Despite how great The King of Fighters may be, the PSP's 'Orochi Saga' suffers a few problems.
Yes, the game itself is good, the controls work well, the visuals look pretty nice on the PSP screen and it's a nice bundle of games for you to play from '94 to '98, so you can't be too fussy now... can we? Well if it means having to suffer long load times and the often voice delay, yes, there's a right to complain.
The Orochi Saga has this annoying tendancy to leave you waiting for a few boring minutes staring at the word 'Loading' in the corner until it decides to let you access the title screen... and then another few minutes to get to the 'game select' screen... and now the 'character select' screen... ok, you get the point, it has long loading times that happen often. And just to rub it in, once you finally get into a fight, the sound seems to delay a little before sorting itself out. It was rather wierd to hear the announcer shout "Ready?" when I'd already knocked my opponent face down to the floor, but whatever I won, I don't mind. The game also happened to freeze on the loading screen once for me while I tried out the training mode... not very nice at all.
But whatever, all that aside, The Orochi Saga allows the player to play 5 of the first King of Fighters arcade games, each that play out exactly like their arcade ports. The game does ask just as you select a one of the series whether you want to play ad-hoc or go to the training mode, so there's at least you can get used to the controls before it throws you into it's fast-paced action... the loading aside. The visuals of The Orochi Saga are pretty good, even stretched to the PSP resolution and the sound is good, despite it's delays at the start of a fight.
It's unfortunate really, The Orochi Saga is both pretty good and bad due to certain conditions. I'll be honest, the loading times become forgivable and sometimes shorter the more you play the game, but we're talking about a fighter here, and who wants to be waiting around when you're wanting to kick butt? However, it's obvious here that there's a good package for you to look into if you're a fan of the King of Fighters series, but if you already own a decent fighter on the PSP, this isn't something you want to be buying at an expensive price.