The Return of the Wolves
When SNK fighters are mentioned, what comes to mind is the iconic King of Fighters series. It makes sense, as it’s a series spanning more than a dozen games over the course of three decades and is rightfully considered one of the most important titles in the genre’s history. The lesser-known older brother of King of Fighters is Fatal Fury, which most people don’t even know about these days due to their long absence.
With the release of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, SNK has brought the series back for the first time in 26 years, showcasing much of their experience and expertise learned of the genre since then.
While the starting roster isn’t massive, it’s solid, offering different types of playstyles.
MSRP: $59.99
Platform: PC, PS, Xbox, NSW
Played on: PC (9800X3D/RTX5080)
Played: 20~ hours
While there is certainly some kind of continued storyline presented in City of the Wolves, it’s not particularly compelling or important in any way. Given that this is a fighting game, I won’t hold it against it as I consider the story in this genre to be a bonus and series like MK and Tekken that do a good job in telling one in an entertaining fashion are outliers and not the norm.
As for the single player content presented here, it’s rather lackluster with a basic arcade/training/tutorial offerings alongside a mode where I can take a character to take on missions which all boil down to fighting dudes and gaining levels and skills to improve the character.
As I was able to complete that mode in a mere few hours, I never felt the desire to go back to try and try it with another character since I was just doing the same battles over and over for experience and it didn’t seem very interesting.
The single player modes leave much to be desired.
In terms of the various combat mechanics, the most important was definitely the “REV Gauge”. This felt similar to the “Drive Gauge” from SFVI in that it allowed me to use EX versions of moves which could be chained together to form impressive combos, but the more I used it, the closer I became to “Overheating”. As overheating meant that I was no longer able to use any REV moves, I had to pay careful attention to that meter at all times. When overheated, I was also susceptible to being guard broken so in a way, it was just as important as the HP bar. Excessive blocking also increased the REV meter so utilizing defensive mechanics like instant blocking and rolling on wake up to escape unfavorable situations were a must.
There was also a heavy emphasis on the use of feints and cancels to certain normal/special attacks to either make them safe on block or to reduce the recovery time so it can be used in combos. While these are nice features to dig into, it made the initial combat feeling incredibly stiff as there’s tons of recovery on most moves, forcing the use of feints/cancels constantly. Also, they have added in the two-lane fighting with dedicated attacks that go between the two lanes but I found this mechanic to be half-baked with many stages not even having lanes as an option, so I hardly ever even experienced it.
As a 4-button fighter, I would say City of the Wolves is not too difficult to get into as the move sets of the characters are fairly limited but due to the necessity of feints/rev cancels, this isn’t exactly the most friendly fighter on the market. They did add a secondary “smart style” which uses a simple directional + button to use moves for those looking for that sort of thing but I stuck with the standard control scheme for my playthrough.
In terms of other notable modes, I really appreciate the inclusion of the color edit mode where I could change the color/pattern of any fighter and use it online. In a time where fighting games are at their worst in terms of microtransactions, these little touches go a long way for garnering good will from the player base.
The online experience felt relatively smooth.
As for actually taking the fight online against other players, the option to lab in the training mode while waiting for a match was welcome as it always is and outside of Wi-Fi Netplay warriors, I would say my experience was quite seamless. This is definitely the best feeling netplay experience SNK has managed thus far, and I hope the trend will continue in their future titles.
In terms of the PC port, it’s yet another barebones PC port with limited graphics quality option and no support for any kind of upscaling technology which in this day and age is pretty unacceptable in my book.
Even though I would have preferred HD-2D Sprites, they did a good job with the 3D models for the characters.
While Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves doesn’t do much to set itself apart from other quality fighters on the market today, it’s a solid new entry in an iconic series that shows that SNK is still a worthy contender amongst the legends of the genre.
Fun Tidbit: There was a lot of controversy about the inclusion of real-life people like Ronaldo and Salvatore which was understandable since in a starting roster of 17, that 2 spots would be taken by some tie-in deals to try and make the game appeal to folk that perhaps don’t even play games. It’s even more frustrating to see the generic NPC mobs you fight in the single player mode have moves of iconic characters I’d much rather see in the game like Leona and Kim. I hope this won’t be a trend going forward.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
