Originally posted by DBOY@May 18 2002,00:47
In terms of story, KOF95-97 were the peak of the series.
KOF98 had by far the best gameplay of the entire series but the story was an absolute joke. I tjust sucked as few things can. It didn't really even have a story. The music was mostly just the music fromt he earlier games except for some new tracks like In Spite of One's Age (one of my favorite songs in the game).
From 99 on the series went downhill. 99 was pretty good but the number of characters was drastically reduced. Strikers provided an interesting new aspect of gameplay but were under control enough where they didn't dominate the game.
2000 broke the formula. Strikers took over th egame and almost every character had ridiculous courner infinite combos you could do thanks to now being able to call strikers during a move. This was abused to death. The music was also incredibly lackluster. There were some interesting new character additions and a pretty good cast, but infinites really sucked the fun out of it.
2001 took everything 2000 did and made it worse. The music is flat out terrible, some of the worst of any Neo-Geo game ever, I really blame Eolith for this. I'm a big fan of Korean games but how they nuked the game so bad is beyond me. In a ditch effort to bring strikers under control, they made strikers use special meter and let you pick up to 3 strikers, gaining another special level bank for each one. This creates a problem with infinites. If you have 3 levels at asny pont it's pretty much game over, because whatever striker combo you bust into, it can go on forever since the combo powers you meter back up giving you more strikers ot keep it going as you do it. Mei Li was a cool addition to the game cast and Robert finally got back his normal (non-charging moves) but even things like that didn't redeem the fact canceling was cranked even higher than it is in Street Fighter 3. You just have to play it to really understand what the problem with it is. Super canceling is another thing that really doesn't belong in KOF. The world does not need to be able to cancel SDM Maiden Masher into a Yami Sugi.
On the upside. The last boss in 2001 is quite cool. Fighting Zero again right before was pretty lame but the boss is challanging enough to make it worth a quarter.
Verdict is: Play it once or twice, but don't buy it. I wouldn't waste your time with a download unless you're getting it at a solid 40kps off a good server. It's not worth any more than that.
Also, Dark, they're releasing SNK vs Capcom. Not Capcom vs SNK. It's going to be a new game. Remember how Neo-Geo Pocket Color SNK vs Capcom was nothing at all remotely like the Capcom vs SNK series?