In the previous part, we looked at the gameplay, which overall shows a veteran SNK team refusing to completely let opinions turn a legacy fighting game into a party game.  Well, some people might call it a party game, others might call it an accessible fighting game that is the inevitable future of fighting games.  Yes, I’m talking about simplified controls and perhaps even more simplified mechanics.  COTW certainly has deep mechanics and may be the last truly satisfying game that the FGC can really dig their teeth into.  If you play it long enough, it will force you to get good, you cannot do so much with Smart Style.  In reaction, players’ comments speak for themselves: the people that can do more than pressing two buttons admire the fun, pace and complexity, while those who cannot will go back to  SF6.  With the re-emergence of Virtua Fighter, I wonder what the future will hold, and perhaps SF6 will always be the most popular fighting game, because there is a huge band of people just do fireball, flying kick, sweep, dragon punch and they have fun.  Capcom added some deeper mechanics, but they aren’t necessary for the majority.  Hey, lol, it works, why change?

While it’s going to take a lot more to reach SF6 sales, COTW continues to sell copies while streamers have garnered a total of a million views on Twitch alone, while they hammer away on ranked and casual modes, and it was just announced that COTW made the gold grade of Steam’s best sellers for April.  The numbers don’t lie, and while in certain regions sales are slowing down (as it goes in the usual business cycle), I can’t get a moment to breathe on ranked mode, there’s always someone challenging.  Some players do report a lack of activity on open lobbies but more often than not, low ranked players won’t join a high ranked player!  It’s a hard life at the top.  Now the big test of longevity is around the corner.  Will it last?  Can’t say, but it’s a good fun fighting game, albeit with some packaging issues.

Presentation

The graphics are a mixed bag.  Watching the game in motion is enthralling. The colours really pop and the effects dazzle.  Gato’s attack sequences look absolutely fantastic.  However, there are some angles where faces look more like an unpolished PS3 model, noticeably with Dong Hwan.  As for Ronaldo’s face… what is going on there?  Why do his eyes look small and uneven?  Salvatore gets away with it while he has his sunglasses on.  The other characters look nice and move smoothly.  The special moves have nice impact and the blue flash contrasts pleasantly with the yellow.  However, the hidden gears are hit and miss, some lacking any impact.  There is a strange inconsistency and it makes me wonder if certain characters were favoured or were victim to a lack of time.

I’m getting more than a little tired of the lack of attention that SNK puts into its games, outside of the actual fighting game core. COTW is a great fighting game, and while it could look too demanding for a casual, what’s probably going to upset the player the most is the clumsy presentation and painful menu system. 

Someone at SNK either isn’t being listened to, or is being stubborn. It’s arguable that the mind of the developer works in a different way to the average user, or perhaps there is a Japanese way of thinking which is apart from the rest of the world.  Whatever the case, I feel this sense of confusion whenever I look at COTW menus.  Perhaps it’s just me, but for starters the game opens up and I just don’t know where to look.  SNK can’t seem to make up its mind in either catering to the mainstream player or FGC.  The nomenclature in COTW is a real issue for me.  I’m staring at two boxes, online and offline, and in my mind ‘offline’ just means not accessible.  I press left and right, and I don’t notice that the explanation is in a box on the left.  The idea of a comic book panel was nice but the execution was meh.  Now here we are, I managed to press something, and the arcade mode and training modes are here, in small text.  The menu is just not snappy enough and some menus have strange layouts and inconsistent ways to close.  Press B or go down to the bottom and press the ‘close’ button?  Who knows, process of elimination, great fun, not.

Let’s move the to the tutorials.  Why is there no advisory tutorial to put the player into Smart Style from the start?  Why is SS hidden in the bottom of a menu?  Why aren’t there any explanations for what icons mean?  Why does the game want to be accessible to new players but doesn’t explain everything?  Why are all the good tutorials on youtube and not mentioned in the game?  Why even call a system “Smart Style” when you could make it more clear with terms such as “pro” and “fun” or “hard” and “easy”?  And who really thought small yellow arrows over white would be distinct and clear??? On high resolution you can see the black outline, but otherwise it’s a pudgy pixellised splot.  

Tutorials are missing: Instant Dashing from REV block and Wake up rolls

There is a demo mode but why not show the actual inputs so that players can follow the model?  They just wave random inputs at you without any timing.

In the REV tutorial, it asks you to execute a dp.  you can do dp as many times as you want, but it won’t complete until you actually hit Terry.  This happens in some of the other tutorials as well.

When are you in REV mode?  Well, you are literally on fire, maybe it would be good to point this out (sic).

Hyper Defense says ”press forward in time with the second hit or later”, it would be clearer with “or any after” or even “in time with any hit after”.  And then use Hotaru as opponent, doing her multihit attack.

In the tutorial for “unique command inputs” it’s really wake up reversals, it notes that you can hold the button, which is really good, then why not a tutorial on buffering?

Stubborn or incomplete?  I really expected a lot of things from this game.  I expected an open world mode, and a gacha style grind, with rewards for completing tutorials, and accessories from KOFXV to win, so I could put Shermie’s haircut on Jenet and be happy.  But noooooo SNK wanted to make a pure arcade fighter, and then succumbed to adding a story mode (EOST) which reminds me more of KOF13 rather than SF6 and Tekken 8.  There is no big hub where players can chill out and chat, racking up the player count on steam, where nobody can prove what makes up the percentage of actual fighters. 

I do actually find EOST addictive but the community element is missing.  The colour edit is fantastic.  The jukebox is good but I don’t see any unlockables or motivations.  In fact, the unlockables from EOST are not evident at all.  I’m just playing EOST because I’m a SNK crackhead.  I certainly can’t say the same for others.  I can’t be bothered to write any more.  I’m just irritated that this would have been a great product alongside BlazBlue and KOF13.  We’ve moved on while SNK is still thinking in retro terms.

I might as well add a note about the website.  It looks nice and the menu is frozen nicely so you don’t get lost, however, it’s biased to PS4 pad users. What are Xbox and Switch2 users going to think when they look at the tutorials?  Why aren’t they simply using the icons, which then would be universal?  Press the REV button to execute REV BLOW.  Or maybe I’m being too anal, and everyone knows how to translate R1 to RB and R2 to RT etc.  I just ran over to compare with the SF6 manual, ah yes, they have a separate one for each platform.  Well then.

This is not a competitive product, this is a rugged arcade fighter with a nice story mode, but will that be enough for mainstream players to become invested?  Those who take the plunge will have fun, but I’m too cynical to believe the majority of players want to really compete, I believe they want to have fun, and that involves mashing buttons, grinding levels, winning trinkets and then hanging around chatting with others in chat rooms.  

Next we will talk about the dark side of COTW, the marketing and community response.  And then 3 weeks will certainly be up.

If you missed the score from the last page, it hasn’t changed:

7/10

SNK needs to change its strategy and funnel that profit back into the company to produce AAA titles.  COTW is an uncut diamond.  But that’s my opinion, perhaps SNK doesn’t need to compete and an arcade game was enough and they wasted a ton of development time on EOST.  On streaming platforms, the game is doing well, as for whether this will translate to sales, and ensure KOF16 has good financial support, only the future will really tell.  Fighting game fans should buy the game and get in the ring asap.  Matchmaking certainly works and the Street Fighter guests are coming to spice things up.  I wouldn’t fault you for waiting for a sale, however.