The King of Fighters XIII is a solid fighting game with some issues that make it fairly niche.
First, there is the gameplay, which is polished and fun, but also has a high barrier to entry. Pulling off any combo requires, at a minimum, some character specific practice. Some players enjoy this style of play, as it can give you a good sense of progression as you learn the ins and outs of a character, but for your more casual fighting game fan, it can be overwhelming and feel like a grind. The sizable cast of characters only makes this issue worse, as it would take years to become good with every character. This also leads to balancing issues, because some characters can feel redundant if they fill the same play style niche as another. The simpler characters to get the hang of will also feel much stronger than the more complex characters, further widening the gap between the best and worst members of the cast. Still, for a “hardcore” fighting game fan, most of these issues won’t affect them much.
Visually, the game is great, with detailed backgrounds and excellent animation work. King of Fighters was one of the last fighting game franchises to go 3D with their character models, giving the game a high-res look, but with a retro style. The game looks more like a remastered version of an old classic than a new game from this era. The animations in this game are famous for nearly bankrupting SNK, and after playing the game, you’ll see why. The animations are flawless, making the sprites almost look like 3D models. There is an insane amount of effort put into the visuals for this game and it is easily one of the highlights.
The game’s sound design is solid, but didn’t wow me. Sound effects are good but nothing special. The soundtrack is usually enjoyable, with only a couple mediocre tracks. Nothing worthy of praise, but also not worthy of criticism. It’s clear that most of the developer’s focus was on visuals and gameplay, so the audio only needed to be passable.
Online play is pretty lackluster, thanks to the weak netcode and small player base. Singleplayer and local multiplayer should be your focus if you are considering buying KoF XIII. Overall, it’s a great fighting game brought down by only a couple issues.
