Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny Review

[Note: this review was originally written in 2011.  Some things stated may be dated by this point in time, but much of it remains true.]

With gaming in one of the lowest states it has ever been in, finding a good Wii game to look forward to has been excruciatingly difficult.  These days, all we get is half-assed, unambitious attempts at making an ordinary game and shovelware made for the blatant purpose of ripping people off.  Gasping for the genuine greatness we used to have in the year 2009, I, yet again, reached out and grabbed a copy of Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, another recent title to a long-running game franchise that I never played before because game sequels are almost always better.

The Rune Factory series has been described as Harvest Moon with JRPG elements and a fantasy setting.  In fact, the full title of the first Rune Factory was Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, so I can see where that description may have come from.  As for my experience with the Harvest Moon games, I’d read about them in Nintendo Power years ago, but never actually played any because frankly they sounded… well… boring.  A game about running a farm isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d try to advertize to a man who believes Viewtiul Joe to be the greatest game and anime series ever made, so it seems Natsume opted to take the Sengoku Basara route and added fantasy and action to make something that should be a total bore significantly less boring and more compelling.  With that, we got the Rune Factory games.

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny starts with a boy and girl traveling to the top of an ancient structure.  The boy and girl’s names are Azel and Sonja by default, but I gave the boy my own name (I probably would have given Sonja the name of my girlfriend if I ever had one).  After a brief run-in with some monsters, the girl sings to an altar and the two are transported to Fenith Island; one apparently parallel to a Fenith island they are from.  But unlike their world, which has several arch dragons all over the place, this Fenith Island has only one that the people worship.

But something interesting happened on the way there: Sonja’s soul is inside of Azel’s body.  From there, a journey begins to find out just what the hell happened and to get Sonja’s body back while the two get adjusted to their new home on the new island.  The premise may have tipped you off that anyone who said you can choose to play as a boy or a girl is partially lying.  You can only choose to play as Sonja after you finish the main story and get her body back, so you’re stuck with the boy for the long run.  This wasn’t a problem for me, of course, but the female gamers wanting to give the game a try might be disappointed.

Tides of Destiny’s gameplay essentially consists of 2 halves.  The first is on Fenith Island, the hub the main characters are living on.  It is on Fenith Island where the Harvest Moon-style life simulation takes place.  There, you talk to all the different residents, buy equipment and food for your travels, participate in festivals, and craft/cook various dishes, weapons, and accessories for use on your travels or to give as gifts.

Most of what you do on both Fenith Island and in your travels use up your rune points, and once you’re out of rune points, you instead start using up large chunks of your health until you pass out.  It’s usually not a problem though, as rune points can be replenished with some food or rest, and more often than not your health will run out long before your rune points do in battle, so most of the time it’s a somewhat trivial mechanic.

Fenith Island is somewhat small, but not small enough to be particularly boring, and though you’ll hear characters speak the same lines of dialogue to you each day (like “Good morning.”), you hear enough new dialogue to really get a feel for them, and they’re all likable in some way.  Fenith Island is home to a lot of peaceful, but very well developed characters that you’ll learn to like, provided you aren’t extremely cynical.  They’re happy to help, altruistic, and good-natured.  It’s like what the world would be like if every smoker on the face of the planet burst into flames in unison.

While they’re all generally good people, they have flaws that distinguish them.  Everyone has their own story to tell that you will learn more of the more you talk to them, which will also raise your relationship values.  When you’ve talked to someone enough, you’ll level up their relationship value, they will invite you to do something with them, and accepting their offer will trigger a scripted event in which you learn something about the character, and your relationship reaches the next level (see also: Persona 3).  These events are fun to watch and do a lot for each character’s development, but don’t happen very often.  You need to talk to the people a lot and every in-game day before the relationship events come up, but giving characters things they like (identified through conversation) as gifts or giving gifts for their birthday (also identified through talking) can speed things up a little, as well as just make you feel good about yourself.

It’s the little things that bring each character to life.  The voice acting, for instance, is surprisingly solid considering most of the actors are unknowns.  After Arc Rise Fantasia, I was suspicious of actors who aren’t A-list, but the acting in Tides of Destiny felt genuine and convincing rather than like an actor that was trying too hard.  The voice director must’ve done their job well, as there are only a couple performances I could consider on the borderline of bad, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them people in more roles in the future.

That’s not to say they didn’t get the usual A-listers.  Patrick Seitz voices the main villain and does an incredible job giving him an imposing voice akin to Kingdom Hearts’ Xemnas.

Almost as effective as the voice acting is each character’s expressions.  When talking, large character models of the speakers take up the screen and go through the motions when expressing themselves, with different sound clips and effects (like tears or a sweat drop).  It’s very much like Animal Crossing.  Their expressions are subtle and cute, and there is so much variety in them, with each character having their own set, that I never grew tired of them in the dozens of hours I played of the game.  It’s no L.A. Noire, but it works just about as well.

Quests and holidays in the game only further let you get to know the residents better.  Each one is a nice break from what is otherwise a routine of simply talking to people around the island while you’ve got nothing better to do and killing monsters in the main quest (more on that later).  Festivals include a lantern festival, in which the islanders float lanterns into the sea, a snow festival where everyone helps make a large dragon sculpture out of snow, and even a beauty pageant, where you vote on who the prettiest girl on the island is.  Most of them have some kind of bonus to it that make them worth attending, such as winning a prize or raising a relationship value, which motivates players to participate even more than them already being fun and diverse.  The only thing disappointing about the events is that they never deviate from the core mechanics of the game.  I’d have liked each one to have its own minigame or shift the game’s genre briefly, but everything you do in the festivals is something you do normally, just with a certain set of rules.  I feel there’s more that could have been done.

Fenith Island as a whole feels like a lovely home to chill out in while you’re not at your day job in the other part of the game.  Unfortunately, it is there where Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny falls apart.

The other half of the game after Fenith Island is traversing the open seas with the giant stone golem you get early in the game, fighting monsters on the different locales you visit, and taming them to work for you.  The default name of the golem is Ymir, but I named my golem Mithos, after the legendary hero of Sylvarant.

While at sea, your golem is able to walk around and explore, flip over rocks, and pull islands out of the sea, provided someone gave you the location of one for a quest first.  Moving around the large ocean is slow at first, but early on you’re able to fast forward to a specific destination on an overhead view, which makes traveling long distances far easier and less tedious.  Once you get that option, you’ll likely never go back to the other view, which causes the open sea to lose a sense of its size, but I’ll take any conveniences I can get.  I wish The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker had that option, to be honest.

Your golem is also able to fight.  Sometimes when flipping something over or just by chance, it can run into some sort of giant sea monster, like a giant squid, a giant jellyfish, or Godzilla.  At that point combat becomes a simple game of blocking and punching.  Punch the enemy when there’s an opening, block when they’re about to strike, or see if you can beat them to the punch.  The impact effects for each of your golem’s punches certainly have some “oomph” to them, but you will probably only want to engage in these battles if you have to, and there are only a handful that are required throughout the entire game, so don’t get too used to doing it.  Even if these fights do level up your golem, I was able to beat the final golem fight without too much trouble even after getting through the game and rarely fighting anything with Mithos, which is good because the last thing I need is more grinding, and even with different opponents, every fight feels the same.

When not on the golem, your character engages in ground combat, where he is able to use a variety of weapons; specifically, spears, axes, hammers, staffs, dual-wielding swords, katanas, and one-handed swords.  As you swat down monsters with each one, you level up your ability to use them, making them deal more damage and making you learn moves to use with them.

It’s with the fighting we come to the first major problem with Tides of Destiny: the combat is absolutely awful.  If you want anything dead, you simply mash the A button as your character jerks around with each weapon doing the same canned, awkward animations over and over again until the enemy or you is dead.  There are rune abilities and special attacks to use, but the majority of them are impractical, doing about as much damage as a normal attack and often leaving you open to take a hit.  You’ll only use them in specific situations, usually when you’re surrounded by monsters and you know it will hit more than one of them.

The simplicity of it all might have been forgivable if the game at least put on a good show.  I’ve played button mashers in the past that have been only a bit more complex than this game in terms of combat, like Kingdom Hearts and Sengoku Basara, but in those games, hitting enemies with your different weapons have smooth animations, gratifying physics, firework-like particle effects, and wider varieties of moves (even if some ARE impractical).  In Tides of Destiny, there is no such merit.  The animations are weak and aren’t visually enticing, the only particle and sound effects are wimpy little white slash and impact effects with the same sound effects for each one, and there are no physics or sense of satisfaction.

The combat could’ve been better had there been more variety in the enemy or level design, but the game can’t even pull that off.  You would think that a game focusing heavily of taming monsters would have a strong number of different kinds to keep the player interested.  That’s why Pokemon and Monster Hunter are so popular.  In Rune Factory, there are only a handful of monsters and their color-changed cousins with no difference except for their name, their stats, and occasionally their projectile attack.  That is absolutely pathetic.

What monsters there are can be tamed instead of killed by constantly brushing them with a magic taming brush.  To tame a monster, you simply go up to them and constantly brush them, taking longer and longer to do so as the game goes on.  Once tamed, the monsters can produce something for you in your golem’s barn, like milk or eggs.  They can also farm for you on the four seasonal islands you get as you progress in the story (after you reanimate them with spirits you find on the field) to grow things to sell or use, and have them follow you into battle to fight alongside you.

There's variety, just not enough.

Brushing monsters to tame them isn’t much of a problem at first, but as it takes longer, it becomes frustrating, and not just because it takes far longer than it should.  It’s possible for the monster you’re trying to tame to be killed by your own monsters, which you can’t control directly (All you can do is teleport them to your location), making all the minutes you spent brushing the monster a complete waste of time.  Even more annoying is that since enemies are copy/pasted so often in this game, and there are monster gates everywhere that infinitely spawn them unless destroyed, it’s very easy to lose track of the specific monster you were taming when there are crowds of lookalikes all over the place and you get blindsided while your target runs off.  I like the idea of this simplistic, yet challenging monster taming method, but it’s the little things in the overall design that keep it from being fun.  Eventually it becomes a chore.

In fact, practically the entire game becomes a chore eventually.  The worst offense Tides of Destiny commits is some of the most ungodly padding I have ever had to slog through.  The game took me around 65 hours to get to the last boss (where I promptly rage-quitted for reasons I will get to), but I’d estimate about 40 or more of those hours were spent fighting through the long, tedious, repetitive, monster-filled, multifloored elemental shrines you have to fight your way through (in which the story gives you no indication to do so), with nothing but the same respawning monsters to get in your way through the recycled corridors and environments.  And you can’t just breeze through them either.  The difficulty curve is more of a difficulty stairwell.  Every time you go up a floor, the monsters spike in their strength, requiring you to once again grind your ass off so that you don’t die in 3 hits.  That means every single floor in all 4 of these shrines are far longer than they should be, and with a poorly implemented combat system, you’ll only want to continue on if you promised to do a review of the damn game!

But it’s with the bosses where the BS piles up.  Just like the enemy levels, the bosses in Tides of Destiny are far too strong.  All of them can kill you in 3 or 4 hits easily, even if you’re at a decent level, and that’s almost a guarantee because they often hit consecutively, and you stagger every time.  The only way I found to beat the bosses was to fight them over and over, memorize their patterns, and then create a hit and run tactic that shaved their obscenely long health bars a little bit at a time.  It is no exaggeration when I say that it took me at least 30 minutes to an hour to beat each of these bosses after bringing along dozens of health potions, plenty of food, and my strongest monsters, leaving with almost nothing left.  And that’s not even counting the dozens and dozens of times I had to start over after the bosses landed a lucky shot!  These are some of the most broken bosses I have ever fought and they are far more of a chore than fun, which is just wrong, because bosses are usually the highlight of any game I play!

Not to mention there's something unoriginal about their designs.

It got so bad, I couldn't even beat the game.  At a certain point of the final boss fight, the hit and run tactics are ultimately useless, and no matter how much I ate, no matter how much I leveled up, it was unbeatable.  I'm not going to make myself suffer just because a game has crappy combat.

All of that combined with the graphics and music suggests that Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny didn’t have nearly enough time, money, and effort to make a good game.  The graphics are decent aesthetically, but technically it looks little better than a PS2 game.  Like I said, the animations are jerky, pixilation can be easy to spot, and the environments painfully lack variety.  The soundtrack is also extremely limited, with maybe barely a dozen or so tracks in the entire game, none of which are very memorable (though admittedly, even after all those hours, the music never got on my nerves).

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny is comparable to the critically panned Alpha Protocol.  One half of the game is really well done, with great characters, a variety of activities, and fun gameplay mechanics, but the core of the game is so half-assed, badly done, and thoroughly unpolished, that most players will not want to suffer through it.  Maybe fans of the Rune Factory series are used to this and will be able to suffer through it, but I don’t think it’s worth it, especially at 40 dollars.  It has far more low points than high points.  It’s not an awful game, but it’s not up to our current generation standards.  Had this game been on the 3DS, it may have been at least passable as an on-the-go time waster, but on the Wii, we expect better than this and have better games to play.  I give Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny a 5.5 out of 10.

The 10,000 View Milestone Post

Today is a day to celebrate.  Not long ago, after several months of activity, the Shonen Otaku Corner has reached its 10,000th view.  Technically it passed that milestone a while ago, but I'm excluding bots that give users views just to direct them to their site.

For this I have every one of my readers to thank.  I hope you've enjoyed my writing here on the Shonen Otaku Corner and will continue to do so.  I'm aware I haven't been posting much lately here, but only because I've been busy writing elsewhere.  Rest assured though, this blog isn't going anywhere!

The Finale of the KOF 13 Finale

I hope in the time it has taken me to get my laptop back up and running, everyone has played The King of Fighters 13 and sent me piles of money for recommending it to them, because with this post, I will be diving straight into spoiler territory!  It is time to finish this retrospective once and for all!

Even after hacking away at Saiki's ankle like a kung-fu lumberjack, he doesn't seem to be in pain.  I suppose Mukai's "that battle didn't count" status is in effect.
Saiki is troubled though.  No matter how much you fight him, there doesn't seem to be enough power to open the gate.

"Maybe you should try hitting above the belt!"

In fact, the thing starts closing!  If Saiki doesn't go through that gate, bad things will happen... To him.

What's happening is that the door is lacking power.  There isn't enough to hold it open.

You can see there's clearly a sphere there, but remember that the spheres harnessing Orochi's power are below the stadium.  Someone must have removed them from there, but who?  Like an instant answer, Saiki is impaled through the back by a sneak attack.

So he never let his guard down ever before?  You had to wait until he got this close to succeeding?

Finally Ash Crimson starts doing something resembling something heroic by killing Saiki and taking what appears to be his powers/essence/soul/something, much like he did Chizuru and Iori.

With the villain defeated and the gate closing, the day is sa- NOPE!

The name of this new form of Ash is never confirmed.  Even in the character voices gallery it's distinguished from the playable Ash by simply having its name in red.  Some people call him Evil Ash, some Dark Ash, and others.... Bad Ash.

Using Saiki's time-stopping power, Evil Ash makes a huge white field that stops time even further for everything not living inside it (I think).  He is somehow stopping time while time is stopped!  Whatever it is he does, it stops the gate from closing.  He is the true final boss of The King of Fighters 13.  Live and let die!

FIGHT!

Sounds like a final boss theme to me.

Evil Ash is essentially a souped-up version of Ash with two of Saiki's super moves.  He's very difficult the first few times you fight him, but after a while you can catch on to his AI patterns.

More than anything, he loves standing the the corner, continuously spamming Ash's flame shot like crazy.  Unlike Ash's move, which can only send out one flame per attack, Evil Ash can send out two, and fire them at a much faster rate.  A lot of the fight will have you guarding in a corner while he hammers away at you with them.  After every few shots though he stops and takes a moment to walk back, giving you a good moment to nail him with a projectile (possibly a Neo Max) or close your distance with him.

When you get close, Ash starts using his close-ranged attacks, one of which is a deadly new move in which he dashes past you, deals a chunk of damage, and disables all your special moves!
Obviously the purely offensive approach couldn't be a dumber idea.  Getting close and counterattacking with patience is essential in fighting Evil Ash.  By counterattacking, I of course mean...

Leg Sweeping.  Yep.  Evil Ash inherited Saiki's Achille's heel.  The difference here is that Evil Ash tends to walk away from you, whereas Saiki eventually got close enough to leg sweep, which means you need to take measures into your own hands and get up close yourself.  Since Evil Ash is also more offensive than Saiki, you'll have to do more guarding this time around as well.

In arcade mode, I usually suggest the coward's way out by using a continue bonus to get his health down to 25% and timing him out by guarding constantly.  In story mode, however, there are no such bonuses, so you'll have to beat him fair and square.  Always remember to sweep the leg with proper timing, be patient, and he'll eventually go down... If you're playing at a low difficulty... After 12 tries.

I must say, this isn't as grand a finale as I'd like.  Instead of fighting some brand-new character like Mukai and Magaki were, we just fight what's little more than a stronger version of a regular character you have to use cheap tactics to beat.  It's a bit of a letdown to a great saga in the King of Fighters storyline, even if the story arc itself is really quite good.  Even Kyo knows it.

After Evil Ash is defeated, the game practically ignores your victory and has Evil Ash get ready to enter the gate.  However, he stops.  Apparently there's an argument going on inside his head.  Have you ever had one of those?  I have.

Saiki tells the boy that he shouldn't resist.  After all...

I guess there's no wardrobe in the center of the mind.

And that one comment is the big revelation.  Saiki looks like Ash because he's Ash's time-traveling immortal ancestor.  All this time, through all his betrayal and deception, Ash was just trying to get close to his ancestor so that he could stop him from going through the gate and changing the future.
You'd think he could have told someone about his little plan so that everyone wouldn't be against him, but he must have thought that taking the sacred treasures would get Saiki to trust him even after playing both sides to stay unpredictable.

In the end, Ash finally succeeds.

The gate closes, leaving Saiki and Ash both stuck in the present time.  As Ash tells Saiki about how Saiki doesn't know anything about him, a furious Saiki panics about a time paradox.

This is where things get really confusing, so here's my interpretation: in the past, Saiki traveled to the future where this whole shebang started.  Ordinarily, this Saiki of the future would replace him in a time loop to write the new future with the knowledge he has.  Since he didn't pass through the gate, now there's no Saiki in the past.  With no Saiki in the past, there's no Saiki in the future, no Those From the Distant Land (organized, anyway) and... No Ash.  If anyone has a better explanation, I'd love to hear it.

And with that, the tragic hero vanishes.  What essentially happens next, as described in many endings, is history rewrites itself to exclude Ash, Saiki and Those From the Distant Land.  It's the textbook definition of a cosmic retcon.  It's like God just threw out the book on time travel logic and took all that nonsense out entirely. The game hints that it's more like there's a gap in each character's memory where the erased characters were, which just makes things even more confusing if you think about it too hard.

This does possibly explain why Ash acted like such a jerk: because no one would even remember him acting that way if his plan succeeded.  He had nothing to lose.  It's kind of sad, really.  With the hero and villain both wiped from existence, there seem to be no more conflicts (that aren't usual, anyway), and Chizuru and Iori both have their powers again.  Everything is right with the world.

Or is it?!

Get every scene in King of Fighters 13's story mode, and you'll get one extra stinger!  It's a great note to end the game on and I couldn't be more excited for the next King of Fighters!  Thank you all for joining me on this epic retrospective, and may you enjoy The King of Fighters for years to come.

King of Fighters Overlooked Subplot

With all the commotion happening regarding Those from the Distant Land, I can't help but feel I may be forgetting something.

Nah.

King of Fighters Retrospective: 13

King of Fighters 13: the real King of Fighters 12!

After years of anticipation, the sequel to the phenomenal King of Fighters 11 finally came out, and as if a sign from god, the game came out on my birthday, November 22^nd following some delays.  I didn’t get it until a year later though.

Ordinarily I would assume that the delays for the game were so that it could be fine-tuned, but that doesn't make any sense.  They didn’t seem to give two shits about taking their time when they were making a certain game before this one that may or may not exist!

But that’s beside the point.  King of Fighters 13 is tied with 11 as my favorite installment in the franchise, which is the big reason the Tales of Ash is my favorite storyline thus far.

It takes place after the tournament in King of Fighters 11.  At the conclusion of that tournament, Ash Crimson stole Iori’s Yasakani Magatama along with his flame powers, and Magaki, another higher-up of Those from the Distant Land, was killed by the weapon of his subordinate, Shion, who is now missing.

In The King of Fighters 13, there’s a new KOF tournament on the horizon, this time sponsored by (a Botan-controlled) Rose Bernstein, who is sparing no expense to make it one the most grandiose ever.

There’s one thing about this scenario I don’t understand, and it’s a pretty glaring plot hole.  The Bernstein family are wanted criminals!  They’re illegal arms dealers!  They’re on the run!  Now Rose is appearing on TV and nobody is doing anything!

Rose and Adelheid did appear on TV in the KOF 2003 comic, but in that, they didn’t give their last names because the Bernsteins are known for being criminals!  Here, she specifically says it’s courtesy of the Bernstein family!  No one I’ve ever talked to and nothing I have ever read has explained this!  My only assumption is that they made good with the government, seeing as how Adelheid is now “friends” with Heidern and they don’t seem to be doing anything illegal (intentionally).  Still, wouldn’t the money from their criminal activities be confiscated?  I just don’t get this.

Adelheid is sitting this one out, at least on the stage.

Maybe they're so powerful they control the police.  That always seems to be the convenient reason with crime lords in fiction.

The entrants in this tournament are all nostalgic, as the majority of them are teams from the first game, KOF 94, and the first good game, KOF 96.

Kyo, Benimaru, and Goro form the classic team Japan.  Though he was going to go anyway, Kyo was personally invited by two of Those from the Distant Land, one of whom Kyo gave a flaming punch to.  Shingo would have loved to join too, but is sadly left out due to injuries sustained in the last tournament protecting Kyo.

Why is it Benimaru only lets his hair down outside of battle?

Yuri, Mai, and King reform the original women’s fighting team, which hasn’t been officially formed since ‘95.  Returning from an extended absence, Takuma joins the Art of Fighting team with Ryo and Robert, and despite the forces involved that got her barred last time, Leona leads the Ikari Warriors team with Ralf and Clark.  Like everyone else, Terry, using his original look, joins with his classic teammates Andy and Joe, and Athena reunites with Kensou and Chin.

Even after losing his Yasakani Magatama and his powers with it, Iori is also an active participant, out to get his powers back and take revenge on the one who stole them.  With his flame gone, Iori now only utilizes the purely physical art of Nanto Suichoken!

You'd think Iori would have run out of teammates by this point, and in a wy, he has.  Joining Iori are his old partners Mature and Vice…. Wait, what?!

I didn’t want to spoil a character ending, but I'm cutting out the ambiguity this time.  You’ve had enough time to play it!  At the end of King of Fighters 96, in Iori's ending, Vice and Mature died!

They!

F&^#ing!

Died!

How are they back?  How is this possible?  The most we get is that they want to protect the Orochi power from falling into the wrong hands, but if that’s the case, where were they in the last game?!  My only guess is that Iori losing his powers indicated that their intervention was necessary, but that still doesn’t explain how they resurrected themselves!

In the story supplements outside the games, Mature and Vice have occasionally haunted Iori as ghosts, so I guess you could say they never truly left.  The only explanation I have is a fan theory that believes the Orochi can never truly die and can enter the world of the living in emergencies or because the Orochi seal is broken or something.  If that were the case, why can’t they just get Goenitz or one of the other Orochi cult members to kick those Distant Land jerk’s asses?  Let’s face it, SNK Playmore just wanted to get Mature and Vice back, plot be damned.  What a load.

Many of the old characters got significant makeovers for 13.  KOF-original characters from the Orochi saga got several new outfits, like a black tank top for Leona and black suits for Mature and Vice.  The only character introduced in the Tales of Ash to get an outfit upgrade is Elizabeth, and thank god for that.

I have no problem with those changes.  I have problems with the other ones.

Some of the characters that appeared in SNK games before KOF were redesigned with their original style in mind.  For example, Kensou wears his green outfit from Psycho Soldier and Athena now has long pink hair and a moe-like face.  King and Yuri both have the unfortunate effect of having the front of their shirts destroyed when finished by a special attack, like they did back in KOF 94 & 95 and the Art of Fighting games.

Ralf and Clark probably got hit the hardest in the art shift, because they’re now both obscenely buff to the point that you have to wonder how their bones work.

I understand what they were trying to do with these changes, but long-time fans got accustomed to their KOF designs.  To suddenly change that makes it taxing to recognize them as the fighters from previous games.

The only characters not from the Orochi saga are the important ones (even if in another story) and Kim’s new teammates.  K’ enters with Maxima and Kula only because Chin Gentsai bribed Kula with ice cream to sign their team up for the tournament, even though K’ wanted nothing to do with it (something that becomes very apparent).

Rather than Chang or Choi, Kim instead has two new participants in his reformation program.  Chang and Choi convinced Kim that Fatal Fury characters Raiden and Hwa Jai were more in need of reformation than they were after seeing the two in a magazine.  In reality, Hwa and Raiden were still not exactly nice people, but weren’t working for anyone evil like Geese.  Hell, Raiden isn't exactly a bad guy himself.  It's just an evil identity he has with his good identity, Big Bear.  Still, they went along with Kim’s program so that their reputation could get a boost from fighting in the KOF tournament.

Raiden and Hwa Jai are two of only three new characters introduced in 13.  Hwa is a muy tai fighter like Joe, but has a far different set of attacks.  Raiden is a wrestler with many grapples and heavy moves that hit slow, but hard.  He's also Australian, so I guess you could say his opponents will face Australian justice.

Ash Crimson is apparently now working with Those from the Distant Land and has promised to gather all 3 of the sacred treasures for them, two of which he already has.

Keep in mind that Ash couldn’t have killed any members of the Distant Land in the previous games.  In 2003, Mukai gets away, and in 11, Magaki is killed by Shion’s spear.  Ash fought against them, but only because it's expressed that he doesn't like them.  There’s also another rather good reason they keep him around and why they believe he'll ultimately do as they say, but I’ll get to that.

The Distant Land folks gave Ash his own invitation, but he doesn’t have a team, so he doesn’t participate per se.  After viciously betraying Shen Woo and pitting him against Oswald in KOF 11, the Shanghai street fighter instead joins Elizabeth’s team with Duo Lon for revenge.  Ash merely watches from the sidelines for most of the game's events though.

Truly Ash is the hero of this story.  Only a hero would join the villains, betray his friends, steal artifacts needed to seal off an evil power, and have every protagonist want his head.

The console version added two more unlockable playable characters: the returning Billy Kane (who has gone back to his original outfit like everyone else) and the leader of Those from the Distant Land, whom Ash bears an uncanny resemblance to.

Billy Kane rules!

While KOF 13’s character selection is substantial, I can’t help but feel disappointed in the characters they chose.  Almost none of the characters premiering in KOF 11 come back, making 11 the only game to have them.  I would have loved to fight with Oswald, B. Jenet, Duck King, or Tizoc again.  There aren’t any new characters important to the plot aside from the main villain either, something that most games before this have done to keep things interesting.  The characters from the Tales of Ash aren’t forgotten, thankfully.  As something of a compensation, just about all of them get cameos somewhere in the game.  You have to look carefully to see some of them in the backgrounds.

This is just one screen.  One screen and there are 7 different characters from previous games!

The characters that are playable got significant changes to their moves in the move to HD systems, and some of them are for the worse.  There are a few special moves Kyo can no longer use, Duo Lon plays completely differently, and King’s Double Strike and Surprise Rose, once special attacks, are now super special attacks.  Not to mention Ralf lost his backbreaker move and his Galactica Phantom has far less range and damage output even though Ralf is BUFFED TO THE MAX IN MUSCLE MASS!  All these changes do is take away character strength, and they're not the only things that had a big change.

In an unexpected move, King of Fighters 13 goes back to a fighting system much like that of King of Fighters 97 & 98.  There’s no more swapping characters on the fly and no more leader selection.  Presumably this is because of the loading times required for each round, which takes all of two seconds.  I suppose that two seconds of waiting would have badly broken the flow had they gone with the free-tagging KOF 11 system.

The only new mechanic introduced is the drive gauge, which is similar the one from KOF 11.  By using up half the meter, you can perform a drive cancel.  When the meter is full, you can press all 4 buttons at once (both triggers or R2+L2 in the console versions) to enter overdrive mode, in which you can use as many cancels as you need and your most powerful attack: the Neo Max for only 2 super stocks instead of 3.  Neo Maxes are basically the replacements of the leader super moves from previous games, because like the leader moves, they require a control stick command and two buttons instead of one.  They’re explosive, flashy, and take humongous gashes out of your opponent’s health.  Pulling one off is oh so satisfying with the game’s graphical leap.

That's kanji, in case your're slow.

The combat in 13 is one of the best yet.  It should be immediately familiar to any King of Fighters player.  It keeps up a speed similar to KOF 11, but feels unique and weightier than any other KOF game, due in no small part to its presentation.  The first (it’s the first, dammit!) HD King of Fighters game looks absolutely revolutionary.  All the character sprites and stages are incredibly detailed and sharp, and backgrounds change with each round, showing off different lighting effects and cameos.  You need only look at it to see how much of a spectacle King of Fighters 13 is.  The finale’s cinematics are also for the first time completely animated, though the endings are still mostly a slideshow of SNK’s trademarked artwork and none of the cutscenes have voice acting.  That’s just sticking true to KOF’s style though.  It is without a doubt the very best looking 2D game I have ever seen.  Not even Arc System Works has yet been able to top The King of Fighters 13.

See, I held on to my powers.  Nyah nyah.

Blending in perfectly with the perfect graphics is the perfect music.  In past King of Fighters games, the best music tracks have been the final boss tracks.  The boss tracks have always seemed to have that extra amount of effort and grandiose detail befitting of a grand finale.  In  The King of Fighters 13, almost every track feels like a boss track!  Combined with the much meatier sound effects and voice acting, the audio for the game can make any fight a memorable one that will have you physically clenching your fist in the air out of either triumph or anger!

But wait, there's more!  Not content with having just one badass soundtrack, SNK Playmore gave the console version two!  If you look in the game's audio options, you’ll notice there is a choice of two tracks: A & B.  Switch to track B, and the game uses an alternative soundtrack using new arranged music from previous King of Fighters games.  Most of the teams get their themes from King of Fighters 11, like Ash’s “Joker” and Elizabeth’s “Queen”, but the teams not present in 11 take alternative measures.  Billy Kane gets Geese’s theme, the women’s team gets their KOF 2003 theme, and Kim’s team gets the Korean theme from KOF 96.

But it's not just the thrills of battle the game brings to life.  King of Fighters 13 also excels in characterization and story.  Character introduction animations from previous games were all taken out and instead, what they used to say at the beginning of a round (or as a taunt) in the past is spoken when you select them on the character select screen.  It would have been nice to have intro animations, but the tradeoff is a better alternative.

In arcade and story mode, in place of intro animations are pre-fight character conversations.  Literally every single character has a specific conversation specific to every single character, including themselves.

These dialogue bits range from trash talking, arguments, discussions about certain aspects of characters, and even the usual “let’s make this a good one” remark.  There are several references to past King of Fighters games, which makes them especially entertaining for the longtime fans.

For characters that fight themselves, there are several variations of reactions.  Leona says she’s fighting her inner evil, Athena says she’s fighting a cosplaying fan, and Kyo believes he’s fighting another one of his clones from 99.  The conversations can be drawn out or short and snappy, and they always fit each character to a T.  I get the feeling we have Atlus to thank for properly translating the script, which I doubt Ignition would have been able to do.

There are also several character-specific win quotes as well; far far more than there were in 11.  In fact, I find it harder to find generic win quotes that apply to any character than specific ones.

Against Terry

All of this action and excitement builds up to the explosive and downright cosmic finale of the Tales of Ash.  I feel like I shouldn’t give it away, since I practically wrote these articles for people who got this game, but even knowing the previous games, it can be pretty hard to understand, so I will take the finale to spell things out as best I can.  You can read it here, but please do not do so until you’ve beaten the game, because there is a gigantic spoiler in there.  I know there isn't much to spoil in KOF, but this game has an exception.

For even more detail on the plot, the console version of King of Fighters 13 has a story mode!  For the first time, a King of Fighters game elaborates more on the plot in the game itself outside of the endings!  In story mode, you fight much less often and watch several scenes that show what different characters are doing as the tournament happens.  These scenes, however, are mostly still images with text over them; quite a lot of text, actually.  If you’ve played Persona 4 Arena or have read all my articles up to this point, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?

To be specific, story mode has 3 different perspective storylines: Heidern’s investigation, Adelheid’s investigation, and Ash’s actions.

Once story mode actually gets to the fighting, you can only select the pre-made teams, and once in battle, there is only one sequence of pre-fight dialogue between every member of both teams.  It all makes the story feel more complete and is the best feature ever in any King of Fighters game.

Hey look!  More characters from previous games!

But wait!  King of Fighters 13 has even more to offer!  In the console version, each character has 10 customizable color slots in which you can adjust the colors of their appearance.  But you may not need to, because every character has 10 alternate colors by default.  Some even have 20 due to alternate outfits you can select by pressing the select button at the color select screen.  These alternate outfits range from new styles to past wardrobes, so if you thought Elizabeth didn’t look incredibly stupid in KOF 11, 13 has you covered.

Additionally, there are several modes to keep players occupied.  Tutorial, time trial, survival, online mode, and (finally!) versus mode are all in the package along with the story and arcade modes.

Beating story mode with different teams and beating arcade mode with a specific combination of characters also nets you many different special pieces of artwork, and completing different goals goes toward revealing a giant picture with chibi forms of every single character from the Tales of Ash, including the PS2-exclusive ones from 11.  The ultimate cameo piece!

My personal favorite is the arcade ending artwork you get for winning with Kyo, Terry, and Ryo, which I won't show because you can unlock it yourself.

If you’re too lazy to unlock everything, there are DLC options to help you along the way in the console versions.  You can pay to unlock everything in the game’s gallery or unlock all the colors for every character, because normally you have to play as a character several times to get more colors for them.

Inevitably, DLC characters are also offered, of which there are 3: Mr. Karate, Iori with his flame powers back, and NESTS Kyo, with his old moveset.  Since they don’t have any impact on the story and technically they’re all in the game already (just in a different form), I don’t find them to be worth it, unlike the game as a whole.  Especially not at $15 total.

King of Fighters 13 is worth every single dollar you can scrounge up.  It is a glorious, feature-packed, celebratory masterpiece with all the bells and whistles!  If you don’t have it by now, you must get it!  Now!  The King of Fighters 13 is available on the Xbox 360, PS3…. And iOS devices.  Yes, really.

The iPhone version of 13, titled King of Fightersi, is just what you’d expect: a compressed and portable recreation.  It’s actually rather impressive just how much it recreates, especially with King of Fightersi 2012 having almost all the characters.

Like most iOS games of its kind, rather than controlling the game with a real control stick and buttons, they’re on the touch screen.

There are also several additions and omissions.  For example, the iPhone version doesn’t have the arcade mode (per se) or story mode, though it does have 13's pre-fight dialogue.  The backgrounds are also completely static, though characters still animate decently enough.  The iOS version has only 2-3 colors for each character, and you fight Ash as a boss instead of experiencing the finale.

Additions include a wi-fi mode that lets you play online anywhere (unlike the console versions needing a router), the ability to share accomplishments on Facebook & Twitter (mandatory for an iOS game), and the “Rose Shop,” where you can buy unlockables like iPhone-exclusive artwork and movies.

Now I know it isn't canon.  Rose can't even manage a piano number.

If you don’t have one of the HD systems, I suggest you check out the portable version.  It keeps the core of the experience, at the very least.  One way or another, you must get this game!

In this stage you can see Shingo and Hinako in the background.

The King of Fighters 13 is the perfect way to end such a out-of-the-norm storyline.  The Tales of Ash truly went out with a bang.  I hope with this retrospective convinced some of you to try this wonderful series, or at least cleared things up for the 13 players out there, but even with this retrospective over, I will never be finished talking about The King of Fighters.

[Update: since my original posting of this article, The King of Fighters 13 has also come out on Steam for the PC!  The Steam edition includes the DLC characters and Steam community bonuses like achievements and Steam trading cards.  I've already got my KOF Steam badge.]