The King of Fighters XIV (PS4) Review

Burning with awesomeness. 

 The King of Fighters XIV makes its return after 2010's The King of Fighters XIII. SNK has returned to video games after experimenting with pachinko machines (Japanese slot machines) and mobile games. As a person who enjoyed The King of Fighters XIII, I was pretty excited once I saw the reveal trailer of XIV. Now that I've had a long time playing it, it's time to give out a review of The King of Fighters XIV.

STORY- Taking place after the Ash Crimson saga, KOF has become a business, a booming at that. A mysterious billionaire declaring himself as the "first champion" called Antonov buys the rights for KOF and hosts his own tournament, drawing worldwide excitement. Not only that, but it draws the attention of fighters that have participated in the tournament before.

The story is bare-bones mind you,
but still entertaining.

GAMEPLAY- While the characters are now in 3D, The King of Fighters XIV is still a 2D fighting game. A new "Max Mode" system gives you access to high-powered attacks when filled. Once your Max reaches five, you'll be able to unleash Climax supers which can shift the tide of battle to your favor. I've had a lot of fun with the core gameplay and trying to learn its mechanics. I've found characters such as Kyo, K', and King to be quite fun and newcomer-friendly (mainly Kyo)

The fighting is fun and addicting. 

 In terms of game modes, there's your standard modes such as story/arcade, versus, training, tutorial, and lastly online. Tutorial and training modes will help you get adapted with the game's basic complex mechanics. Story mode, which is basically arcade mode, has you going against 10 opponents while experiencing the story at the same time. In versus mode, you can either choose to fight against a CPU or a second player. Lastly, online mode has you battling with other players from all over the world. While I've only played a few matches, I definitely got my butt handed to me. An annoyance I had with the mode were lagging and slowdown issues. There was a patch that was said to fix those issues, but I'm not sure if it did the trick. Additionally, there's mission mode which is split into three types: Time Attack, Trials, and Survival. Time Attack has you going against 10 opponents while aiming for the best clear time. Trails has you going for specific character challenges. And finally, my favorite, Survival has you going against many opponents until you run out of health. 

Time attack and Survival are by far the most addictive modes in the game.

PRESENTATION- The biggest change in this KOF are the 3D character models as opposed to the regular 2D sprites. Compared to other fighting that use 3D models such as Street Fighter V and Guilty Gear Xrd, they could have used a bit more polish. The voice-work is presented in Japanese, though characters like Terry speak English. The soundtrack is great with some neat tracks such as the character selection screen, the intro., and the Japan Team BGM. 

The presentation is nice, but the character models
could use a bit more polish.

OVERALL- The King of Fighters XIV is one of the best fighting games of the year. While some areas could have used more polish, it's still an entertaining game that's brimming with content. The King of Fighters XIV is a lot of fun for fans of fighting games or even newcomers. It's by far my favorite fighting game of the year.