Monday 7 February 2011

KOFXIII - First Impressions

Although you've probably read loads of first impressions of KOFXIII by now, i've only just managed to play it today at the Ultimate Clash X Event in London. (See the results for the KOFXIII beginners tournament and KOF02UM tournament here or here.)

First impressions of the game were pretty positive, i found the game very enjoyable and a huge step up from KOFXII.

There have been quite a few changes to some of the characters from XII, Clark who i used as part of my main team in XII i found incredibly difficult to use in this. Particularly since they changed his standing D to his forward+D from XII and his original standing D is only activated close up.
Although people had mentioned to me the command grabs were better in this game, i didn't think they were restored to previous KOF command grab properties. For example one game i played the opponent rolled out of my grab !! That's not to say the command grabs aren't better in this game, just not quite as good as i would have hoped.

Athena i felt was much improved, although not as strong as her 02/02UM version i felt i could play alot more like that version unlike the XII version, which i felt was a very weak Athena.

I was fairly dissapointed with Mai, i didn't feel that she was as good as her other versions. Particularly coming from playing 02UM where she has a large amount of special moves, she feels a little watered down in this.

Kyo seemed not that much different to play, they've changed some of the properties of his moves (qcf+B now has noticable recovery on it).

Kensou seemed alot more fun than his XII version.

Raiden who i practiced playing throughout most of the day is really as broken as you could imagine, i didn't manage to execute his full dropkick combo but the dropkicks by themselves usually did the job...

Takuma i quite liked, although i wasn't quite sure how to play him properly i thought he seemed pretty strong.

The colour schemes you can pick for characters in the game are really nice, i liked a good majority of them and felt SNKP must have put alot of thought into this.

I never quite got the gist of the BC combos or drive cancelling today but look forward to being able to spend some time learning it when the console version comes out.

Although Neomax specials look flashy in videos, they look even better when you see them happen in real life.
I didn't get to see many (particularly as people weren't quite sure of the commands for them), but the ones i did see i thought were pretty cool.

Hitboxes and cross ups i felt were a little strange, half the time where i didn't think i should have been crossed up i ended up in a cross up. There was one funny thing i saw during one of the matches where a player jumped over K' who did an uppercut into qcb+K and he did that special into the completely wrong way.

At the end of the day i thought the game was pretty decent and enjoyed playing it. Although i will stand by what i said to others today, i still think 02UM is a better game BUT i am really looking forward to the home console version now so that i can try out some more things.

I think SNKP did a good job on this game, it isn't quite perfection but i think once the console versions comes out it will only be a good thing for the KOF community.

5 comments:

  1. To me one of the best things about this game was the special throws, "normal" command grabs are much better than they where in XII, but not as insane as they where in '02. EX command throws are the ones that you should be on the look out for, since they have increased range, damage and invincibility they are sooooo much better than regular command throws.

    That was good, because now playing against a strong "grapple character" doesn't feel like going against a black hole that will suck you and kill you the moment you step where you aren't supposed to.

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  2. I liked the EX command throws, they felt alot more like the old style command throw, but it's a shame u need to use a whole bar to do it.

    Personally i'm not sure i like the fact that they've weakened grab characters grab range/priority.
    I'll have to experiment with it more once the console version comes out.

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  3. @ KOF UK, thank you very much for the impression, I would like to ask you about the graphics, are there any improvements from previous version? how are the sprites look? blurry ?!

    Regards

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  4. Hi, i thought the graphics looked good.
    They are the same sprites as the ones used in XII, but because it no longer has the 'Zoom in' effect like Art of Fighting they are always a consistant size on the screen.

    Also because of this they don't suffer the same kind of pixelisation as XII, so generally it looks better.

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  5. @ KOF UK, thanks for answering :) , I am glad that the sprites look better than XII, can't wait anymore I want to play XIII :D

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