LogFAQs > #949109017

#92. The King of Fighters XIII (Xbox 360, 2011)

There are a lot of King of Fighters games, but it's never a series I got into until the more recent games. King of Fighters XII was a huge disappointment in the KoF series, both in terms of play and a limited roster. With KoFXIII, SNK really worked to shake the previous failure and make a fantastic game. The roster was way bigger in this game, packed with characters. Some are stronger than others, but most are viable and there's enough variety that no one should have a hard time finding characters that fit their style. All the character sprites are so high quality and beautiful. It's a great game to look at.



The difficulty is both a positive and negative with this game. SNK fighting games typically have really hard single player modes, which feels dumb when you fail at it a bunch, but it also feels nice to win, and gives a reason to go back to the single player mode every now and then.

KoFXIII also allows for some wildly long combos, which are notoriously hard to hit consistently. The trial mode leans into this, starting you with some three or four move combos, and quickly ramping up to combos with stuff like an HD activation and three juggling fireball loops and a super finish. Below is a video of one set of trials. But as hard as this is, it makes it feel good to actually chain together anything, and makes for some really exciting tournament matches when you see people pull off the crazy stuff while under pressure. The 2013 Evo finals for this game remains one of the most exciting tournament finals to date.

Example video of combo trials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhJk3Nj7Sc0

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