Can King of Fighters XII live up to the legacy created by the rest of it's predecessors?
The Tactical Shift system from King of Fighters 2003 is out while the newer and sexier, Critical Counter System is in. As players take damage, block attacks and land hits, their power and critical counter gauges fills up. When the critical counter gauge is full, the characters health bar will flash green and the gauge will begin to decrease. If a player lands a strong punch or kick at close range, the opposing character will be temporarily immobilized, allowing the player to unleash a barrage of brutal attacks. Finishing these engagements with a special attack can devastate the players opposition and quickly give them the upper hand in a battle. The clash system causes characters who attack each other at the same time with equal power to be force apart and into a neutral position. Guard Breaks can also be used at anytime during a battle now.
The character roster and their move sets for the characters in King of Fighters XII have been seriously downsized and some characters only have a few attacks including their special attack. Some of the iconic characters from the King of Fighters franchise didn't make the roster. However, the newest installment of King of Fighters still has more characters than some of the fighting games that have recently hit the market, yet it's still kind of small considering this is a King of Fighters game. While the game is a solid fighting title, the action is a bit slow and most likely won't appeal to every fighting gamer out there. It's more about timing than anything else. The online mode was pretty bad upon the games release and though SNK has been quick to patch the game(with barely any result) the netcode is still terrible and players still frequently experience lag and matches feel somewhat sluggish. The lack of content also adds insult to the injury that is the online play.
The character sprites have all been hand drawn and look pretty good, same goes for the detailed backgrounds you'll doing be doing battle in. It's just too bad their low res and the character filters don't seem to do anything but add blur to the pixilated characters. The game also lacks polish and feels like a rush job in some areas. The special attacks are visually disappointing and is there any excuse for a 2D fighter to have any kind of slowdown on a powerful console? No, not at all.
King of Fighters XII is a solid fighting game for the most part. Achievements and trophies will encourage players to play through the Arcade mode plenty of times and the hardcore King of Fighters fans will definitely want to check the game out. Anyone on the fence may want to wait it out a bit in hopes that a better patch will be released. Until then, you might be better off checking out BlazBlue or Street Fighter IV instead.