Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves looks tremendous, becoming a talking point in the FGC for good and bad reasons. While the celebrity inclusions haven’t been received well, it’s good to see SNK in a place of prominence after they almost gave up on video games. It’s easy to forget that the company went the way of Konami for a bit, attempting to focus on pachinko machines before Japanese laws made it harder for them to maintain that business.
That is no longer the case, and SNK is back making video games. Fans have King of Fighters 14 to thank for that. It might be one of the uglier fighters available today, but good fighting mechanics and an impressive roster earned plenty of goodwill.
Before we start praising this fighter for its mechanics, let’s address the ugly elephant in the room: this game is ugly. SNK was using 3D visuals for the first time in a 2D fighter, and they look rough. While most of the iconic characters are pretty recognizable – hi Mai – their faces came out of the early PS2 era and those CG effects for elemental attacks look atrocious.
A free update was released to make King of Fighters 14 look better, but it could only do so much. Lighting did improve a bit and some of the faces did improve, we just wish that the devs had more time to give this fighter the visuals it deserves.
However, once you get over its visuals, KOF 14 is one of the best entries in this series and was the fighter SNK needed for a strong comeback.
Gameplay-wise, this is the King of Fighters gamers grew up with and enjoyed. A lot of the motions for signature attacks stayed intact and they all have crunch sound effects. The new Max Mode feature added some flash to this ugly duckling, letting your fighter use unlimited EX moves for a few seconds. Each character also has a tremendous cinematic Level 3 finisher, making everyone feel like a big deal.
What really helped King of Fighters 14 win over fans was its impressive 50 character roster, and this was before DLC came along. After Street Fighter 5 disappointed fans with its lack of content, small roster, and live-service elements, KOF’s huge roster looked even bigger in comparison. Having a great mix of fan-favorites, odd freaks, and newbies, this showed everyone how to properly release a fighting game.
To add more salt to Street Fighter 5’s then-open wound, KOF 14 also had some good single-player content. Fans had the usual Arcade Mode, Survival Mode, and Training Mode, complete with combo trials to “git gud” as the kids like to say. In addition to all of that, there’s also a ton of unlockable art from the series’ history, really making this game feel like a proper comeback for SNK.
King of Fighters 14 sold decently, but those sales were enough to get SNK on more fighting games. After a few years, fans got the Samurai Shodown reboot, which looked better and received plenty of praise from critics. This also led to KOF 15, which finally gave the series a proper makeover with great visuals, even if some of the KOF 14 finishers were reused.
All of this success eventually lead to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, which looks like a culmination of everything SNK has built so far. With intense gameplay, great graphics, and some decent single-player content, this could be the fighter that propels SNK to even bigger heights.
This was all possible, thanks to an ugly fighting game called King of Fighters 14. Luckily, the game is readily available on Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series systems. We also wouldn’t mind a late Switch port if that’s still possible.