The Beta is over; it was good fun, when it was possible to play it.

SNK has come a long way since the days of porting Neogeo titles to console, and now they need to port their games to PC; they need to satisfy a vocally demanding customer base that wants to play online rather than in the arcade. SNK has made progress and learnt from mistakes.  So why is it, in 2025, they manage to release a beta of their precious and frankly considerably risky sequel in frankly an unworkable state?

The game is great, but everything else around it is lacking.  Of course this is a beta, but SNK knows very well that first impressions count and people will listen to bad news rather than reason.  Oda has already issued an apology with a 2nd beta highly likely, but what bothers me most is that the game should have been pretty much complete, so these core features may take an overhaul rather than a few tweaks, and there are only 2 months remaining.

Arguably they could leave everything as is, just fix the matchmaking and the game should still get 8/10.  It’s a fun game at its core, and we still haven’t seen the RPG side.  Now let’s go into detail.

Gameplay

Some players, especially kof players, are very upset. This is simply because they can’t play in kof style. I played a lot of third strike so the mechanic and mindset isn’t alien to me. For those who didn’t, purists and new gen players, it’s going to be an overload. COTW has a ‘drive impact’  type mechanic (arguably first seen in KOF Neowave), feints, breaks, throw button, universal overhead, plus a double parry system, which can be done in the air.

Some might call it an anime game in that derogatory manner to mean it’s full of ‘wtf bbq bs’ but in fact, the pace of the game is much slower due to the speed of normals and the overheat system. Most characters can’t mash an attack, nor can they run.  If you focus on predicting your opponent, rather than focusing on what combo you want to do, you will excel at this game.

Still, I am not surprised if players are turned off from these “tryhards” they meet online and have a bad experience, however, the rpg mode may give them the satisfaction they deserve. On the other hand, they should really try smart style. It’s quick to learn and makes the game very very fun.

Players won’t beat a high level player while playing predictably, and parrying is another layer of mind games that is probably out of reach for most, especially online. The game will be fun to watch, as the opponents struggle to guess what the other will do.

Why play anything but smart style? I implore everyone just to have fun and stop tryharding. There are so many features in the battle system but in fact they don’t need to be employed to have a blast.  The general consensus is positive, and I believe that the players will enjoy the game online and off.

The UI experience

• Menu is sluggish
• Menu system has some strange placements
• Controls need more configuration options
• Feint needs to be a macro

I’ve noticed that on the ps4, the menus are not exactly intuitive, but they work. It’s when you start the pc port, that you will notice the real issues with the user interface. I understand the issue with the pc version now, if you open the text input box, you can’t use the stick to cancel or search and RT does nothing. Then you’re completely lost whereas you simply need to click enter and be patient with the sluggish menu. The input box should flash or glow to show that it can move or not.

The inclusion of a mouse cursor is baffling to me and other comments on the Internet echo this.  The mouse is slow.  You cannot use the mouse cursor with a pc mouse!?

After a match, the mouse sits on the far right of the screen, perhaps to be clear to the user, but then you have to drag the mouse across the screen to start your next match in the lobby, and as for the chat window, the mouse cursor won’t interact with it.

Upon entering a lobby, SNK seems to have gone with the conservative approach, where the chat window is closed, so if there’s no activity, you won’t see it, and if there is some crazy funny conversation going on, you won’t see it either. Which brings us to the notification window, it’s good to get alerts but what is that up arrow supposed to indicate? Press up? Nothing seems to work and there’s no indicator. When it does open, you can catch up with who entered the lobby, got impatient and left, and who wrote messages.

People who don’t want to join the queue and sit in their own lobby and then get annoyed is a cultural issue that is not SNK’s problem, but then again, it is.  How can you change someone’s behaviour and attitude? Any parent or teacher will tell you: it’s by reward. I’ve been expecting to see lots of rewards in this game and they are still missing. For example, Ranking should be per character. If I can get AA rank and then switch characters without starting again, there is less motivation to play. The phenomena of players quitting after reaching a significant rank is well documented (in chat logs).

Language should be per character. Oda knows this feature well from having worked on Street Fighter 4 himself.

What is ”friend search” and why is it there when we are trying to get people out of their comfort zones? Not that it works on PC, in my experience.

Some people complained about long waits between rounds, I didn’t have this problem at all. Or perhaps I did, and it’s not visible on PC because you can see the characters on screen, while perhaps on PS4 the screen is black.

Why is there a hidden confirm button where it doesn’t even exist on button config. The menus need consistency.  I think there doesn’t need to be a exit button, just rely on players using their B button, and every option change should be effective, immediately, no need for a confirm button.

And finally, there’s a lot of buttons to press and the placement can’t be easy for someone holding a controller. Macros are essential, which means every shoulder button is used (throw, spg, hidden gear, hk+hp and lk+hk, not even including feint). A bit strange when the trend is to dumb down everything!  Is it too much?  I’m fine, I have a stick and fingers, but for others I’m not sure the “claw” way of holding the controller will be sufficient. Perhaps SNK forgot some of us have fat fingers? How do you press Y+A without hitting B or D?

The netcode

Why do I have to give permission to epic servers and should I blame them for matchmaking? Hmmm.

During this beta, Matchmaking didn’t work and you still have region lock as default. Lobbies should be listed in closest ping. Mind you, I’ve noticed SF6 has similar issues. On social media I noticed people have differing experiences with other games and some games had similar issues at launch.   The point is SNK cannot afford to implement fixes later on, they need to impress the players at launch otherwise a ton of bad press will come their way.  It’s irrelevant that other games have weathered the storm, the mainstream does not have patience or interest in future fixes.  There is talk that Capcom is about to release Super Street Fighter 6, so COTW needs to be niggle-free to be competitive.

The current netcode seems to search literally based on your setting, for example if you search for 3+ it will not search for anyone with a LOWER ping. If I search for 2+ it only searches for someone close. If I search for any it only gives me opponents at 250ms. However, considering it’s 2025 and snk should have good experience with kofxv, it’s a bit concerning that they would release the beta in this state, as they very well know that first impressions will last.

People couldn’t find my room and I tested it with ps4 and PC.  In fact I set up both my PS4 and PC and they couldn’t find each other unless the room was public.  There are definitely issues and I’m happy that SNK can see it and will listen to feedback.

Once again the lobby is not intuitive. The creation button is at the top while in other menus the finalising button is at the bottom.  The ‘region all” option is not default and that will affect how players see the level of activity, nobody wants to play a ‘dead’ game.  Interestingly there are reports of SF6 players being forced to use VPNs because the game won’t match them correctly, again this is due to regions. Regions need to be abolished.  Opponents and lobbies should be located and listed by nearest ping. I’m no engineer but on paper, that is the logical solution.

The time to start the next match is terrible. Why is the mouse all the way on the other side of the screen? Because players are too blind?

I’ve seen complaints from people who tried ranked mode, to never try it again, but I’ve seen those types of complaints with every fighting game.  It’s valid to complain about being matched with another with a much higher skill.  Also, it’s valid to complain about entering a tennis tournament and getting knocked out by the champion.  Some complaints have more value than others but at the end of the day, netcode needs to find an opponent that is around your level and then somehow find another one and not the same one.  This is actually very demanding and only works if there’s a huge pool of players… again, I was at rank gold and the SF6 netcode gave me a literal new challenger.  I can’t imagine they enjoyed the beating they took but on the other hand they had an opportunity to get a ton of points, if they had defeated me.  The debate over matchmaking will go on for a while more, I imagine, and some people will never be satisfied.  For COTW, it just needs to be able to find as many players as possible and present the game as populated.

Graphics

I wrote down that visual prompts could be clearer on pc, but I’m old and stressed, after reviewing footage it seems fine. The graphics are very nice and some don’t like the green flash, but I’m happy with it.  The game has a yellow aesthetic and this is perhaps why glowing icons and buttons are more difficult to notice as they usually share that very same colour.  It’s fine really.

However, why is Rock Howard’s Hidden Gear so lame? He does the power geyser, turns around to shrug at the audience and the opponent’s lifeless body falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes, no slowdown, no explosions, no bounce, nothing.  It reminds me on Shun Ei’s climax, which is premature.

The zoom-ins during hits are nice, and are much smoother than in KOF14 and 15, now why not play with the camera with different angles, or would it be too similar to Strive?  I still don’t see why they have similar shots like in KOFAS and Real Bout, where the character falls out of the 2d plane.

It seems the era of the padded X-Men training room is over. Which I applaud wholeheartedly.

Music

Great stuff, no complaints there. I can hear that trumpet from KOF14!

Overall

The game is great, just fix the matchmaking. The sluggishness needs to be eliminated and menus improved but it’s not essential.

And for crying out loud, why aren’t we all using FFCOTW as a hashtag? There are already games and things using COTW…

We should all send our feedback to SNK via the following links:

PLAYER QUESTIONNAIRE

BUG REPORT

#cotwobt
I enjoyed the gameplay & the music, & look. The matchmaking/online needs work. Liked the Room Lobby, but the pointer is pretty slow. Hope SNK allows you to put inputs to buttons to L3 & R3, etc. Still my most anticipated game of this year.
#preecha #joehigashi #COTW

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— TaurenceBell (@taurbell.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 3:32 AM