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So when I was asked to do this review, I had very little idea on what to expect. I, for one, have never heard of King of Fighters. I went into it obviously thinking it was Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat-esque fighting. But to me, it was just another button masher and pray to the high heavens that I get some cool moves in there! I’m not someone who often plays fighting games. I love First Person Shooters, Sports and RPG’s, but will get Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat since that is what I have grown up with.
King of Fighters XIV is the first time I have ever heard of this game. Where have I been to miss the last 13?! It doesn’t matter! This game is loads of fun if you have friends to play with in their 3 vs. 3 fighting style. What bothered me the most about this game is that you have to fight in 3 matches (Max 5) just to move on in the story or in general. I thought it would be usually 2 matches and you switch throughout the match with the characters you want to fight with. That wasn’t the case and the game just seemed to drag a little bit too much.
Once downloading the game onto my PS4 I had to wait for another installation for the Story, Online, Versus and Mission. That was tedious and boring, but once I got through it I was quite excited to play! It took awhile also, about two hours, maybe my wifi was being funky, but just pop up some Netflix and wait it out.
The graphics are absolutely beautiful and the maps were a lot of fun! I was more staring in the back to see what was going on then to my actual performance. Dream World and their King of Fighters Parade as well as Guanajuato Dynamite Ring were my top two favorites to fight in and look at. But when it comes down to the story mode, there seemed to be just random maps every time you moved forward.
Speaking of the story, it felt really messy and didn’t make sense in my opinion. Big Boss man is the King of the Fighters, you fight your way (through random maps) to get to him. You fight him and then the “unexpected” happens. I won’t go into detail to save the story for those who decide to purchase this game, but that was about the small taste I got and I wasn’t impressed. Some of the fighters you fight against are extremely annoying and it felt like I was fighting a child that just choose the same move over and over and over again.
There’s a huge, diverse cast that you can choose from. Some looked really cool like Maxima and Love Hear , some were funny like Cholbounge and Meitenkun and then you obviously have your Main Stream Hero in Kyo Kusanagi. Each character will have bickering commentary that goes along with fighting certain characters, but I honestly don’t know who will talk to who. Besides that, the characters are really unrelatable and I can’t build any relationship with any of them which in unfortunate.
Long story short. I would only be purchasing this game to play with friends at home. The story is there, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to play and I wouldn’t be rushing home from errands or work to play it when I have other games that I am more invested in. The graphics are amazing and i loved how detailed it is and I applaud SNK. It is a fun game! I enjoyed my time with it. Would I drop $60 dollars for it? Probably not. I would most likely wait for it to go down to the $20 dollar mark or lower.
