I never played because of so many friends hating on it. So I ended up not buying it. What are some reasons why?
Two major issues I’ve seen come up frequently against it is that the pace of the game is much slower than KoF normally is and also, the dynamically zooming camera threw off a lot of spacing related things since the closer you were to your opponent, the less of the stage you can see.
KOF 12 was an unfinished KOF rushed by SNKPlaymore officials to try and get revenue. The game was not nearly finished and the staff were told to clean it up and put it out so SNKPlaymore can get some revenue. Actually KOF13 is the finished product of KOF12. The result ended with a lot of big guys getting fired at SNK and a lot of the original KOF staff left due to the rush and they knew the game was not close to being finished. This is another reason why CvS3 won’t be happening soon because now a lot of the old colleagues and friends of Capcom left and went to do other things. KOF12 was a 50 rushed game that was probably 20-30% completed. KOF13 is the finished product. Things that were not finished were characters(Actually the directory for KOF12 had a folder that said “98 Iori” or something like that, but he was not in the game because he wasn’t close to being finished), gameplay(the counter hit thing was thrown in at the last minute), stages, and story, and balancing.
I think the important things were:
[LIST=1]
[]netcode issues at launch
[]no story mode featuring a cheap boss
[]1 & 2 caused reviewers to give the game a low score, killing casual interest
[]several characters have shallow movelists
[*]roster size was a reduction from past games, inviting fans of missing characters to look for a reason to hate the game
[/LIST]
Everything else is mostly subjective…