Post by Nester the Lark on Aug 31, 2024 10:47:53 GMT -5
So, as mentioned in the shoutbox, I bought The King of Fighters XIII Global Match. It was on sale on Switch for the first time, and it was a game I had always wanted to try. That, plus with fighting games having been on my mind lately, and looking for something to play while waiting for Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, I decided to go ahead and get it.
It's pretty straightforward as far as the type of features you would expect in a classic fighting game. There are arcade, versus, practice, time attack, survival, trials, and online modes. There's also a gallery for artwork and movies you can unlock. Pretty standard stuff.
There's also a story mode. I wasn't sure what to expect from this. I thought maybe it would basically be like the arcade mode but with more detailed cutscenes. Instead, it's actually a mini visual novel where you occasionally play out a fight scene. It even has branching paths. The text is also very well written. (It was originally localized by Atlus USA.) It's pretty cool. My only complaint is that the text mostly progresses automatically, and sometimes it goes by too fast for me to read.
There's a color customization mode for the characters that's fairly detailed, although it varies from character to character. I can see myself spending a lot of time messing around with this. (SNK is actually bringing back something similar for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.) The only problem is that a lot of the colors need to be unlocked, and it's rather tedious to have to do it. There are 20 extra colors, and you unlock five of them every time you select a character 10 times, so you need to select a character 40 times to unlock all of their extra colors. It only counts in arcade, versus and online modes, and you have to do it for every character individually. This method feels rather outdated, but I assume it was expected that people would be playing online a lot.
Speaking of which, I did try the online mode. After all, the main new feature of this release is rollback netcode, hence the "Global Match" subtitle. There aren't many people playing online, but I figured that since the game is currently on sale, there might be a few more than usual, so this would be my best chance to try it. There are casual and ranked modes. I played casually against a level 81 Japanese player, and according to the in-game stats, I won about 33 percent of the time, which I honestly think is pretty good. As you could imagine between the US and Japan, the connection was a little shaky, and there were a few times when it was very obvious the rollback was kicking in. (In fact, I think I even accidentally won a round because of it. Wish I'd saved the replay.) But in general, it was a fairly smooth experience.
I was a little apprehensive about getting into KoFXIII due to it having a reputation for being one of the least casual-friendly games in the series. Maybe it's because I have experience with other KoF games, but it wasn't as difficult as I was expecting. Even the AI seemed surprisingly manageable for an older SNK game. I think maybe its reputation comes from stricter timing required for doing combos, but since I'm not good at those anyway, my play style doesn't use them much.
Overall, I'm glad I gave it a try, and honestly, it felt good to buy an SNK game again after a long while.
It's pretty straightforward as far as the type of features you would expect in a classic fighting game. There are arcade, versus, practice, time attack, survival, trials, and online modes. There's also a gallery for artwork and movies you can unlock. Pretty standard stuff.
There's also a story mode. I wasn't sure what to expect from this. I thought maybe it would basically be like the arcade mode but with more detailed cutscenes. Instead, it's actually a mini visual novel where you occasionally play out a fight scene. It even has branching paths. The text is also very well written. (It was originally localized by Atlus USA.) It's pretty cool. My only complaint is that the text mostly progresses automatically, and sometimes it goes by too fast for me to read.
There's a color customization mode for the characters that's fairly detailed, although it varies from character to character. I can see myself spending a lot of time messing around with this. (SNK is actually bringing back something similar for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.) The only problem is that a lot of the colors need to be unlocked, and it's rather tedious to have to do it. There are 20 extra colors, and you unlock five of them every time you select a character 10 times, so you need to select a character 40 times to unlock all of their extra colors. It only counts in arcade, versus and online modes, and you have to do it for every character individually. This method feels rather outdated, but I assume it was expected that people would be playing online a lot.
Speaking of which, I did try the online mode. After all, the main new feature of this release is rollback netcode, hence the "Global Match" subtitle. There aren't many people playing online, but I figured that since the game is currently on sale, there might be a few more than usual, so this would be my best chance to try it. There are casual and ranked modes. I played casually against a level 81 Japanese player, and according to the in-game stats, I won about 33 percent of the time, which I honestly think is pretty good. As you could imagine between the US and Japan, the connection was a little shaky, and there were a few times when it was very obvious the rollback was kicking in. (In fact, I think I even accidentally won a round because of it. Wish I'd saved the replay.) But in general, it was a fairly smooth experience.
I was a little apprehensive about getting into KoFXIII due to it having a reputation for being one of the least casual-friendly games in the series. Maybe it's because I have experience with other KoF games, but it wasn't as difficult as I was expecting. Even the AI seemed surprisingly manageable for an older SNK game. I think maybe its reputation comes from stricter timing required for doing combos, but since I'm not good at those anyway, my play style doesn't use them much.
Overall, I'm glad I gave it a try, and honestly, it felt good to buy an SNK game again after a long while.