The King of Fighters 15 Review Addendum: The Updates

It’s been well over a year since The King of Fighters 15 came out and right from the word go SNK has been adding update after update to sweeten the deal, to the point that looking back on it, some of the information in my review of it is dated. Some of my comments and complaints from back then have been addressed and there has been so much added to the game that I think it’s worth updating my thoughts on the game's content a bit and addressing what has changed so that people reading about the game today have a better understanding of its current state.  Consider it an addendum of sorts to my review.

Just like 13 and 14, KOF 15 has been adding on paid DLC characters with two seasons.  Unlike the previous games, the first season of DLC was sold in full teams, with the South Town team, Mark of the Wolves team, Awakened Orochi team and Samurai Shodown team.  One of my problems with 14’s DLC was that even though you got some fun characters to use (Oswald), you didn’t get much else to do with them as they only had special story dialogue with the characters within their DLC package and they didn’t get any new endings.  This is not the case with 15’s DLC teams. Every character has story dialogue with both DLC and base game characters and each one has their own team ending and team story on the official website with just as much care as everyone else’s. They even added new special team artwork endings, making them feel like less of an afterthought.

The season two characters are sold individually, however, and each of them only get one special team artwork ending and no full ending.  They’re the ones that feel like afterthoughts, which makes sense as the second season of DLC allegedly wasn’t even planned.

The DLC characters add a lot to the game and the characters they brought back for it are as fun to play with as ever.  The addition of Shingo and Kim are practically SNK’s way of apologizing after people cried foul for them not being in the base game.  I particularly like that they implemented Haohmaru and Darli Dagger’s heavy slash as a command attack.  Reading the opponent and getting a nice big heavy slash in for big damage gives the same meaty satisfaction of their home series.

The Southtown team, Awakened Orochi team, Shingo and Kim all come with their outfits from previous games, for a little extra value, and Nakoruru’s purple color returns with a slightly different win pose.

While I would recommend getting them discounted, there's a good amount of value with the DLC characters, but I was even more impressed by how much SNK has been throwing at players for absolutely no cost.  Sure, the added cross play and much improved online play is a big plus, but even if you play offline, there is substantially more to play with.  Just like in 14, DLC characters will be in story mode as opponents to fight even if you haven’t bought them and the update that added Najd added a new stage, but the most prominent free content is the two free characters: Omega Rugal and Goenitz.

When I saw that Goenitz was being added into the game as a playable character you can’t ban when playing online, I was going

Imagine my shock and excitement when I found out that he was being added free of charge.  Before that I had a similar reaction to Omega Rugal being free, but to a lesser extent as regular Rugal was already playable in 98, so making him balanced and fair was already established to be doable.

These infamous SNK bosses are both playable and used in a new mode added to the game: the boss challenge.  In the boss challenge, you must defeat new boss forms of these villains, in which they are given a special costume, new moves, cheating AI and obscene attack properties.  As fun as it is to get wrecked by a bonus boss in the same way you would in an Atlus RPG, I don’t think they quite hit a balance between challenging and fun with these.  Omega Rugal’s boss form is pretty damn hard, but if you’re a seasoned player using your best characters and you get a feel for his tactics, he’s not the challenge SNK hyped him up to be.  Goenitz has the opposite problem, where one single hit from him results in a combo that takes down 80% of your health and he’s virtually untouchable unless you cheese him with very specific tactics.  Finding ways to cheese an SNK boss is fun, but not so much when it practically requires you to use a set of very specific characters.

Defeating the boss challenges grants you a title, the costume, their shared boss stage and their music, which brings me to the next flood of free content. [Edit: right after posting this, a new update has made the stage, music and costume unlocked by default, leaving only the title to unlock.  It takes away from the feeling of the alternate costume being a trophy to win.]

I stated in my review that SNK went full ham on the music track selection for KOF 15. Apparently full ham wasn’t enough for them because they’ve been adding more more MORE!

Having used every battle and character select soundtrack from the main games, SNK since added music from KOF 2002: Unlimited Match, the Maximum Impact games, KOF: Neowave and the Neogeo Pocket games.  In my review I stated “with the exception of credits music”, but now that’s not true.  They’ve added the credits music of every main game and the spin-offs.  They even made a new arrangement of the KOF 2000 credits music.

They’ve made a lot of new arrangements, actually.  Every single DLC character and team comes with a new music track and new destiny battle music tracks for when specific characters fight each other.  They even went back and added new arrangements of classic songs for characters that aren’t DLC.  Every single one sounds awesome and are some of my favorite tracks in the series history, including Rhythmic Hallucination, Trash Head, Fairy and 176^th Street.  Again, all of this is free, although they do have to be unlocked by hearing them in-game first and that’s easier to do if you have the DLC characters.

With so much added to the game for both paid DLC and free, alongside the sales that help you get it cheaper nowadays, this already fantastic fighting game is even more fantastic and The King of Fighters 15 has cemented itself as the second best fighting game ever made.  It almost makes you forget SNK is owned by a murderous Saudi tyrant.