Yeah, I know I said I was going to update this thing more often, but the holidays coupled with a nice battle with Omicron(and not like, the cool robots from FFXIV, but the fucking virus which grounded me for the month of January), basically put paid to THAT idea. Well, here's an update, in any case!
With the launch of Elisabeth's trailer today(to no one's surprise, even without the incident, it was pretty obvious I think who was going to be on his team), we've now reached the full 39. Let's take a look at it! I'm going to give it a little mini-review here. Mostly just breaking down its upsides, and the couple downsides I do think it has. I gotta say it's been a pretty long and wild ride, and it's hard to believe it's been a year already. That said, I think time either stopped or started moving in a strange bubble at the end of 2019.
Singles and teams.
Just to note: Characters are subjective, who I love isn't going to be what someone else does, and vice versa. Everyone's entitled to like who they want, and pleasing absolutely everyone is going to be impossible. Like, some people aren't as into the Ash Saga originals, so they may be fine with limited rep, but miss the XIV newcomers. I didn't care for a lot of the XIV newcomers; I was indifferent to a lot of them, but loved the Ash Saga newcomers. And so on. So this is just my POV on it.
Without further ado:
Positives:
While I can't say the roster shattered too many expectations with the exception of Krohnen, I definitely rank it very highly. Like, tied with '97 highly, which I consider the 3rd best canon, non Dream Match roster in the series(XI is first, of course, and 03 I'd put as 2nd. Both of which I think were probably the absolute most solid for the times they came out in terms of how they were assembled.)
For one, this is a hell of a who's who in terms of characters throughout the years. If I had to pick a roster of 39(keeping a couple spots for newcomers, so 37 plus the 2 newcomers), while it wouldn't be 1 for 1 with this, it would be damn close, to be honest. My wishlist, if you break it down, wasn't that incredibly far off(I even got half of my top 10 requests in, though only 1 was in the top 5.)
We have classics(Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters), favorites from the sagas(CYS, Iori, Kyo, Ash, etc), all five Ikaris in a game again for once, and a rounding out of newcomers(even if they weren't my personal fav XIV newcomers-I was more of a Hein person over Luong or Kukri, but I did actually like Shun'ei and Meitenkun enough and Antonov's glow-up was great). Bringing back Krohnen was a massive treat and he got such a damn glow-up that I couldn't believe it; they took a copycat character(Nines went beyond 'tribute') and made him his own.
They also maintain its habit of having a great variety of playstyles for people(Rushdown, zoner, grappler, whatever, there's bound to be something there-this IS, to be fair, usually the case in KOF though, I don't think I ever saw a KOF roster that lacked this. Even XII's notoriously cut roster managed to do this.)
Finally, it IS pretty big in terms of canon rosters, too. Folks gotta remember: XIV was an outlier in terms of roster counts. 50(16 teams plus 2 bosses) was not the norm. When you stack up base, playable rosters of non Dream Match games going down the line, we have:
94-95: 24
96: 27
97: 29 via teams, 30 including Kyo. (35 if you're counting the Orochi forms of CYS, O. Iori and Leona.)
99: 32(including unlockables. They were available in the arcade as base, so I'll count them.) 30 if you're being extremely by the book and not counting unlockables as base.
00: 35, counting sub-bosses but not end boss.
01: 40
03: 33
XI: 33 BASE, 5 Time Release characters in arcade(Adel, Gai, Silber, Hayate, Jyazu), who often get counted as the base as well, for 38. (It's up to your rubber ruler on this one.)
XIII: 31
XIV: 50. (48, 2 unlockable, legal bosses.)
As you can see, it ranks 3rd in biggest canon, non Dream Match rosters. I'm not sure if it's because it dialed back from XIV or what(yes, even I said in the past that traditionally, rosters go up within an arc, and not down), but I definitely don't get the 'small' argument. (Especially given the fact we've been in a pandemic for two years now.) It could, I imagine, also be the fact that the longer the series goes, we get more and more characters; thus the base rosters need to grow, lest we have to keep leaving more and more out. So 40 back during 2001, and 39 now, two sagas later, are a big difference.
Still, it's large, especially given what they were making this game under(remote work, etc.) And let's face it-the chance of their being an unlockable but playable boss like Verse? Probably quite high, which would put this base on par with 2001's base roster.
In short, it's got tons of favorites, brings back some amazing teams(CYS) as well as has like, the Sacred Treasures as an official team for the first time(03 they had a team story, but weren't official, they were all solo in the roster), and I've noticed in general, going around social media and such, that people are even hard pressed to pick one team. I have an entire row of mains and I'm going to be already 'maining' two teams. And somehow besides having a lot of favorites and such, it feels a lot less boring, to me, than what XIII's felt like. (It's weird, I consider XIII having more characters that I like than, say, 94 or something...but it just felt like SUCH a step backward from XI's absolute amazing roster it's hard for me to rate it more than a bit above average.)
For me, KOF XV is a really good way to do a who's who of popular faces(even if it's not perfect.)
It's a very 'attractive' roster, and is bound to I think bring in new players who see it. When you take a look at that big crowd, for me, it's hard to see a new player-unless they basically *only* play 'weirdo' types(I'll get to that), saying "Damn, I can't find anyone I'm interested in."
Downsides:
As good as this base roster is looking, it's not perfect(okay, no KOF roster is perfect, not even like, the S-tier XI's roster.) But it does have a couple of more standout downsides, at least to me.
The first, and biggest, definitely being the lack of Ash saga originals. This saga was important, well-received(XIII was the introduction a lot of players had to the series proper-XIII isn't even one of my favorites by a longshot, but I know the impact the game had on Western audiences), 2003 was a big comeback after a hard time, and the game gave people a lot of very well-liked originals; besides Ash and Betty, Adelheid, Shen, and Duo Lon were all very well received(yeah, again, they don't always pick on popularity, I know-just like I said above. But these guys rate rather highly in several polls I've seen going around, and SNK DID say they might look at what folks want for future DLC.)
But the general impact that saga possibly had on everything(We're still learning about Verse), coupled with the fact they seemed to be trying to fly the flag for all of the sagas, it feels weird to not have one *full* Ash Saga team. Ash, Betty, and Adel would have been an excellent addition(Protag, Rival and Co-Protag), or even Duo Lon or Shen as the third, due to their ties to Ash and Betty. (And I think a fourth could have joined somewhere, too, I mean look at how many NESTS characters we had.) I still stand by what I said about highly ranking this roster, but this is probably its most glaring downside. All other rosters over the years-until the Verse Saga-managed to balance its saga representation well, so I'm hoping DLC can fix this by introducing some more Ash Saga originals. At least getting Adel, Duo Lon, and Shen floating around(the other three major story characters-Oz was a story character, but he had a a lighter impact than the other three, one of which was on two major boss-fighting teams, one of which helped with the boss fighting team in XIII, and one of which is friends with Heidern and worked with him to solve the entire plot of XIII) would be a great idea.
The second, and lesser downside I think, is sort of the lack of a real good 'Weirdo' character. I feel like, while I personally don't go out of my way to use them(if I like one, I like one), not having a weird or quirkier character at ALL on a roster makes it feel like it's missing just a little something. I know that I have more than one friend who enjoys characters like this, despite them not really being all that popular. I think it'd be a good idea to at least try to slide one in over the DLC months. I guess the 'closest' we have for this is...Kukri maybe? And he's the like, barest minimum of 'weirdo' I feel. Dolores? Same, I'm not sure I'd classify them here, though I'd maybe say they're sort of the extent of 'Quirkier Characters.' (I don't think I can even consider KOD that weird-animal-themed wrestlers, after all, aren't particularly too weird of a trope/archetype.)
Neutral 3rd Discussion Point:
There IS a third thing that I'm not sure I can call it a downside...or an upside...it's a very subjective thing that gets discussed; Use of Original KOF Characters vs. Use of characters from other SNK franchises.
KOF XV has only 13 characters who are from other SNK games directly. The rest were all created for KOF.
People can like either/or. Sometimes both(like myself.) I sort of feel like a lot of KOF's OGs ARE like, classic SNK characters now-it's hard to describe Iori and Kyo as anything but, despite the fact they were made for KOF. And to be honest, even Ash Saga's newcomers are old now; there's 19 years between 2003 and 2022. There's 18 years between when Ralf(one of their earliest protagonists next to Sasuke in Sasuke vs. Commander) was created, and 2003. It puts into perspective that a lot of these characters are just as deserving of the 'title' of 'SNK Character.' It's REALLY hard for me to especially see anyone created during the Orochi Saga as anything but a classic KOF character.
All THAT said, I know people would like more Garou characters(Kain gets suggested a lot, as does Marco, Freeman, etc), a Metal Slug team, a Last Blade team, other Fatal Fury characters, and so on. So I really don't think this is like, wrong or right-this one's very subjective(well, all of these ups and downs are), but I can sort of understand people who like the idea of the roster being split between 'Originals' and 'From other SNK games' being a little short-changed with this one, even if I don't necessarily agree it's necessary. mers and think they put in a few too many at the cost of other older classics, and so on. These are
I feel like, sometimes, this roster really would have been ideal to try to squeeze out 45-48 at launch, assuming a best-case perfect scenario(which they certainly didn't have during development this time, so I'm not being too hard on that.) I mean I can easily get 2-3 more teams on this that are all either OG or story-appropriate characters and STILL not be bloated at all. It would have given Ash Saga better rep, probably not left out Kim(tho many Kim fans I know would have rather him be late, but reworked from XIII/XIV, not that I blame them at all), and filled in I think those couple holes that I feel it has.
The Short Version:
So yeah, in short, great roster, great for OGs(tho I think, mayhap a few OGs might like a few more classics sprinkled about-I'm cool, others may feel differently) and great for new players, could really use some more Ash saga originals and maybe a weirdo, but still great. Hopefully they'll name-drop the DLC soon(Not discussing any rumors or anything here for now) so we can see how it all looks after Pass 1. (And then in years to come! I look forward to seeing how it all looks in the end.)
Oh yeah, if you're curious: this is how I'm looking right now for it! No order on the rows themselves, I'm currently hammering out how I want my two primary teams to look. Likely Ash will be anchoring on one and Iori or Krohnen anchoring the other, with the Ikaris sprinkled about, depending. (Heidern may need his own setup since I usually prefer playing him 3rd...)
DLC is going to shift things.
Also ya all caught how Elisabeth mentioned Duo Lon in her story, right? Like, actually mentioned that she wanted to team with him again(and Beni!). Even Elisabeth knows XI's roster is amazeballs, lol. Gotta wonder how batty Kukri's driving Betty if she wants her old team back, despite getting her best friend of forever back from another timeline/dimension that he snapped himself out of.
Look, getting a namedrop of Duo Lon three days before my birthday may not sound like much but the fact is it didn't deconfirm him for later, I'll take it, lol.
(And yeah, if they could get on with giving me my two boys with Adel and Duo Lon in a later pass, that'd be greeeaaat. Not trying to be TOO greedy here, as I'm not asking for much.)
I can now officially say this roster tier list is Elisabeth Approved.
Anyway, 'til next time!
