This will be the first time I play a KOF title competitively. After years of going to tournaments for SF4 and playing ST and 3s competitively online I want next year to be the start of my time with KOF. I’ll probably be coming back to tekken as well so I think for me my official games will be SFV,KOF XIV and tekken. I’m sort of nervous though KOF because I’ve never played a competitive match before. Fightcade doesn’t work on my laptop so outside just practicing 98 a lot and watching high level videos it will be a very new experience for me.
The strange thing though is that I’m way more hyped for KOF XIV then I am SFV at this point. After having played the V beta I realize the game is more or less similar to 4. This isn’t to say that it’s bad but I don’t think it played the way I was expecting. In the case of KOF XIV, it seems like they have done a great job transitioning from 2D to 3D and that at the very least it will play like a KOF game as opposed to what happen with SF4 where it didn’t really resemble the 2D SF games.
I want XI Terry, I want breaks into insane damage and excellent buttons.
No 98 Athena where it was like they copy and pasted an ST fireball and stuck it into a KOF game?
I want XIII Kensou (lowkey huge Kensou fan) with some changes.
Keep his ability to combo off of his throw, that was cool.
His fireball is generally very good, I like XIII’s size but I want 98’s speeds as they made that shit fast af. I hop they keep it so that he’s left crouching after the fireball and that it appears a bit over him like in 98 so he can use it to AA effectively. I don’t care what they do with his EX fireball as long as it isn’t as useless as it is in XIII.
Give him his 98’ sweep, another great button.
I want him to have his 98’ far B but his XI Ryuusougeki.
V seems like its a far different beast than 4.
Good choice on practicing 98, that seems the game to study as this is being made by the Chinese (THEY LOVE 98) and the game seems like a good stew of 98 and XIII with some 2002 and XI mixed in for flavor.
Yeah I look at 98 as the ST for the series as in it teaches you all the basic fundamentals. My team in KOF XIV will be kyo,beni and ryo. On that note does anyone know who the best players are for each of these characters in 98 and 2002.
@SoleChris Yeah, I figured. The Leona player intentionally did hop j.B to profile over the projectile. In certain match ups, small things like that will happen, but Leona sacrifices the ability to land on them with a jump-in since she’s whiffing an immediate j.B to get over the projectile. I’m not too worried over that. If she can naturally hop over it without whiffing an attack, that’s more of an issue.
@CaptainGinyu Athena’s Psychoball, if I recall, had the same hit box in KOF98 as it did in KOF2002. If at the least, it worked pretty much the same with most characters getting hit by it if they try to hop it and it was pretty fat. The main difference between the two is that in KOF2002, it recovered much faster. Saying it recovered as fast as a Sonic Boom may be a hyperbole, but it felt close to that.
For me, XIII Kensou’s fireball was really bad. It’s very hop-able to the point where if Kensou cancels sweep into slow fireball, I can hop after blocking the sweep and go over the projectile and punish him. I’m more looking forward to seeing his XIII cr.C getting better, retaining a good DP, and fireball being fat again so no one could hop it except in very specific high profile situations. Maybe he can get his old f.B back and have some kind of combo like cl.C xx f.B xx air dive > juggle.
@ReoGeoSRK All I can say is that if you live in the US, the competition for KOF isn’t that strong in my opinion. It’ll be tough in the sense that you don’t have a way to grind KOF competitively against real players until you start competing (because your Fightcade doesn’t work.) So, it’s hard to have ingrained fundamentals so you can beat bad players without even thinking. That said, the overall competition in the US isn’t that strong and there’s nothing to really be worried about. Socal players might give you the biggest trouble, but even I’m not scared of them as long as my normals work like they do in KOF98 and not KOFXIII. I easily get top 8 at NCR in KOFXIII because everyone doesn’t know how to jump in properly and get cr.B trip anti-aired by me into a combo into hard knockdown and get eaten by okizeme, including Socal. Smarter players like Reynald or Mr.KOF know better, but that’s to be granted. So all in all, you’re going to be in the same boat with many other people.
Turn that nervous tension into excitement, be ready to want to fuck people up in tournament! That’s what I do when I feel nervousness or doubt, I just use the same energy and turn it into confidence. Having tension is a good thing, let it be your strength rather than a weakness.
I couldn’t agree more. I think the fact that this is such unmarked territory for me is what is building this excitement. I might have been good in ST but trying to convert that skill into KOF is a exciting challenge I’m looking forward to. I suspect his game will be very rewarding to KOF 98 players, man just thinking about a possible second coming of 98 is enough to get me hyped.
On that note I wanted to share more 1st hand impressions. These 2 pretty much confirm what everyone else has been saying.
Well that’s not really completely fair. The biggest issue that SFV has going against it is…Capcom is actually being TOO open about the process. Due to that, it’s hard to really talk about true in-depth stuff because everything changes within two seconds. KoFXIV is doing its best to take the best of previous offerings, which makes it much easier to discuss intricacies…because they aren’t ever going to be too far off from what previous games are like in that department. SFV mechanics keep changing like crazy. Hell let’s take those Crush Counters for example.
One normal for each character
No now two normals for each
Wait, let’s change which normals they are with each iteration.
Let’s have Crush Counters gain a ton of V-Gauge now.
Let’s make all DP’s have essentially Fatal Recovery thus more Crush Counters
Let’s make it so all Sweeps are now Crush Counters and cause Hard Knockdown when they cause a Crush Counter.
That’s all within the last few months and just one of those changes can completely change how you view a character and how the system itself works. I don’t see KOFXIV having that much fluidity over a major mechanic and even if it does, we won’t know about it which is probably for the best.
In the topic of mechanics I have a question. Ultimately KOF 98 and KOF 2002 are considered the best KOF experiences. While I always appreciated and loved these genes at high level what was really the major difference between them. For instance what does KOF 98 emphasize that 2002 doesn’t and vice versa. Moreover if KOF XIV is a hybrid between the 2, which do you think it should favor more.
I think we are just trying to stay on the hype train. KoF doesnt get much love these days. Capcom can shit out anything and people will buy it up. KoF 11 and 13 were great games but still people havent tried it and with the complaints this one has been getting we are trying to keep things positive.
Capcom has tons on money their game looks great and even if it was shit (Im not saying it will be) there will be a ton of people buying and playing it. People are going to be much more critical with KoF it has to do everything and more just to stand on close to level ground with capcom.
I am still hype, I hope they put color edit in, not gonna lie love havin my team matching.
I will say I hope they keep making their climax supers cool KoF supers have always been cooler (cooler than capcom stuff IMO) So far Im only diggin Kulas
I like Chang’s and Iori’s too (I love being able to recite the Oath of the Yatagarasu from Ace Attorney Investigations…though there will be no time to do it now compared to XIII).
Well I mean what the games do mechanically is pretty similar, the only major differences is the max mode stuff and 02 being able to cancel certain specials with other specials.
The major differences come from balance design. 98 is a very space control oriented game because so many characters have incredibly strong normals. Rush down and keepaway are also very strong, but a lot of the pace of the match is dictated by the midrange. Getting rushed down is due to a failure of mid range control. 02 on the other hand really toned down the strength of normals. Pokes aren’t as good, anti airs aren’t as good, the mid range isn’t as good. Because of that, the two extremes in playstyle absolutely dominate. All in rush down and max range keepaway. This was somewhat fixed in 02UM but not really.
Honestly just for the sake of gameplay variety I would love more of a 98 hitbox design to return. I’m really just a big fan of all styles of play being strong and viable. 02 as far as balancing ideals isn’t bad, but lacking in strong anti airs is bare minimum kinda lame. Hops should be good, but you should be able to check hops easily if you call them out. I feel like 98 has the smartest design in play, you can make a read on damn near anything and challenge it, there is very little you are forced to put up with and that’s very satisfying.
The Last Blade 1 & 2 are like Hokuto no Ken and Sengoku Basara X, they are easily some of my favorite fg’s of all time, and i will certainly want to see them back with a new sequel to improve on the good that they made, yes all of them are ridiculously broken but i am sure that there is a lot of potential with all of them.
The netcode will make or break this game in the u.s market…if its steaming hot garbage like every other snk game with the same trash netcode used from fatalfury on consoles an up…dead in the u.s market…dead dead dead in a month after release
Hoping this plays like older snk games. Xiii was all hd moded out, only way to do damage. And hd modes are way above what snk hot garbage inhouse netcode can handle…