I loved the KOFXIII trials.
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I agree that trying to learn 3 characters at once is tough. There is no dial a combo (Which is good, especially for a tactical fighter) to make this easier.
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As far as execution for KOF XIII I guess it is very much dependent on the character. Elisabeth is an execution nightmare for me, but things seem so much easier with King and Athena. Maybe I just picked the wrong characters to start with.
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It boggles my mind how overlooked KOF XIII is, at least in the US. It is about a million times better than SFIV. This coming from a guy who grew up playing mostly Capcom fighters.
13 isnāt really KOF. Iād say 13 is the most anime-game then any other KOF except those 3D games.
Honestly, the more I think about it the more I think CVS2 nailed the 3-3 team game better then any of SNKās attempts aside from XI and the UMās. CVS2 has at least 3-4 Grooves that are good and changes the dynamic. The tiers kindaā suck but you can mix it up enough where youāre not going to see the same anchor on every team.
Whatās a real KOF like? Just wondering.
The UM titles.
Is there a breakdown somewhere of why XIII isnāt the same as older titles? Iām new to KOF and I started with XIII. Iām curious about how itās different.
Some of guys in my local community have been playing KOF since it came out, and they seem to like XIII a lot. They arenāt scrubs either, so Iām inclined to believe the changes arenāt all bad.
Can u explain further? Iāve only played KOF XIII.
Not trying to be a snob but you just have to watch some high level play in the older games or UM or XI and compare to 13. Youāre not going to be getting away with nearly as many hops or safe as hell moves in the older titles compared to 13. The older titles had more of a footsie and spacing game going on as well. Just the implementation of EX moves, EX Supers and HD mode just makes it derpy.
13 is a fun game but itās not something I would personally take seriously. Thatās just me. Iām not gdlk or anything.
Laban did two posts about that:
Thx! Laban also mentions 98UM and 02UM, I guess these are the creme de la creme of the series? I always here about those 2 titles (UM edition or vanilla). Well if they ever come out on Steam Iāll pick them up.
To run it down:
With the except of maybe two characters, Mature and Robert, pretty much any airborne projectile could be hopped over in XIII. In older games, it was quite the opposite unless you minutely timed your hop with a character that has a higher arcād/floatier hop (meaning that in return, they donāt have a strong hop high/low game.) So getting around zoning entailed committing to full jumps like SF as well as neutral jumping or walking and blocking.
Collision boxes are sloppier than they usually are, many jump-ins curve around the collision boxes of the grounded characters and grounded anti-airs tend to lose in most situations barring a few characters such as Ryo or Billy. This rewards jumps and hops more than it did in previous games with less ramifications for doing so.
DPs are generally better in this game as reversals. DPs were good in previous KOFs mainly as anti-airs except for a few good ones such as Ryoās A ver. Kohou, Ioriās C Oniyaki, and a few others. Across the board DPs have been made consistently invulnerable (at least on C or EX Versions) in XIII.
Grounded anti-airs have been weakened across the board. Both in terms of range and in damage. Itās not as strong of a deterrent as it had been, especially since jump-in damage is better now thanks to Drive and HD combo conversions. Risk and reward is skewed. The speed of some of them have been slowed down such as Daimonās df.C.
Many universal subsystems are worse. Rolls are slower and are more easily punishable, Guard Rolls have a huge freeze frame on activation and eats up the opponentās inputs in favor of the opponent (so if the player tries to punish bad habit blockstrings, the opponent is rewarded by not committing since the freeze frame saves them from doing so,) Guard Cancel Blowbacks come out slower or there isnāt enough freeze frames to lock an opponent in place for the Guard Cancel Blowback to hit them (also they donāt do as much damage along with being susceptible to safe jumps.)
Reversal Super Jumps donāt work anymore although there were counters to the tactic in the first place. In lieu, back dashes have been buffed to be airborne on the first frame.
Hops tend to have higher arcs per each character in comparison to their previous KOF iterations. Kyoās j.B and j.C cross up spacings have changed. Arcs tend to be higher in general, worse high/lows than previous games.
Hops also have a weird deceleration or slower speed on descent from their apex. Empty into low isnāt as strong except on wake up.
Throws come out more easily due to how inputs are handled. Also makes empty hops from neutral less of a viable option.
Blocking builds much more meter than it used to do. In some cases, blocking zoning builds more meter for the person taking the zoning than the player that tosses out projectiles and such.
Chip damage isnāt as strong as in previous games. Makes the previous point more viable to keep on blocking since the meter gain outweighs the reception of chip damage.
Guard Break is like CVS2 more than it is like previous games. The window to hit a character during Guard Break in old games was really small. The player had to either guard break on a jump-in attack and immediately land and combo or guard break on a cancelable normal and then cancel into a 2 in 1 to convert. Finishing with a special that canāt follow up or a normal that couldnāt cancel resulted in a guard break but the opponent would recover before anything else could be done. Also, there wasnāt a guard bar to visually see when guard break would occur. I think in 02 (or it most probably was in Garou MOTW instead) the character visually flashed red when guard break was going to soon occur, but that was about it.
Jump CD attacks donāt induce push back for the attacker, only the defender. This is dramatically different from old KOFs because j.CDs against cornered opponents are much scarier for blockstrings since the receiver canāt be pushed back any further because of the corner and there isnāt any push back for the attack. This really helps out Takuma and Mr. Karate to make them scary since they have deep, downward hitboxes for their J.CD (which they havenāt had prior to XIII) and could keep characters locked down if they donāt have good reversals to get out of the pressure. Along with how guard breaks are now, jump-ins are really good now.
There are only one throw animations for forward and back throws now. This helps some characters out since some characters back throw animations and properties now are on their forward throw. For Kyo and Terry, their forward throws now have hard knockdown and wake up safe jump set ups whereas in older KOF games, they only had soft knockdown forward throws.
BC mode 02 like combos are now a separate subsystem from meter. Of course this is a doozy and it skews damage output since itās a separate bar and stacks on even more damage.
There are EX moves in the game. Theyāre akin to Vampire/Darkstalker like EX moves in which it takes a full bar and some moves become faster, have more invul, or juggle better. This in some ways adds to damage disparity since a character like Benimaru benefits from spending minimal drive and an ex move in order to juggle and output more damage than other characters could.
Characters generally have stubbier normals in proportion to the screen. Most probably their attacks wouldnāt be as bad if the screen was 4:3. This changes the way the spacing game is played to some degree.
Input shortcuts could be just as bad as SFIV sometimes and the period of time given to do inputs for special moves feel as big as Garou MOTW. Running and doing a fireball may result in a DP most of the time, but the weird inputs allow the player to run and do a fireball as long as the fireball is tiger kneeād, among other particular inputs such as that.
Damage across the board is much lower than other KOF games except when Drives and HD comes into play. Makes meter management more of a focus.
Certain jump-ins have been buffed greatly compared to past iterations, such as Kyoās j.CD and j.2C, Takuma/Karateās j.CD, and etc. Some have been worsened such as Leonaās j.C and j.CD.
And thatās all I could think of off the top of my head.
I generally donāt like the game; but if other people enjoy it, then by all means do so. For me and my experience with playing 98 and 02, XIII doesnāt deliver to me what I expect from KOF and it feels like the fundamentals I have learned were undermined when playing XIII. As long as I always have players, and certainly players better than me, on GGPO playing 98 until the end of time, Iām good to go. Speaking of which, I havenāt played 98 in a good long while since Iāve been grinding to play Guilty Gear and Blazblue locally.
Iād say the creme de la creme would be between 98og and 02um on a global scale. The main issue with 98um is that it buffed everyone on the general scale, but people complain about less ācharacter diversity within the top tier.ā Meaning, people keep seeing Krauser, O.Geese, Iori; although the case hasnāt been so within the videos of current 98um videos around on Nicovideo and Youtube. Then that isnāt taking in account of 98umFE changes that again buffs everyone but top tier and slightly nerfing Krauser. So the claim against character diversity isnāt well founded. The other points against it are valid considerations in terms of liking or disliking the game.
An issue to take into account is that some people donāt like the system changes from 98 to 98um and that there is generally less damage across the board and now subsystems like sidestep is really strong. In 98og, Extra mode used to be irrelevant because of the time it took to charge, movement with forward dash wasnāt good as running, the player couldnāt stock and hold onto meter, and the player couldnāt tech throws, period. The way that changed now is that players could now hold onto a single stock and Quick Max it like how people quick activate in 02/um or XIII, players can now tech throws from any situation just like how Advanced mode can (with the exception of mash throws, just like Advanced mode,) forward dash still isnāt as good as running but walk speed in this mode has been made much faster per character than their walk speeds in Advanced mode, and among other changes to make it strong.
I think another issue with Sidestep is that it functions like a stationary roll; but unlike a roll, it doesnāt have recovery frames. Players can even sidestep into sidestep when getting around projectiles and projectile supers. Like a roll, it can be thrown; but with 98ās and 98umās system, a player can mash tech during roll and now sidestep for 98um. So some players didnāt like that. The ways to āfixā it are to either make rolls and sidesteps be unable to tech throws or give sidesteps the same amount of recovery that rolls have to punish it. For some people, this may be a deal breaker in terms of liking 98um or not.
Otherwise, Iād say overall 98og and 98um have enough changes to consider them different games, unlike from 02 to 02um which mainly changed how meter is spent during Max mode and character nuances.
The Trinity for me would be 98og, 98um, and 02um with XI, 2000, and 95 with honorable mention. Chinese honorable mention would be 97 since they canāt stop playing that game.
Iād certainly pick up 98um and 02um if they get on Steam.
Itās interesting to hear about KOF 13 compared to older KOF games. I personally couldnāt get into the older ones that much (at least up to 99, granted the ports I played may have been iffy at best) but still fun to know about them.
thx laban, that was a good read.
God i fucking hate that. When I play NEST Kyo, it try to do a QCF+A/C for his punch move after dashing forward and get punished for doing a DP. Iām gonna have to learn to do a tiger knee on a hitbox, I guess.
You make some good points. Some of them I donāt think are inherently bad, but I can see how they would be frustrating to an old school KOF player. I like the EX moves, but they probably are the reason the damage was lowered.
Would you recommend KOF02UM on XBLA for online play? I heard they patched the netcode in it, so it should be better than 98UM, but is it worth it?
Honestly, unless GG Xrd is a colossal letdown, Iām probably going to stop with KOF all together once itās released in Japan. But in the meantime, XIII seems to be the best option, since no one plays GGAC locally and the online is all but dead.
EX Moves are fine with me overall, I just donāt like the ones that set up into large juggles that donāt require any more meter commitment.
I would not recommend getting 02um or 98um for online purposes on XBLA, the connection is terrible even after patch. If I had a 360, Iād buy them just so I can bring it to locals so I wouldnāt have to worry about having PS2 Sticks and using Swap Magic. Still, online is bad and donāt expect anything from it.
On a different note, although you didnāt call me an old school KOF player, I just want to clarify to everyone that Iām not an old school player of KOF games. I started playing KOF98 in '09 to get ready for KOF 12. 12 was ass, so I just kept on playing 98 (occasionally 02) on GGPO and kept learning more about the games. If old school was used as a modifier for KOF rather than the player, then thatās fine. Just donāt want people to get the wrong idea that Iāve been around KOF98 since '98. I would have been 7 years old then.
Iād too be on Xrd hard once that gets out. Iām warmly anticipating KOFXIV, but Iām not going to get my hopes up too much as it crushed me before.
This is minor when compared to Labanās excellent list but KOF XIII really watered down some of the characters in terms of move lists and tools. I know for me Terry and Clark arenāt nearly half as fun to play when compared to the older games, partly because theyāre missing moves that make them stand out as characters.
On a control pad Iāve never had an issue playing on either side of the screen but with a stick I have a harder time playing on the right side. Everyone person Iāve met that favours one side over the other prefers the left side. Iāve always wondered why that is.
I meant old school as in the older games. From the sound of it, anything 02 and below are considered THE kof games too. No one ever seems to care about any of the newer ones.
Thanks for the heads up. I almost bought 02UM earlier, but I had a feeling the netcode wouldnāt be up to snuff. KOFXIII Steam is barely playable online, and thatās being touted as the best version for the netcode.
I find the things are weird on the right side, mostly due to always being on the left in training. But using a hitbox makes things worse because Iām using my ring finger more than my index finger.
For me to make Terry complete, he just needs safe burn knuckle on block after a block string, make Rising Tackle a dp move with a guard point like it is in 98, 98 or 02 j.CD, and an instant overhead j.D (and df.C working better pls.) But yeah other characters were wack. Robert having st.B, st.D, f.A, and cr.C covering all the same angle of space was dumb. Athena lost her air throw option select along with Leona. Other stuff
Oh I forgot this point, there are no proximity unblockables in XIII. Ones like Robertās were transformed into command throws. What makes proximity unblockables different from command throws is that they only activate within range, so there is no whiff animation. Some portions of the proximity unblockables are unblockable so even if you happen to escape the first hit, it can still hit you when you try to block the remaining strikes. In really rare circumstances and with particular ones, sometimes you can actually block the follow up hits. You could combo into them like command throws, but if a normal is blocked, canceling into a proximity unblockable doesnāt work and the move doesnāt come out. Itās like a low/no committal command throw.
I donāt know why they gave Clark that Dash (B+D and toward) I think it was in 12 but it was worthless and it was still worthless in 13. Itās just a gimmick. Clark really needed a running grab or a command input jumping grab.
Terry needed his Powercharge and a Neomax thatās not ass.