got in a good hour or so of UM today.
Playing it is a bit of a shock to the system, I’m so used to KoFXI that it’s hard to adjust to this older style of gameplay.
One of the biggest adjustments is the damage. I certainly appreciate damage-scaling alot more now that I’ve played UM. BnB combos easily eat 25-40% of the meter. One really annoying thing is that the new damage meters aren’t very accurate. There were several matches where the lifebar was clearly empty but the character was still alive. I let my guard down a few times thinking my opponent was dead and was punished severely for it. I guess if I could hear the sound it wouldn’t be so bad but arcades make that impossible.
Some more observations:
Reg. Geese is an absolute monster. Fast, high damaging combos. Great hop attacks. Pretty much easy mode. His Deadly Rave start ups very fast and doesn’t require manual input. Shadow smasher is fast and safe, but doesn’t cover much distance. The only problem is his RS. The level 2 version is seriously disappointing. Damage on either version isn’t so great and the level 2 version doesn’t seem to come out any faster or cover any more area than level 1. On top of that level 2 RS has a very long recovery time. It also seems to lack invincibility throughout the entire animation. Just as the ragging storm finishes, but with the animation still on the screen, Geese can be hit out of it. You pretty much setup yourself up to eat a super if you whiff or the opponent blocks.
EX Geese is equally as powerful but I prefer Reg. Geese. He has the claw animation for his RS and just from appearance seems to be more effective than Reg. Geese’s, would need more testing to say for sure. The level 1 Rashoumon throw isn’t so great. The opponent still wakes up close to Geese after the throw and you can be punished before geese finishes his animation.
Krauser will be a low tier character, mid-at best. His hitboxes and range are very screwy. His hard attacks cover alot of distance on screen but you actually have to be very close or you’ll whiff. Rushdown absolutely kills him, his only defense is his qcf+P counter which only works on highs and mids, but once people catch on to it they’ll just start rush-in grapple/throw games. Even at a distance he’s not so hot. His Blitz Ball comes out way too slow and is easy to avoid/counter.
Yamazaki is a bit of a beast himself. The only noticeable differences between the reg. and ex versions: He has the “loop” animation for his snake hand in the reg. version and the “wind”-like animation in the EX version. Also for the Reg. Yamazaki his dp+P slides for with multiple hits but EX Yamazaki does one swipe and if it connects will stab the opponent for an extra hit. Didn’t play much with the EX version today, so there may be more differences I haven’t seen yet.
Yamazaki seems to have match-up problems with Lucky, though. Basketball vs. Snake Arm – the basketball usually wins.
Billy Kane kicks ass. Great poke game.
And grapplers/grapples own this game. High priority and invincibility on start up for many characters. I imagine the top tier will be mostly grapplers and probably geese.
Someone asked about Geese’s jumping C – yes it’s still two hits. I haven’t been able to do a a shippuken off a hop yet, but the joystick isn’t so hot on the cabinet i played.
You can also hit ABC while getting hit to power-up now. I can see this being very useful. The emergency evasion roll, however, momentarily pauses the screen so it’s very easy for an opponent to recompose and come back after you.
EX Mode and Dodging are very annoying. Dodging looks like it could be abused quite easily.
Overall, i feel this is just the original KoF '98 with a few more characters. No human player ever uses “ultimate” mode, and the small game play changes to powering up and rolling don’t seem to make that big of difference. It’s still fun but not revolutionary by any means.
