my experience, with few to no lag issues on the PS5 version I was playing. If you’re willing to dive in, there’s plenty of competition to go around and a completely workable framework in which to battle.

In other words, there’s a sizable cast of characters, a fantastic fighting engine, solid netplay and a story mode that…well, it’s present, and we’ve definitely seen modern fighting games that launch without one, right? That means The King of Fighters XV is a fantastic example of its genre and it’s worth looking into. If you haven’t already dedicated your soul to mastering one of the other big-name fighters, here’s another option – and if you have, King of Fighters XV might make for a great side game.