Don’t expect a lot this time, I’d much prefer you got to witness most of the game with your own eyes. That, and the build I’ve played is nowhere near complete, so I fully expect a lot of changes.
I suppose I can share some details on how assists work. When you select a character, you can select between two different assists. Here are a few moves that characters use when assisting
>Kyo: 236K hopkicks and uppercut
>Iori: Projectile and sumagushi (hand swipe)
>Terry: Burn knuckle and round wave
>Mr. Karate 2: Zanretsu ken and short range projectile
>Haohmaru: Tornado and unblockable slash
Also, some characters have assist exclusive moves such as Jill’s herb from MVC2 and Morrigan’s meter buff from 3. I guess that this is so that there isn’t much overlap considering how many chars there are that shoot projectiles, do uppercuts and do charging attacks. For example, one of Fuuma’s assists places a seal of fire on the screen, if the opponent touches it they get burned into a crumple state that lets you continue your combo. Also, Kula can put a shield of ice on her partner that makes them temporarily immune to chip damage, but breaks after a few hits.
https://twitter.com/Diavlestein/status/919623435558576130
This is VERY accurate to their new looks, so kudos to the artist! However, there are two details that are incorrect. K’s collar is slightly larger/higher than that, and Kula’s hair is MUCH shorter. She’s almost bald, so I guess a good example would be Charlize Theron’s character from Mad Max: Fury Road. There is a story justification for this, but I’d rather not spoil.
I cannot wait for you guys to see this beautiful game that SNK has been hard at work on. I don’t want to say too much more, because I want you to see it all with your own eyes and I think my sources might be getting savy soon, since this information has spread throughout the internet. But I am not opposed to answering specific gameplay-related questions.
Kula’s reason to cut her hair
[details=Spoiler]Early in the story, the hacker’s group is shown capturing various Neo Geo fighters,
including the cut characters. Eventually,
they go after K’ and his team, but they put up a fight. Just as they’re about to be finished off,
Maxima jumps in to save them, but since he’s a cyborg the hacker is able to crack into his body and force him to self destruct, killing him.
K’ grabs Kula and they run for it. Kula is traumatized so she spends a long time shut in,
while K’ joins up with Yuki and Ai to fight the hackers. A bit later, K’ is confronted by Goodman, who mentions that he remembers K’,with the scene strongly implying that he is Igniz under an alias. Just as Goodman is about to finish K’, an icicle strikes him from the back, and Kula walks in to join K’ with her new look and a new resolve. You then control K’ and Kula fighting Goodman.
[/details]
Unlike MVC, you cannot call assists in the middle of an attack. You must be in a state where you can act normally.
As mentioned before by other leakers, they are an animesque style. If you’ve seen the Dragon Ball, Naruto, etc type of games, you know what you’re in for. The game looks absolutely nothing like XIV in any capacity.
This leaker is right on the money, “Neo Shock Engine” is the tentative name some are using for SNK’s new 3D engine. I don’t believe that it will be the final name for the engine, however. Of course, KOFXIV does not use this engine. It seems this leaker does have more credibility than I had previously assumed, which makes me question why he’s attempting to discredit me so hard. Perhaps he’s trying to prevent me from spoiling too much, or costing us our sources?
The cast are all in a playable state except for the final boss and the boss versions of certain characters, although specific move properties and balance are of course tentative. The story mode cuts off at a certain point, after only a couple of hours. There are no character endings for arcade mode currently, it just ends on a screen saying the game is in development.
The boss difficulty will vary for most players, but I would put Goodman and the new final boss on par with the likes of 94 Rugal, 96 Goenitz, 2001 Igniz, 2003 Magaki, especially the last boss who has various cheap tricks including some moves that break the fourth wall to mess with the interface. He can “hack” the game to alter life values, super bar, even altering your button controls or the properties of your moves, or tthe visuals/sound.
Most of the character abilities are pretty standard if you’re familiar with classic SNK, but I suppose I can elaborate on the “V-Trigger” style mechanic. For instance, Mizuchi’s playable form starts draining his meter and his partner’s life to transform him into his boss form, so you temporarily get to control an SNK boss.
Cel shading is definitely not the right word for the visuals. It’s more that the art style resembles anime rather than KOFXIV’s realistic style. As I’ve said, look at the licensed anime games from Namco-Bandai.
King Lion plays identically to the first game. His “V-Trigger” gives him new techniques.
There are redesigns, but most of them are either ones you’ve seen before such as Kyo and Iori using different looks or are very subtle such as Ryo utilizing elements from Wild Ambition. Captain Kidd has a slightly exaggerated build like Antonov and Robert has his goatee, but very few characters have extreme makeovers like K’ and Kula do. The most notable changes are to Yuki, Ai, Andy, and Mizuchi . Yuki and Ai wear tight body suits that resemble the characters from Ton. Andy fights in a new uniform with a classical ninja face mask and scarf. Mizuchi is perhaps the most interesting, in my opinion. His playable form has black hair with a white streak, and he has many lacerations and scars across his body, implying the Orochi power is exceeding his body’s limits. During his idle animation, his hair will glow white and he doubles over in pain holding his head. His boss form is the same as it was in the first game. Aside from this, many female characters have more conservative outfits, Mai is dressed as she is in the Chinese port of KOFXIV and Rosa has her mid-drif covered. I can’t say for certain if this will be the case in every region.
It’s a very, very fast-paced game, on par with Guilty Gear XRD. It controls almost identically to the first game, save for the new mechanics, but it’s much more loose and forgiving. Many difficult command inputs are changed to be easier. The game is very easy to pick up and play with your friends, in my opinion, assuming nothing changes.
The build I’ve played has arcade, story, versus, training and survival modes. That’s it. I don’t know what else may or may not be coming.
Yes, if you fail at any fight in arcade mode, you can use a continue service, like in most SNK games.
All normally playable characters are selectable in this build, but that may just be for testing purposes. Characters like Mizuchi, Neo Dio, King Lion, Kagami and Goodman have boss forms, but they are unselectable, as is the final boss.
I don’t know much about how DLC is going to work, but based on what the other leakers have said I’m going to assume that Athena, Kensou, Mars People and Morden are the four DLC characters, since they don’t exist in the build I’ve played. All I’ve been told is that there will be a season pass with four DLC characters and six costumes.
I have no idea if the censorship to the female characters will be region based or not, but I have been told that SNK is very aware of the complaints that Western gaming journalists and feminist activists have to their characters, and want desperately to amend their image in the US. That, and the build I’ve played is in completely translated English. I’m unsure if the censorship will be present in all versions of the game, but I can say with absolute certainty that unless something changes, it will be present in the North American release.
All I do know is that SNK’s sales in the United States are abysmal, so it makes perfect sense that they would want to try anything they can to increase their sales. . Through my contacts I do know that many overseas developers think about these things often when considering the release of their games in the West.
If I had to make an estimate, I’d say that this is probably the first playable build. It’s still very buggy and rough looking. Maybe it’s been in this state for about 6 months? I don’t know, I’m not a developer.
Training mode is extremely barebones right now. I assume, and hope, it will get more features later.
I don’t want to spoil too many of them, but I want to reiterate that the stages are a serious love later to the history of SNK, instead of the random science fiction stuff in the first game. If you’re a longtime fan, you WILL recognize many of them. I had a huge smile on my face every time I saw one of them for the first time.
The character select screen is similar to the first game with characters across from their counterparts, Yuki to Ai, Kyo to Iori, K’ to Kula, so on and so forh. The boss characters are grouped at the bottom, and on either side of them are four empty boxes for the season pass characters.
