After hearing so much of the hype surrounding this game, I honestly expected more. I've owned this game for almost over a year at this point and I've only played it for a total of three hours. It's just not very engaging to me especially compared to most of KOF '94-XI.
Firstly, let's talk about the presentation, because this is what everyone who discusses this game ever will bring up. I honestly just think it looks ok. The sprites are cool I guess but most of them just don't really feel like the characters they're meant to represent, like Ryo, Yuri, and Leona for example. I like a couple of the new sprites, especially Athena and K', those are cool! Also the stages are so boring. I see people give KOF XI shit for having boring stages but these are infinitely worse. Where is all the color? Actually that applies to the sprites too, why is everything so desaturated looking. I might be crazy but it seems that the sprites have some sort of anti aliasing on them, which just makes them look blurry and ugly. I don't think the game looks bad, but I feel it looks lamer than alot of the earlier games, especially '97-'00.
The gameplay is just your average KOF fare. It's very combo focused compared to other entries and that's neat. Even as someone who loves KOF XI I don't really miss the tag feature much, but I feel they should've kept it in this one just to stay consistent with the other two games in the saga. What I don't like about the gameplay is that most character movesets feel kinda gimped which is lame. KOF has always had an issue of adding and removing moves for characters every entry, but it's stripped down a fair margin here which is disappointing.
The bosses in this game are also boring. What is it with the Ash Saga and having bosses that aren't even shitty in an ironically funny way like the original SNK and Eolith era, instead just being giant enemies that spam projectiles and command grabs everywhere? They're just annoying.
I legitimately do not care for the music in this one, none of the tracks I heard during gameplay made me feel enticed to listen to them in my free time unlike many of the other entries. The music isn't bad, but compared to '94-'00 and XI it's not as impactful.
I don't hate this game. I think it's pretty solid, and I understand why so many fans love this game. But for me, this one just is missing something that many earlier entries had. Especially after the super unique and fun KOF XI, this is such a basic return to form that it hurts. After three hours of game time, I feel like I have exhausted almost all entertainment from this game, and that's honestly kinda sad. Hopefully I can pick up KOF XV this christmas and possibly enjoy that one though!

Very miffed about this one. KoF is probably my favorite fighting game franchise (Alhough Plus R is probably still my favourite game) because of how solid the system mechanics are, no matter how unbalanced or stripped down the game may be, the games always feel like a dream to control. Having said that, I never actually played XIII until recently, but I kept experiencing it through osmosis via posts and comments saying how beautiful this game looked, how this was the best KoF, how SNK shouldn't have moved to 3D, etc, etc... With all that, actually playing the game, and knowing the game mechanics we had in the Ash saga until now (even including XII), it feels like SNK was putting all their chips into presentation this time around, when the Ash saga's whole deal until this point is that it carried almost no mechanics from the previous games aside from movement related ones.

XIII instead went back to the usual team 3-on-3 format we all know and love but did some serious changes in how the game is actually played. Max mode makes a comeback but uses a whole different gauge outside of the usual super meter, and it introduces EX moves into the series. While having a third version of a special to play around sounds interesting, specially for fighters that we all know how their movesets are going to look like, but this feels like a compensation for absolutely GUTTING some of the characters' movelist. Terry has no Power Charge, no Fire Kick, no Ground Wave, no Power Dunk, and has only access to the absolute bare essentials. Many characters are like this, to the point that i'd say only Ash and Iori (for lore reasons) had additions to their moveset. There is a lot of animation reusing and even some normals were straight up removed. It feels really weird having the exact same throw for C and D and characters not always having close normal versions.

What characters kept has been heavily focused, and what moves they traded or replaced have, a lot of the time, one direct goal, combos. Aside from probably 2002UM this has to be the most combo centric KoF game. Normal into Command Normal into special will no longer cut it, you are heavily encouraged to make use of the Drive gauge for meterless special cancels. Entering Max mode now gives you an auto run which makes it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to land a combo after any confirm. This has the rammifications of only keeping moves the developers had in mind for building combo routes. Clark's other 5 hundred grabs may be gone as he only keeps one this time around, but now he also has EX Vulcan Punch and a hit confirmable string in Close C > 3A which gives him a combo game that he NEVER had, seriously, Clark's big combo used to literally be a single Close C into his super, but had some of the most frightening vortex and call-outs of any grappler in the game, he feels like an entirely different character. He is not the only example, some characters got things added in place of other things, like Ash losing his command grab but now getting a proper Sans Culotte route from a low thanks to 4B links.

Do I like it? I wouldnt say I dislike it directly, I like it when games in a series keep enough of what's important but spice things up a little, I really enjoyed XI for that reason. Doing combos in XIII feels really nice but it does feel like the developers had to sacrifice a lot of other things in the character moveset so things like this grappler getting easy confirms into huge damage with also a lot of grabs to his name didnt get out of hand quickly. Same thing can be said with a lot of characters, that had most tools regarding more esoteric things in the older games, removed or repourposed for keeping that juggle going. You quickly realize this by looking at how much everyone makes a deal about the trials in this game, the developers really wanted to showcase this game's combo possibilites. This is a hugely subjective topic so a lot of my ramblings may feel like crazy talk for people who think this system is the best in the franchise, and I can see the argument of this game being someone's favorite KoF because of these decisions, but i'll just say that there is a reason why a lot of the XIII playerbase only really likes XIII, and a lot of people that play other KoF titles don't, the game was and still is a very divise product in how it wanted to shift priorities around.

What actually feels more plausible for the removal of moves however was that this game costed SNK tons of money. Yeah we have reached the point where we talk about the presentation. Yeah the sprites look good, we all know it, it's an accepted fact...or is it?

Now, I know this game took a lot of time to animate, like a LOT of time, but the end result looks...strange. Many people have commented just how obsessed this game is to giving steroids to every character. Terry plays basketball, he doesnt benchpress school buses, but why does Ryo have no pupils? Why is Takuma walking forward the scariest shit ever? Why is Yuri noodled-arm but when you beat her you can see her humongous rack? Why is the game so obsessed in making every nationality a caricature in the stages? Why did they think Iori's hair was supposed to be a tupé? Has any of the developers actually seen how a woman's boob actually jiggle or did they design Mai's idle pose looking at water balloons?

The game looks bizarre, I sometimes feel like I am looking at skinwalkers. Beautiful skinwalkers, sure, but some of these characters absolutely do not look like how they are meant to. We can talk all we want about how good this game looks on screenshots but seeing it in motion with these things plus the insane amount of 3D effects that look NOTHING like the rest of the game (looking at you Duo Lon's weird smoke-skull thingies). If there is one thing I dont see talked about is how good this game sounds (not even just the music), the sound effects are dope, I dont think I have been scared more in a fighting game than whenever my friend who plays Clark runs up, turns the world into a black void, I see the words Neo Max pop up, a speeding jet lets me know of my sudden, incoming death, just so I get Piledrived into the earth's core while I hear the ground itself crack open on my headphones GOD this game SOUNDS like a dream! But no, everything always comes back to the graphics, which I dont even think look like what KoF is supposed to look like.

This is a KoF game at the end of the day, I am bound to get my enjoyment out of it, I think this game has the best playable version of Ash crimson so my boy being so much fun gets thumbs up for that, but there's always something in the back of my psyche that my conscience doesnt always interpret right away, telling this and that are wrong and shouldnt be like that, but really, developers are free to do whatever they think will move a series forward (except for the racism and sexism please who the fuck actually designed some of these stages I want their names). We live in a era where most of the games are readily available via Fightcade or modern consoles with solid netcode (aside from this one but I'll bet solid gold Code Mystics wont take too long to add it to XIII) so it's not like people are forced to play one over the other (except for XIII god this netcode is cheeks), so if you disagreed on in this review means we both have different tastes and we both have options to satisfy them, which is cool

Except is you like propaganda-level caricatures as your game's stages if that's the case go fuck yourself.

sendo o jogo seguinte ao catastrófico KoF XII, o XIII tinha muito a entregar, para limpar o nome da franquia e evitar uma potencial morte dela, e ele faz isso de forma magistral
tendo um modo história curto, mas de qualidade, principalmente se comparado ao padrão do gênero (cof cof MK e Injustice cof cof). A gameplay é bem boa, não sendo algo grandioso no nível dos KoF's 98 e 2002, por exemplo, mas da era Ash certamente é a melhor
A OST é boa e os personagens são bem carismáticos e com bastante personalidade, tendo viradas bem surpreendentes pra um fighting game
uma onda de ar fresco depois do KoF XII

KOF XIII | 100h+ de jogo

Sem palavras.

Simplesmente fenomenal, nunca vi um jogo com um combo game tão técnico e extenso, todos personagens, repito, TODOS OS PERSONAGENS tem um combo de no mínimo 30 hits

O sistema de cancelamento é perfeito, a spritework do jogo é impecável. É o jogo de luta mais LINDO QUE JOGUEI (sim, mais que o Strive), tem personagem PRA KRL, então variedade de trio n falta.

A OST é maravilhosa, escuto as musicas infinitamente até hoje. O trial desse jogo é INSANO (cheguei a ficar com a mão roxa uma vez).

Esse jogo, E EU DIGO DE BOCA CHEIA, é o MELHOR jogo de luta já feito, simplesmente nenhum jogo de luta chega perto de conseguir ser:

Bonito visualmente, OST explendida, ter tanto char e ser tão TÉCNICO e DIVERTIDO

Meu jogo de luta favorito

10/10

Ok so kof xiii is regarded as one of the best in franchise and I don’t get it, sure on its own as a fighting game it’s great, but overall it’s such a downgrade from the previous entries. The Tales of Ash story was ruined because they removed just about every important new character and replaced them with safe characters that came back every game, so the story feels really unfinished because so many characters were left behind. Also the move sets are so bad, almost every move set was cut into thirds. It’s just annoying that following up kof XI’s crazy roster and innovative mechanics was a very standard entry in the series covered in godlike graphics (which is probably 90% of this game’s praise to begin with). I’m not gonna talk about kof xii either because that game is just a glorified demo I don’t count it as it’s own game.

This game is what KOF should mean, great characters, music, Story and presentations. At the same time bringing a flow of gameplay so fun I have never seen in any other game, HOWEVER this flow's counter The game's balance. Gameplay is super unbalanced, playing multiplayer can feel like turn based RPG combat or Dominations of the player by you or by them. Sure, every character got some stuff, ranging from Good HD combos to Infinite hard to pull off combos that are just broken, which means the cast is not that unbalance.
Everything I mention before is a negative that comes with every fighting game Franchise under the sun, sure, but KOF at his heart isn't that hard to learn, you can grab KOF 2002 or 2002 um and learn the basic go to multiplayer and still coming out with some knowledge on how to improve. But XIII has never really had good online, so you have to play with the same people offline or have the insanity to go against people who master the delay. Also, this game is fast, so this circumstances makes is super frustrating to play as a true experience as a fighting game. So it's difficult to improve in this game, which in turn makes getting into KOF by this as your starting point hard.
However, KOF XIII has the best offline features in any KOF, it has an arcade ladder that features missions (that suggest you to at least should learn what a Drive cancel is, make a 3 hit combo or do a super)that rewards you with meter and to have some fun with the meter, at least 2 middle bosses or 3 if you count one you can get by completing more missions in the arcade. Color edits of the sprites, leaving to free customize of your characters, sure you have to unlock all colors by picking the character 50 times at least, But when you do have the freedom it's so worth it to have true colors for your taste on the character you play. Other modes like time trials, trials, survival and story mode. A good gallery and an alternate music mode to hear music from previous KOF's. So it's still a good offline game.
the Story is a conclusion to the Ash's saga, it's great, not the best conclusion of the KOF's sagas but better than NEST in my opinion.
I love Classic's Kyo move set is the best versions of classic Kyo imo.
The roster in this KOF is strong but small, features some good fan favorites and some new faces which they debut in this KOF by being completely new or being from fatal fury. But being so small makes it the worst of the saga, (I know XII was a way worst roster and being dream match makes XII the worst candidate to the KOF roster in the series) comparing it to 2003 and XI which manages to make unique rosters by keeping fan favorites and still adding new characters, sure it's because of XIII sprites that the roster is like this.

XIII sprites are good, and have some resourcefully reuse body sprites. Some characters are wonderful kyo, Iori, leona, daimon, shen, ash and some other, but some are bad like ralph, clark, takuma, terry are my picks for the worst. Not in animation btw, in motion they are all as good and Spectacular to see and play.

I think this everything I wanted to say about this game, I love this game. I said this is what KOF should mean, but this game isn't what KOF should represent. KOF mean and represent what the series so much more in 98, 98 um, 2002 um, 2002 and XV than XIII.