The King of Fighters 14 Review

This review is in part by Atlus for providing us a game key to review this game. A humble thank you to them.

The King of the Fighters is the over coin usually for many fans of the genre known as Fighting. Growing up my first embrace to the series was with 96′, then from there I later came across the 99′ installment, being one of my personal favorites. Now we had many games past 99′ some loved, others that were not so liked, like Maximum Impact. Which I own and actually liked. Due to its cheesy nature. One thing that is usually on par is the controls. The game was a mixture of approachable by all walks of fighting fans, experienced, or laid back.

The roster for this installment is pretty huge. Consisting over fifty characters. You have a large collection from different play-styles and formats. The characters are all filled with flash and specialties. One thing we found sadly is there is no tag system, which you think would be a thing to be considered for three character teams. For many team style fighting games offering team line ups this was a thing that added some great strategy, giving some characters a breather while you came up with another fighter to take your complainants off guard. With such a massive roster and man possible great team line ups you would have hoped for a bit of using the team side more explored.

Gameplay is given a 3D shine, with awesome looking visuals. Combos, and or flipping around is excitingly animated. With back flips seeming to hit from a prior movement, like a punch or a kid, making it all feel natural. Smooth if yo will. Characters up close are decent, but not quite as flexed out with the body work. When fighters clash it is like watching art in motion, sure you got paint particle effects in other fighters like Street Fighter 4 or 5, but this game brings out the real, and somewhat brutal beauty of contact sport. Attacks in the game are stylish, but are not overly insane. Much like titles like Guilty Gear or the lot. On default setting, the AI at least for my period of playing this offline for the coverage were not as fierce. So then I cranked it up to the next setting, four, which is in digits leading up to five. Then it felt pretty balanced, and I got a good challenge from them. Being able to counter my moves, and following up with arrays of fist justice of their own.  I usually ran through the game with teams of three to stretch out the fights. Though, still dwelling on the concept of wanting to tag in another team member from time to time to combo up attack patterns, or simply juggle and spank with a Special attack. Each one of the fifty characters all have their own move sets, and ways to go about them, as I sort of mentioned before. I sat down and played with every single character, some above my understanding, others being very easy to use. The ones I usually went with were manageable, mixing up somewhat fast attacks. Max mode is a great thing to use during this experience. It offered some explosive switch arounds for some intense fights.

The level design is that of your usual fighting game, offering bright, bold colors, and a pretty awesome hud for your characters. Giving a clear and easy to understand layout.  Obviously that is a thing is never a issue most of the time for fighting games, it just comes down to a easy to read lay out to make it keen for skilled players to see it, or even have a reading of it prior to combo sets and build up. I barely had to look down at the gauge at the bottom of the screen. Meaning I could almost tell when it filled and never had to take my eyes off the action. Usually I have had a few games where it was tricky, so I had to swap my eyes from one part of the screen to the other. As game huds go, this one has a stream line one that helps me improve keeping my focus, without the distraction, bravo!

In Closing:

The King of the Fighters 14 is a truly great fighting game.  Offering a huge line up of fighters you may choose from allowing you singles, or groups of three to run along with. The only downside from this game is the factor of not being able to tag in characters. What they seemed to provide is a deeply fun and engaging fighter with plenty to par up. This said the story itself is not to write home about but subsided a push through for folks who do not care enough to run about online. The online aspect is in the most part stable. At least giving me no issue to find a match once the servers were online for us to per take in them. The game shines in terms of solid polish and having so many characters to mix and match.

Recommended!!