This is what you’re here for: three-on-three bouts against dozens of different fighters, with flashy combos and unpronounceable move names. I didn’t exactly think they were the best cutscenes featured in a fighting game, with the overall plot and voice acting feeling like the most generic of shonens, but it was a nice distraction in between fights. This is just your run-of-the-mill single player arcade mode, just sprinkled with a handful of fully animated, fully voiced CG cutscenes. First of all, this is not a story mode per se. I was surprised with the scope of the game’s story mode. Yeah, SNK isn’t very creative when it comes to protagonist names… What’s in here is pretty great, however, with SNK optimizing the hell out of the limited resources at their disposal. The King of Fighters XV can’t compete with the likes of Tekken and Guilty Gear when it comes to visuals (which are good, but far from being considered a next-gen standard), animations, and amount of content. I also know that the SNK of today is just a mere fraction of what it once used to be in terms of size and financial prowess. I love SNK, I grew up playing a multitudes of games on tons of Neo Geo cabinets and my trustworthy (and lethargic) Neo Geo CD. And yes, it does feature rollback netcode for its online multiplayer. The end result is pretty good, despite the latter: this is, without a doubt, the best looking polygonal KoF game ever made, with the smoothest gameplay and performance of any game in the franchise. Let me be clear that, despite all the glitzy marketing campaigns and previews, The King of Fighters XV is not a reinvention of the wheel, retaining a good chunk of what made its predecessor so fun to play, all while adding more content on the side, and removing a bit of content on the other. Another fun fact: he was the inspiration behind Street Fighter’s Dan Hibiki. Fun fact: Ryo’s design was based on Patrick Swayze.
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