I enjoy playing the game offline / story / arcade mode. I'm happy Season one DLC is FREE. I'm happy with the character roster. It's not as fun as King of Fighters XV, but it's still fun. I find it worth ~$40.

netcode is trash, everything takes forever to load, games take forever to find and when I do find one it's 9 frames of rollback

The 2D version of Tekken 8 in it's current state, and no, that's not a compliment.

SNK should go back to making 2d games with sprites. They just don't have the skills or budget to make a 3d game.

A great fighter that deserves your attention. It had some balance issues early on, but the latest patch has the game moving in the right direction. Execution is challenging, neutral is fast, and combos are flashy and satisfying. There are a lot of mechanics to learn, but there's no need to pick them all up at once. New mechanics will intuitively reveal themselves as you learn the game and get better. For example, new players do not need to worry about guard cancels and hyper defense, but important features like rev blow will be obviously useful right away. New fighting game players will still find enough modern features like huge hit stun on jump ins, a generous input buffer, and special move shortcuts to make the game approachable.

As a big fan of Mark of the Wolves, I was excited for this release, but unfortunately this falls well short of those expectations. Get the feeling that most of the effort went into presentation and marketing of the game instead of refining the gameplay and player experience. The game feels like you are playing under water, the input buffer is finicky, and something feels off with the character model interactions. Navigating menus in the game is not intuitive and cumbersome. Online play involves long wait times, a perplexing lobby system, and netcode that can look smooth at times, but is masking latency underneath. Hoping SNK decides to give this release some polish in later seasons since this could be a contender for a top FG, but as of right now it just feels like a chore to play.

The gameplay is wildly satisfying, has a high skill ceiling and all the characters are well designed, voiced and animated. This is one of the few fighting games that really lets you make everything that you like aesthetically prominent. The color editor is a really good example, instead of having you pay for a pass or by DLC color palletes, the developers really gave players near unlimited freedom to achieve their own aesthetic. To top it all off the first season DLC characters are all free, this is what ALL games should be doing, this really feels like it is made with the players and their time in mind rather then the players money. Aside from the 2 bizarre guest characters that no one asked for or even currently have an interest in this is a great fighting game that is some what newbie friendly to people who are new to fighting games. I say "somewhat" because Street Fighter 6 does a better job of explaining how fighting games work than this game. This is a game that i...

Just take out Ganacci and Ronaldo and we'll pretend this never happened.

COTW is such a blast to play. Its in an amazing spot where its faster pace then Street Fighter, but not as insane as Marvel. Its the perfect balance that gives you the best of both worlds. With the addition of the legendary Street Fighter Characters Ken Masters, and getting all the DLC free with purchase, now a great time to jump in to my favorite fighting game out!

Underwhelming with a roster of mostly identical characters.