Ahoy Captain Cats here and today we are going to review the latest entry to one of the most celebrated fighting game franchises to date and that game is The King Of Fighters XV. For this review, we are going to refer to the game as KOF XV for short.

The game was created, developed, and published by SNK and was released on PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X on the 17 of this month. KOF XV was created with the use of the Unreal Engine 4 and GGPO rollback networking, a first for the series and it shows that this is what the series needs to use, while it won’t match the iconic look from the early games in the series, it was a huge welcome to what KOF XIV was. The characters, environments, designs, sound, and flow of the game are just on another level. The character roster is a total of 39 with 4 additional teams and one single character as DLC will bring the total of 52 playable characters.

The learning curve for this game has been water down a bit but in a good way. Instead of trying to remember a huge command list of moves, combos, and supers that on paper looks like a math equation, they are giving a new, friendly on-the-hand list that is great for both new and season players to the series.

While the single-player content has a good amount of content to keep one busy for a while, the online gameplay is where KOF shine. The GGPO rollback networking on this game has set the standard for what online gameplay should be for any upcoming fighting games. The only other game I can think that can meet KOF XV online gameplay is Mortal Kombat 11.

Overall KOF XV has set the new standard of what fighting games should try to be this year. KOF XV is available now and is worth the time to pick up and play.