I'm happy to see more fighting games on GOG. We may not have Mortal Kombat X or Dragon Ball FighterZ yet, but we're making progress. Personally, I'm new to the KOF franchise, but I'm enjoying it sofar.
A fair bit of warning though. I have a 144 hz monitor, and on first launch, the game was nearly unplayable. Game logic seems to be tied to framerate, as it was running too quickly to control. After putting a 60 fps cap on it with MSI afterburner & RivaTuner, it works just fine.
Great game with tons of stuff
+awesome characters with 3 on 3 goodness
+tight combo system
+story mode
+character color customization!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
+beautiful sprites
+lots of fun with friends
-this is the last sprite based KOF : (
King of Fighters 13 is one of the very few DRM-free fighting games available for PC (outside of emulators). It plays quite nice as well from a casual player's perspective. Although it does contain serveral combo meters and fancy sh*t as "Super Neo-Max Special Moves", you don't need a PhD in drive cancelling to enjoy it, as simple button mashing feels already quite rewarding (you'll want to use a game pad or arcade stick though).
The character roster is not as huge as in previous installments of this series but you get compensated with multiple game modes, a tutorial, move lists and all the usual stuff expected from a modern game. If King of Fighters runs slow in fullscreen try to update your GPU driver, it solved the issue in my case.
This game has some of the best looking sprites and backgrounds in a KOF game. It is fun to play and pretty fun to learn. If you are looking for people to play with add me! I down any time!
SNK fanboy biases aside, this game offers something that has been lost to time: Old school, 2D fighting.
Today we have the incredible polish of Guilty Gear, DBZ, Fighting EX Layer etc, BUT despite those games being 2D, they are not pixel art 2D fighters.
The reason this is important, is because SNK made this game in 2011, a pre-retro era when there was little to no interest in geriatric pixel fighters, so SNK gave the genre a send-off, in the form of the best looking 2D pixel art fighter they could, before the inevitable switch to 3D.
So to make it short: the game looks fantastic. Incredibly detailed sprites fill the screen, and Graphics-wise, no pixel game in recent years comes close. Modern sprite games have a tendency to mimic old games with sprite styles that are deliberately scaled down- which I love! But KOF XIII uses sprites in a very modern, very polished way- a natural progression from their previous titles. This is a labour of love by the team.
It is a AAA game above all else. The gameplay is tight and responsive: matches with friends- or online players- are high energy bouts of technical combat- as you would expect if you know the franchise. It's interesting, because people compare it to Street Fighter, but SNK fighters have a very different feel, much more frenetic, which I prefer! (Biased).
The stages are varied and interesting, and a staunch character selection of 36 players.
Game content wise: it's jacked. Many, many modes to play; unlockables to find; a character customisation mode is there, which is a dream come true for me- basically, there is no shortage of hours to waste. SNK really outdid themselves, content wise... not sure what happened with the new Sam Sho :'(
Cons: It was "behind the times" for 2011...
But for a 2D fighter it's a 10/10 game- for 90s boomers like me, and those who want to see the best of the genre. I believe the work SNK put in, made it timeless.
(Recommended: Buy & play with friend over discord- nothing beats co-op.)
