Game:

The King of Fighters EX: Neoblood (2002)

Duration: 5:06

11,800 views

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Original Air Date: April 10th, 2009 (Revised Today!)

If you're a rabid fan of the KoF series, you might want to shield your eyes and cover your ears. If you're a casual KoF fan, you may want to shield your eyes and cover your ears. If you're a casual fighting game fan, you may want to shield your eyes and cover your ears. This game is mediocre at best IMO, and at worst, it's almost unplayable. As someone who is quite familiar with the KoF series, I can't, in all honesty, call this a great fighter, much less a great KoF game. To do so would be an insult to KoF in my humble opinion.

Of course, I don't expect it to match similar games on more advanced systems, but this game is so lacking even for the GBA. Some of the animations are greatly lacking (especially the backdrops, and poor Robert...), several character's moves are slow, the game is buggy and the hit detection is off, and not even all the characters can be played with. Even if the characters retain most (if not all) of their signature moves, if they don't work as they were meant to for some characters, then they are just shells of themselves. You want an idea of how poor this game is? Think of an easy infinite combo with Ralf using ONE damn move. Nuff said.

A good number of characters were relegated to being simple "Strikers" and some of the striker attacks are poor as hell. For example, using Vanessa as a striker causes the game to freeze up and your character attacks at like one frame per second during sweeps and everything, making doing combos with her a major chore. The game's exclusive character, Moe, also seems poorly put together. Her special attacks have gaps in them and can be interrupted and she has a very short sweep which doesn't even hit them at the tip of its extension as-is, further limiting its range... she also doesn't make for a good striker. And then there's the sound... eh.

A sequel to this game was barely released (published by Atlus in the states) and it's supposed to be much more rounded. The only real benefit of this game that I can think of immediately is that it's an early GBA game, but so are Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival. If you like KoF games, you should look into the sequel. Enjoy.