The Best King Of Fighters game since 98
I had my doubts with XI since all my friends told me that 2003 sucked hard. But let me tell you this… XI is by far the best KOF game since 98.
In the graphics department KOF holds up pretty well for a game that recycles sprites every year. But lets face it… their age starts to show. The Backgrounds are decent with the PS2 exclusives as the best looking of the bunch. But in the end, the combination of the 3D backgrounds and the characters models looks awkward.
The music is decent; your typical KOF music with arranged versions of some classic SNK BGMs.
The AI is not hard as Hell but not easy as a walk in the park. It's just right. However the Final Boss is your typical cheesy son of a gun in a classic SNK style (this guys surely know how to make cheap bosses).
But the reason why XI stands over previous games is the gameplay. The fighting mechanics introduced in KOF 2003 have been refined and they work just fine. I hate the delay of normal shifts, but Quick and Saving Shifts features are awesome. The introduction of the Skill meter is what KOF needed for years. I hated every time that I accidentally lost a stock of my super special move bar just for a @#$%^ saving roll…that sucked hard. The Leader Specials are the equivalent of the super desperation moves of previous games but only one character of the team has it; it's kind of like your secret weapon. The super cancels are cool but nothing new if you have played games like last blade. But the dream cancels are awesome; being able to change a special move to a leader move is so damn cool and the fact that the skill meter limits the amount of times a dream cancel can be performed helps against extremely cheap friends.
The cast has some of your expected characters (Kyo, Iori, K', Terry, Ryo, Athena) but also venture with new additions and removes some old characters that you are going to miss (like Andy, Joe or Takuma). For the most part, the selection is weird but works. Newcomers to the SNK universe like Gato, Eiji or Duck King are welcome additions. For the most part the new characters are boring and useless with gambi…Oswald as the only exception. Some of the sub bosses like Gai or Hayate don't seem to fit in this game and the main boss is just way too cheap. Thankfully, they added extra characters to the PS2 version like fan favorites Geese Howard, Robert Garcia or Mai Shiranui (What were they smoking when the decided to remove Mai from this game).
The game has a fairly decent amount of extras and game modes to choose from with Arcade and Challenge as the more entertaining of the bunch.
I have enjoyed every minute playing KOF XI. I have to admit that I didn't have any interest in this game at first because of past KOF games and the Shift system introduced in KOF2003 (I was worried that this game was as cheap as Marvel vs Capcom 2). But in the end Playmore achieved what SNK fans have been waiting for years, a good KOF game. I just hope that Playmore doesn't release KOF XII in America a year and a half after the japanese release.