Changes to the Striker system have arrived, and the bosses are very tough, but the series needed a bigger change.
King of Fighters 2000 got kinda wacky with the Strikers, bringing in many people from other games. The core gameplay was mostly similar to KOF 1999, though. KOF 2001 didn't make much of an effort to change things, either.
One big change involved the Striker system. Now, instead of having a separate amount of uses for them, this game makes you sacrifice 1 gauge of power to get your Striker to attack. 1 gauge of power for an attack that can be stopped before it starts, and doesn't even do a lot of damage. I'm not a big fan of this change, but then again, I never cared much for the Striker system.
Another change with that system is that now you can change the amount of Strikers in your team. You can set this amount before every match, but I don't know why you would willingly limit yourself to having 1 fighter and 3 Strikers, for example. You could even have 4 fighters and 0 Strikers, meaning that you will always have a 4-on-3 advantage against non-boss AI fights. Sure, doing that decreases your power gauge to just 1 bar, but that's not much of a sacrifice if you know how the AI behaves.
The graphics are still glorious pixel art, and the soundtrack is still very good. All the bells and whistles are still there, but the core gameplay sure is starting to fall into the same old territory by this point.
Let's look at the changes to the roster: Heidern and Goro Daimon returned, which was nice. Li Xiangfei returned as well, which wasn't very nice for me, I never liked her.
As for the total newbies, May Lee didn't last long in the series, and I was never a fan. K9999 sure reminded me of Tetsuo from Akira, the famous anime movie. In fact, it also reminded some lawyers about that as well, and thus, K9999 is unlikely to ever return to King of Fighters.
That's not a joke, by the way. K999 was practically an example of plagiarism that lawyers would dream about, and thus, he was limited to being playable in this game, and KOF 2002. Outside of this, he was playable in maybe one more game, and he was eventually Benoit'd from SNK. A pity, since he was one of my favorite characters when I was a little gamer. Press forward and weak punch with K9999 for the easiest special moves in a fighting game.
Foxy was completely worthless to me, and I did not miss her from any KOF game after this. She reappears in KOF 2002 Unlimited Match. Angel, on the other hand, is a character I kind of adore, but maybe that's because I'm a biased latin american, and she's Mexican. She has a creative system with her special moves that lend themselves into combo opportunities, and her voice is...there, in this game. It's not bad, but after hearing the different voice actress in KOF 2002, it's kind of bland in comparison to that. The Mexican waifu would return in games related to the NESTS saga, and most notably, in KOF XIV.
The rest of the roster is very much the same old, same old, but I will note that Robert Garcia no longer makes the player have to hold buttons on the D-Pad to do his important special moves. In fact, he's arguably one of the better characters in the game, namely due to his one special move where he kicks his opponent a few times before making said opponent bounce off the wall, into the air. Seems like combo bait to me.
Also, K' screams in this game. A lot more than in his previous appearances. It's bothersome to fight against him.
Now, the bosses...oh, man, they're a new level of difficult here. The Zero from the previous game is now a "clone" because SNK soured on him, and this time around, the original Zero is a sub-boss. Design-wise, he's much better, and the AI is such an annoyance. Personally, I feel like he's considerably more difficult than the "clone" because he makes much better use of his super moves, and he has 3 Strikers: Glugan (a lion), Ron (an asshole that comes in and tries to break your guard), and Krizalid.
Igniz is the final boss, and though he doesn't have Strikers with him, he's a nightmare all on his own. The AI will try, and likely succeed at hitting you with its whip combo that lands 10 easy hits on you. I could go into detail, but to summarize: he's one of many asshole SNK boss characters, and I can't really find an "easy pattern" to beat him (unless you feel brave with Mai).
Overall - not a bad KOF, but maybe the Striker system needed to go away if there wasn't much creativity put into it anymore. Maybe the bosses could be a little less cheap. Maybe.
