The King of Fighters XIV... finally in 2016

[KAI]

Playable at Playstation Experience this december
Brace for (maximum) impact.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I didn't really pay attention when those were still around, but haven't KoF animations always been a tad sub-arcade standard? Or could it be that I'm thinking of some other SNK title/series?

[BIL]

Huge rosters, aged hardware and (I would imagine) the annual releases always dated the MVS KOFs' look, yep. They vastly made up for it with artistry and force of personality, though, something this new game isn't displaying. That Kyo model looks like something out of Rapelay.

[quash]

Ugliness aside, I am optimistic that they will make a decent game. Hopefully it will fix the few shortcomings of XIII (weak guard cancel options, hitboxes on fireballs and strong normals, more emphasis on meter management and less full life combos).

[Strider77]

I think it's going to be a hot mess..... we haven't gotten a single KOF from this team. Do we even know who is working on it?

[gameoverDude]

SNK needs to give AOF 3 and FF 3 a little more respect in this character roster.
How about Karman Cole, Wyler (tone him down just enough to make him a regular playable "tank" character instead of a boss), Bob Wilson, and Hon-Fu?

Huge rosters, aged hardware and (I would imagine) the annual releases always dated the MVS KOFs' look, yep. They vastly made up for it with artistry and force of personality, though, something this new game isn't displaying. That Kyo model looks like something out of Rapelay.

I'm hoping the end release plays better than it looks (at this point in time that is- they're welcome to improve the visuals also!).

[KAI]

Interview with KOFXIV producer
At least it's been produced by a japanese team.

[KAI]

2nd teaser

Still looks ugly as shit.

[xxx1993]

I hope Alice from the Fatal Fury Pachinko games gets included in this game.

[BulletMagnet]

Funnily enough, SNKP apparently announced that it's leaving the pachislot business.

[null1024]

So, it's ugly as sin. At the very least, it looks like an ordinary KOF from that new trailer, and that's reassuring.
We can at least expect it to be something approaching okay, maybe.

and then we get it, and its 2001 bad

[DestroyTheCore]

I don't mind the new art direction, but I can't tell the characters from the background because the developers try really hard to add graphical details. It's just too much.

[gameoverDude]

Interview with KOFXIV producer
At least it's been produced by a japanese team.

Yasuyuki Oda. My hopes for this are rising.

You could say some of the Neo KOFs are ugly as sin compared to Street Fighter III, also. It does look recognizably like KOF, just as SF4, SF5, GGXrd, and MK 2011/MKX stay true to their franchises. That said, the stages could use some improvement.

KOF XIV looks like it will be at least reasonably good, if not great.

[Skykid]

Total guesswork, but based on the combo styles of that trailer it *looks* like it's been mapped on KOF '98 once again, which is still the pinnacle of refined KOF systems, so it's kind of a no-brainer.

It's not too surprising they can't better '98, but it's a shame they can rarely develop anything genuinely new that works as well. Anyway, conjecture. It looks like total shit, but hopefully it will play ok.

[Obscura]

Not a fan of XIII?

Admittedly, I've never played any of the pre-XIII KoF's to any real extent, but I adore XIII's system.

[ACSeraph]

^Yeah gotta agree XIII was a great system, although I could see some people not appreciating the mass damage combo-fiend nature of it. XIII felt like a fully realized and fine tuned version of the 2k2 system. Skykid's right though, '98 is definitely the most elegant.

New game is ugly, but at the same time I can't imagine SNK having anything above a budget-title level of money to work with. I kind of feel bad for them actually, as they are bringing out a brand new game in a beloved franchise that ought to be good and dead and pulling out of the gambling market to focus on games. The financial realities of their situation probly have a lot to do with the visuals being the way they are, but the slivers of gameplay shown look like proper KoF so there must be some heart and love put into this.

Considering every piece of information they put out about the game gets a massive amount of dislikes and negative comments that eclipses anything positive it must be extremely depressing for the development staff to slog through every day trying to produce a new title for us cranky bastards. Maybe the game will suck, but the new direction of the company suggests that the people working there still love and care about the ips. Lets try and not be shallow about the visuals and give them a fair chance to sell us on the gameplay when the time comes.

I want to believe!

[Squire Grooktook]

I think a large amount of the complaints about visuals were made on the assumption that they'd farmed it out to some no-name korean team or something. With core snk people working on it, it's a lot easier to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Still kind of leaves me wondering why they didn't just recycle the kof13 sprites (maybe add one or two new characters and call it kof14). I guess that's just not the way the market works.

[ACSeraph]

Well, looking at what they've shown I would imagine even if they reused the assets from XIII plus 1 or 2 new characters and new stage artwork it would have been far more expensive than that mediocre 3D.

[Skykid]

Not a fan of XIII?

Admittedly, I've never played any of the pre-XIII KoF's to any real extent, but I adore XIII's system.

No it's great, surprisingly so - and I also love '96 and '97 for their own little idiosyncracies. Hell, I quite enjoy '94 and '95 too. For me it peaked at '98, it's the perfect harmony of everything they were building towards, an amazingly limber and fine-tuned game. I just think KOF suffered as soon as they tried to do too much. Adding the strikers in '99 and buggering up the roll ruined that game instantly, and although the experimentation has had pros and cons thereafter, they never found anything worth sticking with. So it was just that, experimentation largely not worth continuing with, leaving you with a sort of messy lineage from '98 onward.

Capcom never so largely affected the core of Street Fighter (although Zero 3 was a bit of a blunder) and I don't think KOF required much adjustment either, just new characters and moves. XIII is great at what it does, much better than expected, but I still prefer the snappier raw pixels of the originals. '98 is a timeless victory, and people are still playing it everywhere in China as we speak.

[Strider77]

I play 98 as we speak!!!

[BIL]

I think a large amount of the complaints about visuals were made on the assumption that they'd farmed it out to some no-name korean team or something. With core snk people working on it, it's a lot easier to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Same same. In any case, it's not like the series hasn't had good games with some fugly audiovisuals previously (2002).

...tbh I think the absolute stylistic nadir of the series remains 99's sunny park stage. Out of context it's mouthwateringly crisp pixel art. In context it makes the game look ridiculous. A clash of the world's mightiest martial arts! Bone-jarring blows detonating mere feet away from unperturbed pigeons! Pigeons don't work like that. Monty Python-esque incongruity.

The immaculate rainy ver is, of course, another matter entirely.

Spoiler

[null1024]

The immaculate rainy ver is of course another matter:

Spoiler

Oh yeah, totally. 2000's also got some nice ones, but that stage when wet is perfect.
Shame 99's got so many issues, even ignoring strikers.

As for 2002 looking ugly, you better not be talking about the sheep stage.

Just look at this masterwork.
also, Kim's obnoxiously smooth and nice '02 idle animation that's jarringly out of place

They definitely did drop the ball with music, and the backgrounds aren't anything to write home about.

[hanasu]

The biggest problem with 13 was the netcode. I think it has an extremely positive reception across the majority of fighting game players (KoF top 8 at EVO is always great), but the online play in this day and age is a dealbreaker. Also learning HD combos and three characters at once when you're new is a big turnoff to newcomers. If they can make the online work well, they have a shot - but the general trend in new sequels is decidedly not in the direction of combo system simplification (SF5 notwithstanding), so who knows.

[drunkninja24]

^Yeah gotta agree XIII was a great system, although I could see some people not appreciating the mass damage combo-fiend nature of it. XIII felt like a fully realized and fine tuned version of the 2k2 system. Skykid's right though, '98 is definitely the most elegant.

New game is ugly, but at the same time I can't imagine SNK having anything above a budget-title level of money to work with. I kind of feel bad for them actually, as they are bringing out a brand new game in a beloved franchise that ought to be good and dead and pulling out of the gambling market to focus on games. The financial realities of their situation probly have a lot to do with the visuals being the way they are, but the slivers of gameplay shown look like proper KoF so there must be some heart and love put into this.

Considering every piece of information they put out about the game gets a massive amount of dislikes and negative comments that eclipses anything positive it must be extremely depressing for the development staff to slog through every day trying to produce a new title for us cranky bastards. Maybe the game will suck, but the new direction of the company suggests that the people working there still love and care about the ips. Lets try and not be shallow about the visuals and give them a fair chance to sell us on the gameplay when the time comes.

I want to believe!

At best, I'm hoping for perhaps another XII -> XIII situation

XII felt like rushed horseshit (cause it basically was), whereas XIII was the game they wanted to make initially

Perhaps XIV -> XV will do something similar, just with bringing the main series to 3D visually

One can dream

[gameoverDude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNkGxgMkcBE

Here's a frame by frame comparison of XIII vs XIV. It's not really looking that bad, and in this shape, I'd take it. Not everything has to be GGXrd level. SNK didn't pull off SFIII level visuals with KOF'97 after all, and it still looked just fine even with SFIII eclipsing it visually.

[null1024]

That video is nice to see.
I still hope they make the visuals nicer. They look... well, I can't say good, but they aren't terrible when viewed from the side.

Really, they needed to show the fighting when the first trailer was released though. First trailer gave everyone a "Maximum Impact" vibe without it and that really, really hurt the perception of XIV.
also, Kyo's ugly ass face was full screen, that didn't help and I wonder why SNK even showed it

Looks aren't everything, but it really does feel odd coming directly off of XIII, especially with how pretty that game is [even if it has some major style issues like the obnoxious muscles on Terry and Clark, as well as the seemingly 12yo Athena and Yuri].
Doubly so when Xrd is on the market, people are just going to compare. Even SF5 looks massively prettier [even if it still resembles SF4's ugly-ass self to my taste] than XIV right now.

[gameoverDude]

Youtube video with graphics comparison & possible Roster Leak

This is a graphics comparison between the 1st & 2nd trailers, with a few tweaks.

Something real interesting: Around 2:38 it looks like some sort of character select screen WIP with Kyo, Iori, Leona, & Chang having 44 empty boxes. Did SNK try to drop a hint? And there's some rumored roster leak in Japanese. Then at 2:47 there's an English roster translated from that.

01) Tung Fu Rue & 2 others (China Team)
02) Kyo, Benimaru, Goro (Japan)
03) Terry, Andy, Joe (FF)
04) Ryo & Yuri Sakazaki, Robert (AOF)
05) K', Maxima, Kula (K' Team)
06) Kim Kap Hwan, Kim's master, Kim's wife (Kim Team)
07) Chang, Choi, & new prisoner (Criminal Team)
08) Mai, King, & Alice (Women's Team)
09) Ralf, Clark, & Leona (Ikari Warriors)
10) Athena, Sie, Chin Gentsai (Psycho Soldier)
11) Iori, Mature, Vice (Yagami Team as in KOF '96)
12) Ramon, Angel, Tizoc (Mexico Team)
13) Acting mask girl, Teenage girl singer w/ electric element, & Mysterious hooded man (Palace Wan team)
14) Geese, Billy, and ?? (Southtown Team)
15) Brazilian ninja, Handicap boxer, & Pretty Latin girl (S. American team)
16) Nakoruru, Love Heart, & Mui-Mui (Alternate world team)
Mid boss) Russian billionaire. (sounds like it could be someone like Rugal, but not him. Rugal is probably German.)
Final boss) Non human species.

Alice Chrysler was originally going to replace Mai in Fatal Fury 3, BTW. This idea got nixed early on.

[null1024]

I really do hope that leaked roster is true. There's a handful of little things that make it seem unlikely to me [Geese returning [even though he's not dead in KOF], Kim's wife, and the alternate world team]. But it actually sounds like a great selection of characters if it is true. I'm excited.

Also, part of me noticed that things got better visually between trailer 1 and 2, but I didn't think on it [also, trailer 1 is way too short to get much from]. They still looked too similar.

[Hagane]

It's amazing how, no matter how much time passes and how many times they go bankrupt, SNK still manages to completely fail at business. It wasn't that hard to understand that anime cel-shaded graphics were the only way to retain SNK's 2D feel while not spending too much money... yet they decide to go for a realistic style, something that needs lots of money to be done well.

Not surprisingly, this looks like shit. It'll probably play well since their latest games (2k2 UM, KOF XIII) have been very solid, but it will be a total failure sales wise. With such terrible graphics only the most hardcore fighting game players will give it a chance.

[NeoStrayCat]

Andy Bogard confirmed! PS Experience mention!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM5s-Ad4e6s