The same thing that happens to a game franchise, once you strip it of all the things that made it great in the first place. This hurts me to the core. I am a long time fan of the KOF series and to see this happen, is a lot like watching a child get plowed down by a 50 cal. rifle. Yeah... This was bad. Not Horrible but, nowhere near, being as great as SF4 or BlazBlue.
What the hell went wrong here? Did the developers run out of money giving the game a face lift? Well, I admit. The KOF series needed a fresh coat of paint but, that doesn't mean that it needed to be stripped of the other essentials that made it good! I know plastic surgery can be expensive but, Holy damn! Do I need to teach a class on how NOT to ruin a game?
What the hell we're they thinking at the production board meeting? Stuff like this will bring your piss to a boil with anger! You got the practice mode so you can learn the moves and, the time attack feature so you can see how fast you can stomp the cpu and 2 player mode...That's it, really! The online feature is almost non existent because, of the lag. Don't know about the XBOX 360 version but, the PS3 version I played has a serious lag problem.
Hope that gets fixed soon. This game is too much of a bare bones fighting game. it has some new improvements of the fighting engine, and fresh coat of hand drawn paint. But, No story, Laggy online play, out of place English voice acting and, only a fraction of what the character roster used to be makes this KOF XII lack luster. Only for the Hard core, devoted fans. The rest of you look elsewhere. It ain't a bad game... it functions… it's just a disappointing entry into the series.