Well I'm not going on a ton of sleep here, but I'll see what I can put together. We got a lot of stuff today! This is mostly going to be me compiling stuff from around online and then bullshitting about it as I usually do.
For starters, we got a bunch o' info at TGS about KOF XV! For starters I'll just link the stream here, if you happened to miss it. It's a bit of a long watch, but you can jump around.
It has a slightly updated trailer, and it goes over some of the gameplay basics, as well as has some people playing an eight-character demo(consisting of Iori, Kyo, Leona, Athena, Mai, Shun'ei, Terry, and Isla, the new rival girl.) Speaking of which, we have her trailer here!
Now I'll be honest; she's not really my cuppa tea. Moveset doesn't really look like, well, too 'Azzy' and neither does her aesthetic. Still, she's vibrant, seems to fit the cast alright(in terms of more modern games, I mean I'm still kinda old school admittedly, if designs are busy I prefer them more 'Elaborate' than 'Loud' for lack of a better term.) I mean I find her pretty inoffensive, it looks like she'd drop into League or something. I'm sure she'll find a few players, even if she's not really what I'm looking for. The hands are pretty cool, though, and she apparently greets them as 'Amanda' which is interesting. The spray-paint super is pretty funny and troll-like, I'll give them.
They mentioned ''Surprises'' in the presentation today. I'll get back to that(character wise.)
So as the day went on, we got to see bits and pieces of trailers. Like Iori's win screen!
A gorgeous Athena alt color:
These make my King of Fantasy self very happy.
We also got to see some bits on the Max Mode. The Blue(Neutral) max does indeed get a much bigger bar, as you can see from these three comparison pics I'm about to post; the red bar is what the anchor Quick/Red max looks like from the website. The smaller Blue bar is what the Point Neutral caps at.
(Despite it saying 3 in the 2nd and 3rd, the activation is 2 bars, so they had five. The top bar was definitely done on a point character in the video.)
So Neutral Max bar is just plain bigger. Both of them seem to grant free level 1's-the Quick *seems* to end it(maybe it just uses so much of it it ends up ending it), but the Blue does not end on super. Blue is where you can connect three of them; I have not seen yet how much a level 2 or 3 costs in Blue max. I'll get back to people on that one. But what seems to happen is that it just costs a chunk of the mode to use a super. Which means maybe Ash could, say, pop Sans-Culotte for some meter, and do his wreckage with increased damage and guard crush(which only Blue offers), and then when that mode wears out, if he still has regular meter, he's free to pop Sans-Culotte again(the Max Mode meter seems to have a cooldown on it, I'm not sure of how long that is.) And continue more fun? Yeah this has some potential; I definitely can't wait to lab the game.
I'm going to also point out in the video, the developers pointed out specifically how they geared things to get away from XIV's issues, like cr. B fishing into Max Mode. By making it more expensive, that helped a lot, and splitting the max modes into two, I think they already well started on their way. The fact they targeted this(as well as making sure the game has rollback!) shows they do, indeed, care a lot.
Shatter Strike definitely looks fun-and strong, I think the fact it costs an entire bar to use(tho refunds half on hit) is probably necessary. This is, however, going to I think counterbalance people from spamming those ''When in Doubt'' EX moves, which I think, at only half a bar, could get a little out of control themselves. The meter is going to be working quite a bit, I think, between Shatter Strike needing one to activate, EX moves taking half, and both Max Modes needing two to activate, along with supers still costing if you aren't in max mode, of course.
I see some are skeptical about it and I get why, but I sorta feel like it's in there to help vs. the EX's that are going to get spammed the second someone has half a bar.
Some other neat things, gleaned around Twitter and compiled for your perusal. Speaking of those awesome EX's:
Iori's EX dp+K just happens to have projectile invuln.
Reddit had discovered the old CH system back, which was skipped in XIV. That's good news, IMO.
Some Climaxes. Leona's, Athena's, Iori's, and Terry's. All look fantastic(Leona's Rebel Spark remains a very iconic one for her-it's short and simple, but she's about precision), but Iori's takes the cake; it's so...visceral and it ends so damn brutally. I've watched it for like five hours now.
On the site, we got a preview of Classic Leona! I admit, I'm one of those weirdos who loves her new outfit because I like the military longer trousers with the tank top, but this IS a great outfit and I know a lot of people love it.
Then, we made an interesting discovery. Someone was posting a cool video showing color variants on Reddit, when it occurred to us that the Character Select theme was the theme that played in Kukri's Trailer, which I actually forgot to link since I forgot to blog about it since I don't really play him. Oops.
Better late than never? Something something Fetishism Explosion?
Okay I'll give them credit: I like the fact they leaned harder on Kukri's troll side. To be honest after SNKH I kinda think even if the game itself was some fever dream and only the endings were canon, it's probably their best bet. And to be honest he looks pretty fun? Not really my type of character, again, but it seems Kukri fans are happy with what they gave him.
Anyway, listen closely and you can hear things. This is a fairly decent discovery; a lot of us, pre-Gamescom, were pinning him for Ash's team. After Gamescom, however, we started to have a change of heart, seeing how the Rival and the Braids Lady(apparently named Delores), are teamed; I would assume so hearing in the trailer how she says ''I call the shots.'' It may be a hint. When having a good look at Kukri, though, and seeing the braid, and the decorations on his clothing, and how it matches with some of the decorations on Delores' stuff(as well as the braid...), I think there may be some Verse Connection stuff happening. Besides that, he simply doesn't fit that snow stage, like, at all. The teams we've seen so far all at least decently match their stages well; GAW in the ring, I think the Agents fit a shady night stage, Treasures fit Esaka, CYS the Concert Hall, and so on.
Kukri sticks out like a sore thumb on that snow stage. I won't say it's impossible, but given all the info I have now? I'm leaning stronger toward Rivals.
Anyway, again, the day went on. More little things pop up, like Terry's Rising Tackle being back to a dp motion, and Kyo's RED kick having its notation changed slightly. You can peruse the move lists here, if you're curious.
Suddenly, as I was checking my feed debating the best way to shoot the concentrated caffeine into my veins so my eyes would stay open, and I thought I was hallucinating due to lack of sleep, I thought I saw K's trailer pop up. Okay, maybe it's just from the big trailer? Nope, apparently they just up and stealth-dropped K's trailer!
Welcome back, K of Dash.
Fashionably late as always, probably hitting his snooze alarm and not wanting to be here at all, his trailer on the other hand looks awesome. He's got 6K back from XI which is awesome to see, and his dp follow up looks sooo good.
Remember this, XI fans?
He's going to be fun by the look and I gladly have him on my backup crew for certain. He's K', but better, and I swear this looks like it's going to be one of the more fun K's to play in a while. But man that was a good trailer surprise. The initial announcements said "characters", plural, but after just seeing the one this morning for Isla, I figured that'd have been it. But K' literally woke up and chose violence, as we all expect him to.
I guess that's somewhat it for now in terms of footage and pictures! I am still going to be combing my feed over the next couple of days for more fight footage, but right now running on low sleep and a lot of info I think it'd probably be better if I broke this up.
So are we any closer to the teams?
Well, not quite. Maybe a little, with the revelation the song in Kukri's trailer was the character select.
But otherwise, we know Ash, K' and Isla are all on their own teams, they DID Mention there are 13 teams, so we know that bottom team isn't solo, and they just have not shown Heidern yet, except for the one Gematsu render. And we still have several weeks of announcements, probably bi-weekly. To be honest, while I can see them closing off the Rival team sooner than later, since I think that team has less 'weight' behind it since it's not going to involve returns and will involve the newcomers by the look, I feel like it'll be the others they want to keep us waiting on.
Basically, here's where I'm at. Looking at this setup I have here, look at the top two rows, and pick six. That's who is likely going to cap off the roster. They did mention in that trailer some 'Surprises', and so if there are surprises still after bringing CYS back from the dead and Ash back from another timeline, we may well get a doozy on one of these teams.
Basically those last three rows are just mentioned, but I think the six will come from the top 2 rows. We also don't know a few things like-is that initial DLC supposed to have been in the initial roster(which I almost think it was?) Is it story based? This would answer some questions.
I would prepare for some high-end trolling, though. With birthdays coming up of characters(which they may or may not follow), just be prepared for them to sprinkle a bunch of characters in that everyone's going to fight about.
That said, please give up on that atrocious Angel/Kula/Sylvie team. Good lord, why would you even attempt that. Edit team, sure, but as a canon story team? Please, read some lore. Even a little. Sylvie's afraid of Angel. Kula and Angel hate each other. A story team with rivals needs *someone* to kinda tie them together. K' stopping Kula and Angel throwing hands? Sure, that can work, though not optimal. Chizuru with Kyo and Iori? Yeah that works due to like, a long time clan responsibility and such.
Ideally, K' team will stick together, though I hope they don't try something silly and swap out Maxima for Angel or Heidern(the latter of which I really think should have his own team, and it could well be they wanna sit on that team.) At least Heidern being there would make some better narrative sense, if they *must* swap it, so long as they put Adel on Ash team's third to get that team going or something. ;p
BUT I digress. Predictions and wishes aside(FWIW I think Ash Team will most likely be Betty and then either Duo Lon, Shen, or Adel, Heidern's team if he has his own will indeed be Adel and Whip, if not, he's more likely with K', and that last team goes to South Town Something), they're gonna leave us hanging. (I will say I will stick by my guess of, out of these last six, two or three of them are going to be from before XIV, since I feel like those are the best to sit on, to book-end getting some comebacks at the start, and some comebacks at the end.)
And I think that's a wrap for now!
OH YEAH A BONUS! It's not KOF XV related, but KOF 98UMFE related. This winter...
WE CAN REJOICE. 98 fans can now continue playing one of the best KOFs(certainly my personal favorite), only this time, with proper netcode-especially since we know Code Mystics does a hell of a good job on it.
Yes indeed, today has been a good day.
If you want to make things even better, now, SNK, moving forward...
No comments:
Post a Comment