Favorite Kof game and why?

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

So which is your favorite of the series and why? List reasons in terms of design, characters, gameplay, etc.

[Great Dark Hero]

KOF98UMFE mainly due to nostalgia. I love playing the EX versions of the characters on this game as well (specifically EX Terry, EX Mai and EX Mary). I am also very fond on how normals and jump-ins work in the game as well. Another thing is that there are a number ways to influence the game play in favor of what the player really wants to do with the Extra, Advanced and Ultimate modes. Plus, secondary versions of the characters (essentially having new/extra extensive move sets to exploit).
The characters I like to play on 98UM in general are all of the characters mentioned above, plus Yamazaki, Heavy D!, Leona, Geese, Eiji, Kyo and Saisyu. I started playing Eiji partially because I like to punish players for whiffing too much at the mid/far range.
KOF02UM is a close second while XIII is a distant 3rd. I generally like the roster on KOF02UM. My favorites are usually Terry, Mary and Yamazaki. I also sub with Lin, Mai, Shermie, Kyo, and Heidern. At this point, you can probably tell that I usually prefer to play neutral/noteworthy recurring characters, buxom female characters and... characters that are "solid" (neither high or low tier). Part of the reason I do this is because there is a huge chance that the opposing is not going to know the match up (which 70% of the time, I was right as far as the German competition was concerned). I am still trying to learn Angel and Kasumi at this time.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Sept 12, 2015 22:03:36 GMT -5 Great Dark Hero said:

KOF98UMFE mainly due to nostalgia. I love playing the EX versions of the characters on this game as well (specifically EX Terry, EX Mai and EX Mary). I am also very fond on how normals and jump-ins work in the game as well. Another thing is that there are a number ways to influence the game play in favor of what the player really wants to do with the Extra, Advanced and Ultimate modes. Plus, secondary versions of the characters (essentially having new/extra extensive move sets to exploit).
The characters I like to play on 98UM in general are all of the characters mentioned above, plus Yamazaki, Heavy D!, Leona, Geese, Eiji, Kyo and Saisyu. I started playing Eiji partially because I like to punish players for whiffing too much at the mid/far range.
KOF02UM is a close second while XIII is a distant 3rd. I generally like the roster on KOF02UM. My favorites are usually Terry, Mary and Yamazaki. I also sub with Lin, Mai, Shermie, Kyo, and Heidern. At this point, you can probably tell that I usually prefer to play neutral/noteworthy recurring characters, buxom female characters and... characters that are "solid" (neither high or low tier). Part of the reason I do this is because there is a huge chance that the opposing is not going to know the match up (which 70% of the time, I was right as far as the German competition was concerned). I am still trying to learn Angel and Kasumi at this time.

I also have to say I had a lot of fun with Kof XI despite many of the complaints it gets. Great music, fun style of play. Kula was strong in that game though.

I'd probably say it's 02', 98, then 13 out of the "top 3" but in reality I liked a lot of them.

I'd probably edge it to 02 because of the cast and the great moveset. Normals were still strong and damage off of individual hits were still good so you didn't have to rely on touch of death the way you did on XIII. 98 was great for much of the same reason but I liked the mobility and options of 02 while still retaining fundamentals.

XIII had watered down move lists and weakened normals in favor of over reliance on jump CD's and custom combos. Which is why I don't like those systems as much because it's just a roundabout way of getting lesser results. Nothing more annoying than playing against Takuma with Mai and beating him the whole round next to no health, only for him to land a command grab or hit and then do 80% and win. That design was dumb.

There are so many great characters to try out and use with Kof that you just can't go wrong. I've always loved the roster.

[Great Dark Hero]

Okay.
I stated... that if I were to grade KOFXIII 1 out of 10... I would give a 8 out of 10. A 8/10 score.
There are over 36 playable characters, all whom are competitive viable and easily likable (this is a tad more evident based on intermediate to high level tournament outside of the West). On a general consensus, KOFXIII is a very great game in general in which more people should play.

The main issues with KOFXIII:
- Many of the character have been considerably neutered compared to their past counter parts. The character move sets in general are not quite as lengthy or as elaborate as it were in the past games. Within games such as 98/98UM(FE) and 02/02UM for example, the characters had a lot of useful moves in which many players could easy forget about half of the time because there were so many.
In XIII, characters such as King, Mai, Clark, Terry, Leona, Duo, and even Elisabeth for example lost quite a few moves or went back to a variation of a previous move set from a earlier game, which may not have consisted of a large move set. It's not that the characters "need" to have so many moves at once because it was more than likely a design decision for suiting how the meter system works in KOFXIII. This could also be due to how expensive it is to make sprites. But, anytime after KOF96, the KOF characters became "known" for having rather elaborate and interesting move sets, unlike Street Fighter were every other character has around 3 to 4 special moves and a couple of command moves (no, that is not to say that those games are terrible. I love many fighting games and I would easily take pleasure in playing things like older Capcom titles... SFA2... SFA3... Darkstalkers... that includes many other fighting games from different genres as well). There is also slight discrepancy with NESTS Kyo. This isn't really "NESTS saga" Kyo. This is mainly an interpretation of "98 Kyo" while he is wearing his NESTS saga costume. When Kyo fought in the NESTS saga of the KOF series, his move set changed once more when going on from the amazing (yet non-canonical dream match game) KOF98UM.

- Netcode.
... I don't need to say anything about this. The PC version of KOFXIII fixes this issue to a degree.

- Over emphasis on the HD system
This is a big one. The game is a lot more combo centric than both 98/98UM and 02/02UM. The reality is that the HD system is based on 02UM BC system, but within that particular game, it was not really necessary and a lot of characters didn't really have a use for it at the time.
While the combos look very amazing in general there is an issue with how the neutral game works. The background stages are generally wider, so there is a lot more room to move around. Normals in this game in general... are not that good, either because they don't really do that much damage by themselves (not rewarding) or because many of them have really bad range. The game does not reward the player for being "solid." Not as much as in the older titles. To make a minor note about back dashes, they automatically cause the players character to be in a mid air state... if they are hit by a normal, it just causes a air reset in which it would help the player escape from pressure.
A player could try to win by completely outplaying the opponent with well-placed normal moves and smaller combos for good damage but if one player scores an HD combo for high damage, the round is essentially over. This sounds good in theory, except neither of the player are rewarded for having a stronger neutral and spacing game while taking advantage of the fast paced element that KOF is known for. It is not like SF where moving around and jumping too much is not supported... it's just that the neutral game in KOFXIII specifically is generally weaker. Jump-ins in XIII are also relatively strong.

To be continued.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Sept 19, 2015 8:44:16 GMT -5 Great Dark Hero said:

Okay.
I stated... that if I were to grade KOFXIII 1 out of 10... I would give a 8 out of 10. A 8/10 score.
There are over 36 playable characters, all whom are competitive viable and easily likable (this is a tad more evident based on intermediate to high level tournament outside of the West). On a general consensus, KOFXIII is a very great game in general in which more people should play.

The main issues with KOFXIII:
- Many of the character have been considerably neutered compared to their past counter parts. The character move sets in general are not quite as lengthy or as elaborate as it were in the past games. Within games such as 98/98UM(FE) and 02/02UM for example, the characters had a lot of useful moves in which many players could easy forget about half of the time because there were so many.
In XIII, characters such as King, Mai, Clark, Terry, Leona, Duo, and even Elisabeth for example lost quite a few moves or went back to a variation of a previous move set from a earlier game, which may not have consisted of a large move set. It's not that the characters "need" to have so many moves at once because it was more than likely a design decision for suiting how the meter system works in KOFXIII. This could also be due to how expensive it is to make sprites. But, anytime after KOF96, the KOF characters became "known" for having rather elaborate and interesting move sets, unlike Street Fighter were every other character has around 3 to 4 special moves and a couple of command moves (no, that is not to say that those games are terrible. I love many fighting games and I would easily take pleasure in playing things like older Capcom titles... SFA2... SFA3... Darkstalkers... that includes many other fighting games from different genres as well). There is also slight discrepancy with NESTS Kyo. This isn't really "NESTS saga" Kyo. This is mainly an interpretation of "98 Kyo" while he is wearing his NESTS saga costume. When Kyo fought in the NESTS saga of the KOF series, his move set changed once more when going on from the amazing (yet non-canonical dream match game) KOF98UM.

- Netcode.
... I don't need to say anything about this. The PC version of KOFXIII fixes this issue to a degree.

- Over emphasis on the HD system
This is a big one. The game is a lot more combo centric than both 98/98UM and 02/02UM. The reality is that the HD system is based on 02UM BC system, but within that particular game, it was not really necessary and a lot of characters didn't really have a use for it at the time.
While the combos look very amazing in general there is an issue with how the neutral game works. The background stages are generally wider, so there is a lot more room to move around. Normals in this game in general... are not that good, either because they don't really do that much damage by themselves (not rewarding) or because many of them have really bad range. The game does not reward the player for being "solid." Not as much as in the older titles. To make a minor note about back dashes, they automatically cause the players character to be in a mid air state... if they are hit by a normal, it just causes a air reset in which it would help the player escape from pressure.
A player could try to win by completely outplaying the opponent with well-placed normal moves and smaller combos for good damage but if one player scores an HD combo for high damage, the round is essentially over. This sounds good in theory, except neither of the player are rewarded for having a stronger neutral and spacing game while taking advantage of the fast paced element that KOF is known for. It is not like SF where moving around and jumping too much is not supported... it's just that the neutral game in KOFXIII specifically is generally weaker. Jump-ins in XIII are also relatively strong.

To be continued.

Great post. If I counted the netcode on the console version I'd have to give the game a 7 or 6.5/10 since it was horrible and unplayable in an age where it isn't acceptable. I was looking at gameplay but the Steam version was good.


The moves were dumbed down because of the cost of making all of these characters. Each one took many months (like 7) and they were expensive, especially for a small company which is why nobody does hand sprites anymore. To save costs they gave ex moves instead (many which were just overpowered like Kim's and Chin's) and they also had headswaps. In older Kof games, they reused the sprites over and over again, and in a perfect world I'd take XIII's visuals with better movesets and more characters but it isn't feasable. It's definitely a shame to see characters like Maxima get watered down so much.


The over emphasis on death combos is definitely really silly. I don't mind good damage and execution but it rewards really scrubby play. I recall some player saying he didn't like 02 because of combos but prefers XIII. Kof XIII was just the Marvel of Kof. Lots of jumping and fishing for death combos makes this game less honest. One of the worst offenders is Takuma. Play him with a character like Mai and you can out poke him all around and he could land one hit and it would be game over even if you got him down to 15% health. This is why characters like Mai who are more normal focused are weak compared to "land that one hit" characters like Takuma. I don't like this because the meter gain is ridiculous to begin with and you end up just doing combos on each other past the first round which is why I find the first round to be best. After that it's just all about death combos and occasional whoring ex moves.


On the normals, look at the characters in the old game and how large they are and how much space they take up on the screen. Their normals are strong, have large active frames and do great damage. You could discourage them from jumping. Rugal's st. hk is a good example of this.

Now look at XIII. Even characters like Saiki who have good anti airs are tiny and the normals have awful range. Only Daimon has decent range. Jump CD's are too strong and everything sends you into the corner which leads you to another guessing game or eat a death combo. Takuma is also good example of this. He's actually a good example of everything that's wrong with Kof xii. Poor ground normals, overpowered jump CD, WAAAY too much damage without needing HD. The "I guessed right, time to die!" gameplay was silly.

Drive cancels were enough. HD was just the worst part of a good game. Hopefully they learn from this.

[WarMachineRhodey]

Sept 19, 2015 9:17:33 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

Sept 19, 2015 8:44:16 GMT -5 Great Dark Hero said:

Okay.
I stated... that if I were to grade KOFXIII 1 out of 10... I would give a 8 out of 10. A 8/10 score.
There are over 36 playable characters, all whom are competitive viable and easily likable (this is a tad more evident based on intermediate to high level tournament outside of the West). On a general consensus, KOFXIII is a very great game in general in which more people should play.

The main issues with KOFXIII:
- Many of the character have been considerably neutered compared to their past counter parts. The character move sets in general are not quite as lengthy or as elaborate as it were in the past games. Within games such as 98/98UM(FE) and 02/02UM for example, the characters had a lot of useful moves in which many players could easy forget about half of the time because there were so many.
In XIII, characters such as King, Mai, Clark, Terry, Leona, Duo, and even Elisabeth for example lost quite a few moves or went back to a variation of a previous move set from a earlier game, which may not have consisted of a large move set. It's not that the characters "need" to have so many moves at once because it was more than likely a design decision for suiting how the meter system works in KOFXIII. This could also be due to how expensive it is to make sprites. But, anytime after KOF96, the KOF characters became "known" for having rather elaborate and interesting move sets, unlike Street Fighter were every other character has around 3 to 4 special moves and a couple of command moves (no, that is not to say that those games are terrible. I love many fighting games and I would easily take pleasure in playing things like older Capcom titles... SFA2... SFA3... Darkstalkers... that includes many other fighting games from different genres as well). There is also slight discrepancy with NESTS Kyo. This isn't really "NESTS saga" Kyo. This is mainly an interpretation of "98 Kyo" while he is wearing his NESTS saga costume. When Kyo fought in the NESTS saga of the KOF series, his move set changed once more when going on from the amazing (yet non-canonical dream match game) KOF98UM.

- Netcode.
... I don't need to say anything about this. The PC version of KOFXIII fixes this issue to a degree.

- Over emphasis on the HD system
This is a big one. The game is a lot more combo centric than both 98/98UM and 02/02UM. The reality is that the HD system is based on 02UM BC system, but within that particular game, it was not really necessary and a lot of characters didn't really have a use for it at the time.
While the combos look very amazing in general there is an issue with how the neutral game works. The background stages are generally wider, so there is a lot more room to move around. Normals in this game in general... are not that good, either because they don't really do that much damage by themselves (not rewarding) or because many of them have really bad range. The game does not reward the player for being "solid." Not as much as in the older titles. To make a minor note about back dashes, they automatically cause the players character to be in a mid air state... if they are hit by a normal, it just causes a air reset in which it would help the player escape from pressure.
A player could try to win by completely outplaying the opponent with well-placed normal moves and smaller combos for good damage but if one player scores an HD combo for high damage, the round is essentially over. This sounds good in theory, except neither of the player are rewarded for having a stronger neutral and spacing game while taking advantage of the fast paced element that KOF is known for. It is not like SF where moving around and jumping too much is not supported... it's just that the neutral game in KOFXIII specifically is generally weaker. Jump-ins in XIII are also relatively strong.

To be continued.

Great post. If I counted the netcode on the console version I'd have to give the game a 7 or 6.5/10 since it was horrible and unplayable in an age where it isn't acceptable. I was looking at gameplay but the Steam version was good.


The moves were dumbed down because of the cost of making all of these characters. Each one took many months (like 7) and they were expensive, especially for a small company which is why nobody does hand sprites anymore. To save costs they gave ex moves instead (many which were just overpowered like Kim's and Chin's) and they also had headswaps. In older Kof games, they reused the sprites over and over again, and in a perfect world I'd take XIII's visuals with better movesets and more characters but it isn't feasable. It's definitely a shame to see characters like Maxima get watered down so much.


The over emphasis on death combos is definitely really silly. I don't mind good damage and execution but it rewards really scrubby play. I recall some player saying he didn't like 02 because of combos but prefers XIII. Kof XIII was just the Marvel of Kof. Lots of jumping and fishing for death combos makes this game less honest. One of the worst offenders is Takuma. Play him with a character like Mai and you can out poke him all around and he could land one hit and it would be game over even if you got him down to 15% health. This is why characters like Mai who are more normal focused are weak compared to "land that one hit" characters like Takuma. I don't like this because the meter gain is ridiculous to begin with and you end up just doing combos on each other past the first round which is why I find the first round to be best. After that it's just all about death combos and occasional whoring ex moves.


On the normals, look at the characters in the old game and how large they are and how much space they take up on the screen. Their normals are strong, have large active frames and do great damage. You could discourage them from jumping. Rugal's st. hk is a good example of this.

Now look at XIII. Even characters like Saiki who have good anti airs are tiny and the normals have awful range. Only Daimon has decent range. Jump CD's are too strong and everything sends you into the corner which leads you to another guessing game or eat a death combo. Takuma is also good example of this. He's actually a good example of everything that's wrong with Kof xii. Poor ground normals, overpowered jump CD, WAAAY too much damage without needing HD. The "I guessed right, time to die!" gameplay was silly.

Drive cancels were enough. HD was just the worst part of a good game. Hopefully they learn from this.

XIII was a solid game but imo it needed just to be tuned up 1 more time. Kinda like how ssf4ae v.2012 where SNK could have gotten some player feedback and made some small adjustments and clean up some of the bugs and hitbox issues but not add any new chars.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Yea, although it would have taken some huge direction changing.

The arcade version didn't have ridiculous meter building though and they made the console version more balanced. I don't have as much of an issue with balance (although it could be improved) my problem is more with the diminished movesets and neutral game along with the ridiculous rewards of landing stray hits. Characters like Beni could just jump like crazy and spam D and it was very difficult to stop him without jumping yourself. Hwa has no anti air normal he has to jump or use his awful DP.

I'm guessing they couldn't afford another update. I would have liked it but I would like a new game more at this point (that looks and plays good).

[WarMachineRhodey]

Sept 19, 2015 14:59:14 GMT -5 The Big Daddy C-Master said:

Yea, although it would have taken some huge direction changing.

The arcade version didn't have ridiculous meter building though and they made the console version more balanced. I don't have as much of an issue with balance (although it could be improved) my problem is more with the diminished movesets and neutral game along with the ridiculous rewards of landing stray hits. Characters like Beni could just jump like crazy and spam D and it was very difficult to stop him without jumping yourself. Hwa has no anti air normal he has to jump or use his awful DP.

I'm guessing they couldn't afford another update. I would have liked it but I would like a new game more at this point (that looks and plays good).

Speaking of not being able to afford anything hopefully SNK will be interact more with its players/fans now they are under a new company. The lack of interactivity with the community hurt SNK alot.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Well that's one downside of the Japanese with all of their innovation. They're stuck in their ways and many times they just won't listen even to their detriment. Netcode for instance. That said the PC version means they are improving in that regard.

[Great Dark Hero]

Who do you guys like to play on KOF? That is... 98/98UM, 02/02UM and XIII?

98UMFE: EX-Terry, Eiji, EX-Mai, Kyo, Saisyu, EX-Mary, Yamazaki, Heavy D!, Geese and Leona

02UM: Terry, Mary, Yamazaki, Mai, Lin, Shermie, Kyo, and Heidern

XIII: (Claw)Iori, Mai, Hwa, Elisabeth, King, Terry, Leona, Kim and Takuma

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Sept 23, 2015 21:25:07 GMT -5 Great Dark Hero said:

Who do you guys like to play on KOF? That is... 98/98UM, 02/02UM and XIII?

98UMFE: EX-Terry, Eiji, EX-Mai, Kyo, Saisyu, EX-Mary, Yamazaki, Heavy D!, Geese and Leona

02UM: Terry, Mary, Yamazaki, Mai, Lin, Shermie, Kyo, and Heidern

XIII: (Claw)Iori, Mai, Hwa, Elisabeth, King, Terry, Leona, Kim and Takuma

Did you like Heavy D because of his design or his style?

[Great Dark Hero]

Both, though I normally play him as a second on every team I use.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Sept 23, 2015 21:47:40 GMT -5 Great Dark Hero said:

Both, though I normally play him as a second on every team I use.

There are so many characters and I like trying many out.

In XIII I've used: Saiki, Ex Iori, Kyo, Mai, Yuri, Kula, Vice, K', Daimon, Raiden, Maxima, Athena, etc.

My most common used were Hwa, Kula, Kyo, Saiki, Ex Iori, Mai, Vice, and Daimon I believe.