John Grimm makes an excellent point about EX moves in XIII.
Take my boyfriend Terry Bogard for example, there was close no logical reason to use any version of Rising Tackle as an AA or reversal other than the EX one unless you had always had a good fucking read on an opponent (Yukichi Senpai) and even then it wasn’t very good in terms of resource management. 1 bar for little extra damage.
You’re going to have to wait for a Dream Match fam for Orochi. USA Sports Team will live on in our hearts. But the Chinese seem to like using them in 98 so maybe they have a chance of a resurrection.
Laban, amazing writeup, mate. I’m really excited to see more footage. I’m very curious if grounded CD still causes the wallsplat state if they were already in hitstun (normal or even crumple state like from Kula’s f+A)
I’m right there with John re: EX moves. I loved their inclusion in KOF XIII because they gave characters a lot of utility moves that they wouldn’t normally have, but it’s hard to understate their importance. This way, the utility is locked behind something that limits it, but already has a use for damage (MAX cancel extending combos), defensive (neutral screen freeze>react scenarios) and just full screen setup stuff (Andy slow fireball). I like it!
I’m also excited for a new saga to start and new characters to be revealed. if that leak list is to be believed, I’m hoping Robert goes back to 2003/NGBC kicking awesomeness. dude is too stylish to just be doing shoto stuff.
@Be4r Actually, Leona’s hair does turn a red shade when she does her Climax (Neomax) in KOFXIV. It’s that the red shade is subtle. In her win quotes, she often says that she’s controlling her power better so she doesn’t go ham and incapacitate people like Ralf and Clark again. So the subtlety in her hair color change infers character growth/development. The redness is still here.
I disagree with the notion that EX moves took the place of Level 1 supers in III series. Especially when you consider that so few characters from Alpha are in SF3 series at all (only four, and of those four, Akuma didn’t even have EX moves). EX specials in III and IV are just that - Enhanced Specials. And as with the complaint about XIII, in SF3 the EX Specials were the only useful versions of most special moves while their normal counterparts were terrible. Contrast this to SFIV, where most special moves were good, and EX special moves were better. Sure, you had a few non-EX stinkers (e.g. Rufus Messiah Kick), but the majority were great.
It’s only with SFV that you could claim that EX Specials are now the equivalent of L1 supers. And I still don’t like this system, BTW.
I always viewed XIII as being kinda like Dark Stalkers, where EX Special Moves (called ES Specials - Enhanced Specials in DS) and Super Moves (called EX Specials - Extra Specials in DS) were equivalent, hence why they had the same cost. Overlap was inevitable, but I wouldn’t say one completely obsoleted the other. Even if regular DMs weren’t so great, at least they still had EX DMs and Neo MAX DMs. If anything, I think Hyper Drive made regular DMs useless.
Bubba re: KoF future
I think it will depend on how long/hard the development cycle has been and how much profit the game makes.
IF the game is sufficiently profitable and the development cycle wasn’t too rough, i.e. they haven’t secretly been working on this for 4 years already, I think they will go back to their previous method of releasing entirely new entries, but with, say, a two year gap instead of yearly. Maybe they’ll include some DLC like a team or two but nothing major. They WILL be recycling assets. I suspect model improvements will be very minour, i.e. get used to this aesthetic, it’s here for the long haul. If and when KoFXV will be made, unless it’s for the next hardware generation, it will look very much like XIV. There won’t be any equivalent graphic upgrades a la SFIV -> SFV without new hardware (and even then, I still wouldn’t count on any major improvement given the tactics that SNK seems to employing, i.e. going for quantity over quality).
I keep thinking about the Mortal Kombat games on PS2 as a reference here. I can see SNK putting out a trilogy of KoFs on PS4 in 2016, 2018, and 2020 with mostly the same assets, with each entry selling less but making more profit than the last due to lowered development costs. Or even more apropros: The PS2 Maximum Impact games.
On the other hand, if the cycle has been longer than we suspect, and/or the game doesn’t make much profit from day one, I can see them stretching things out for a much longer period via DLC teams to recoup costs. Even with 50 characters, there are still a couple dozen more they could add to the game over time.
I’m hoping for the former personally. Not so much because I want them to pump out more KoFs on current gen hardware (that would be nice, but I’m honestly not the biggest KoF fan), but because they might finally get around to doing something *non-*KoF again for the first time in over a decade. Well, something non-crappy that is - I’m still waiting for my new Samurai Shodown to wash the stench of SS Sen away.
No lie: If they made a new Samurai Shodown with KoFXIV graphics but with SS Zero Special’s (or even SS2) gameplay and cast, plus a few new comers, I’d be ALL over that. Samurai Shodown needs a revival dammit! </rant>
Though look on the bright side: Having KOF XV will mean less work for SNK Playmore in terms of characters since most of them have already been made.
Other than possibly adding a few more characters such as Chizuru, Blue Mary, Takuma, etc. to the lineup in the future while no doubt getting rid of certain characters after KOF XIV, they should be fine.
You have regular DMs which cost 1 stock, MAX DMs which are more powerful versions of the regular DMs but require you to be in MAX Mode, and the Climax DMs which are basically Hiddem SDMs, MAX 2s, Leader DMs, Neomaxes, etc.
Side question, but how good is SNK with balancing? We have a confirmed roster of 50 Characters, but how many of them are actually going to be viable on the competitive scene? From what I saw during the KOF13 tournaments, everybody picked Takuma, Duo Lon, Iori, and Chin
KOF has enough cool universal options where unless you’re at the highest of high levels, any character is effective and even then, most of the cast is still viable. Even in 98, you’ll still see many players do well picking outside of Kyo, Daimon, Chizuru and Orochi Chris.
Yeah, in XIII everyone has a pocket EX Iori and Chin, but dudes still do well with characters like Clark, Yuri, Ralf, Shen, King, Ryo, Kyo, Daimon, Athena, Elizabeth and even sometimes a random Raiden, Mai or Kensou. These are just off the top of my head, there are numerous characters being used.
MadKOF trolled his way to top 8 one EVO with Raiden, Woo f*cked up Romance with Mai in top 16 another EVO and ET (My Boy!) just OCV’s people with Clark until he eventually loses to Xiaohai or Tokido because they have better fundamentals than him, not characters.
Its 95% based on how good you are with movement and thinking rather than character selection.
In any competitive video game ever, people are going to minimize their chances of losing, which means picking the best characters even if they only improve your odds slightly. XIII is a very well balanced game, most characters are competitively viable. As previously mentioned, modern SNK is also responsible for 98UM/FE and 02UM, which are also very well balanced games (even though both have their strong top tiers, sure), and have a history of fantastic updates.
Looking at their track record, pretty terrible in my opinion. SNK never really gets balancing right the first time (but then who the hell does? lol), so it takes them several games to really figure out what to do sometimes, as is the case with the Real Bout Fatal Fury games, every single Real Bout game had completely different plane shift mechanics, on top of some other things like the bogus ring outs in Real Bout 1, or the destructible walls in Real Bout Special that instantly dizzied. SNK would pretty much just straight up move on to the next game and introduce some crazy new wacky mechanic, that’s pretty much how they always worked and it wasn’t often they would do a straight up revision. They did do stuff like Fatal Fury Special, and coming from Fatal Fury 2, it was a huge improvement over that game. Same can be said about Samurai Shodown V Special coming from the original Samurai Shodown V, came out being a much better game. Then you have stuff like KOF98UM and KOF2k2UM, and players are pretty split on these games compared to the originals for whatever reasons. I like the original 98 and 98UM, but on the other hand… I really don’t like the original 2k2, but I’m not exactly a fan of some of the BS introduced in 2k2UM either, but I’d rather play 2k2UM over the original 2k2 anyday.
I’ll say though… 97 Terry… good times. POWER CHARGE.
Also shoutout to RBS Mai. Mai with a rekka is the best.
