I feel like a good opener to this project before going into the nitty gritty would be looking at what I believe is important to become a good KoF player. In the end it’s all opinions but this covers my approach to the game and many fighting games really. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a beginners primer but more for those that know fighting games and what they’re doing well enough but can’t move over to another game easily.

I will cover my attitude to approach as well as my actual game approach as I go, as I feel like that attitude is part of why players get stuck. Sometimes you need to reflect on your own mindset before you actually start trying to pick up a game and even while you’re playing it. I am no stranger to frustration when it comes to things like execution or awareness in fighting games. I might go into this a bit more in the future but I will cover it briefly at least to set up my thoughts on KoF as they are based entirely on how I approach games in general.

Forewarning before continuing is that I’m a very technical player and so my opinion very heavily favours that kind of style. I think you can take a lot of approaches to KoF as a game due to the freedom of the system but I can’t exactly talk about the approach that I don’t undertake myself. Maybe sometime later I will collate that information from some top players and show off how they look at the game but for now, it’s just my own view.

Execution

The first thing I want to cover is execution. Consistent execution is the most vital thing in any fighting game in my opinion. If you cannot do what you want to do at least 99% of the time then you must practice until that is what happens. I don’t mean just in training mode but in matches, even if it’s against AI or something, being able to do what you want is vital. This is where I see a lot of players fall over in KoF. For me KoF is easy mode executionally, just like it is for my friends that started with KoF. I had one friend that played KoF for years first and thought SFIV was the hardest thing in the world because of the link based system. Try to understand that execution is all practice, I’m sure you never hit your sick links the first time you picked up SFIV, I’m sure you never hit your airdash and microdash combos the first time you picked up BB, GG, MB or whatever anime game, so keep in mind that this takes time. Execution does not come overnight, no execution is too hard, it’s only too different.

This applies to hops, super motions, cancelling, combos, even walking and running across the screen. Execution is everything in a fighting game and if you find yourself unable to do what you want to do then what you need is practice. If something is too difficult then all you need to do is practice it until it is no longer difficult. Of course different lengths of time apply for different things, some people may have a harder time with movement and keeping control of themselves in the neutral but hit combos with ease, where others can have the opposite problem. My approach is to always remember this is something I can better myself in. I tend to just power through it until I can do it for most things. Always remember to try and keep calm. If you ever panic then your execution will not be where it should be. Always be confident that you can do it otherwise you might mentally block yourself from ever being able to. It’s a hard thing to put into words and it’s a hard thing to talk people through from my experience. All I can really do is repeat how important it is to just stay on it.

Game Logic

The next most important thing post execution is the games logic itself. I’ll do a breakdown of this for KoF as much as I can in a follow up post by next weekend. The game logic is how the game is played from mechanics to the combo system. It is incredibly important that you learn these inside out as you progress. You can always tackle them first but you will never decipher it all on your first look. There is a lot of mechanics in the game and they are all very simple but how you deal with them and how they meld together is what makes it interesting. My approach to learning a new game is to find out how to abuse the mechanics and how to stop others abusing them as much as possible and I think that is the most important thing to do in KoF period. If you cannot stop your opponent rolling then you will lose. If you cannot stop them hopping then you will lose. If you cannot stop them running then you will lose. If you cannot stop them throwing projectiles then you will lose.

The game logic is what makes or breaks your offensive and defensive game in KoF. The one advantage to that however is that as you learn to defeat the options you are able to understand why they won’t work for you either. It’s very much worth focusing on dealing with the mechanics than it is to use them as it will teach you both at the same time. There will still be things to learn from character to character but that comes with experience or a lot of time spent in training. If an option in the game looks strong to you then you should look into it the next chance you get. A lot of newcomers love to roll and it can be a good option but it contains massive risk that many of them do not understand. When that good option begins to get punished then the frustration kicks in, then it’s a terrible game and they are out, never to play KoF again. If you can understand that punish yourself then you will be able to understand in a match why it is not working for you. Always remember that if something is so strong and you are the only one doing it, chances are there is a reason for that. Always try and figure it out yourself in training mode, or if it stops working all of a sudden try and figure out why then take that knowledge as you go forward with your game.

Generally the game logic in KoF is that everything comes with a disadvantage.

Throwing fireballs and having them be blocked does chip, but it gives the opponent more meter than you gain.

Running at an opponent allows you to restart your pressure faster but the disadvantage is you cannot block instantly from your run.

Hopping or Jumping allows you to traverse projectiles and a lot of normals and special moves in the game but you cannot block, and depending on how you are hit you can be put in a tricky reset situation.

Tech rolling allows you to get up faster from the ground but you lose your throw invulnerability period and also move backwards, giving up ground.

Rolling makes you strike and projectile invincible, you can be thrown but rolling in the time where you cannot be thrown does not get rid of that throw invulnerability. Rolls can be punished by anything towards the end and that can be a full combo punish if you are not careful.

These are only some examples but you must always remember that no option comes without risk and no option is truly unstoppable. There will be skewed risk/reward depending on your situation and generally you want to be on the favourable end of that as much as possible. Always remember that even your strongest option will become weak if it’s the only option you ever use. Try to stay varied as much as possible and put yourself in your opponents shoes. The game logic applies to both pressure and neutral games for both players so understanding how you should approach it will be the step to becoming a strong player in KoF. I cannot stress enough how important it is to understand the core systems and how they apply in the game logic.

Next would be the combo system. The combo system in KoF follows quite a simple logic and has only become more complicated over the years. I will focus on XIV as that is primarily why I’m writing this in the first place. In KoFXIV these are the rules I keep in mind when exploring a character:

Most characters confirm their heavy moves by cancelling to command normals and taking the combo from there. Lights into command normals are common routes as well but sometimes a special move is better. Once you reach the same move in a combo, generally the path does not change afterwards.

With those in mind I can generally figure out a characters combos very quickly. Once you can keep in mind that all characters combo in a similar fashion from the beginning of their combos I think it becomes very easy to pick up and learn new characters. Learning the combo parts of a character once you understand the logic and timing for one is easy and so the difficult piece is learning how to play that character in the game. In KoF moves that have different hitstop or cancel windows are an exception, not a rule, and so the cancelling of moves tends to be very linear throughout the cast. This means that for Kyo your cl.C to command normal will be the exact same timing for doing cl.C to command normal for Iori. The same applies to doing their cr.A to their respective command normals and specials. In general it is very possible to feel the game out in that sense.

The newest rule for combos is Max Mode in KoFXIV which as a rule works the same as the activation part of HD from KoFXIII but is a lot more frequent. I have simplified Max Mode down to a cancel that automatically lets you run and go back to the start of your combo. It may seem like a lot at first but that is essentially all it does, it moves you closer and lets you begin from cl.C again but with a few more options in EX moves. I think what is best is to not think about it so much, and just do your combo as if that is where you started.

Overall I believe it is important to understand these things for yourself the most. It is all good watching a video but it’s all very monkey see monkey do. If you do not understand why you are doing something or why it works then you cannot innovate and create your own way of playing and exploration. By watching videos you may become able to understand combos for 3 characters but when attempting to play a new character you will have to go back to watching videos again. I think it is important to understand and learn for yourself so that you can have a reference to how things work in your head. This especially goes for playing the neutral and understanding the game mechanics themselves.

I believe because the logic of the game is so important is why many top KoF players can “play the cast” so to speak. The characters are a lot less important than understanding the core game. That is not to say that tiers do not exist and that some characters aren’t stronger than others, because it’s all definitely there, but jumping between characters is easy because the idea of how to play the game is very much how most characters will play the game in the first place. The idea that you want to punish your opponents use of the mechanics is the same for every character and the combos are all very similar so that once you learn even one character that the rest come very easy and with very little time in comparison.

I think the biggest turn off for new players in KoF is that when an opponent has a much greater knowledge of the game logic then there is a very obvious and huge gap between the players. It does not take much to make that gap smaller but many players I feel get discouraged when they get destroyed by a stronger player, something that is very easy in KoF. It is not easy for a game to look close and it is almost impossible for a weaker player to take a game from a stronger player. I think this is because the stronger player continues to regain life each round they win, and they gain more the faster the round ends. This means it’s easy for a player that is dominant to stay on their first character even if they do get hit by the opponent a few times.

That gap is born from that lack of understanding. A player may look impressive with the combos that they do and they may look impressive from the things they are doing but when faced with a player who truly understands then they will look the same as anyone else. This is why I say maybe try to avoid videos as much as you can. It’s worth watching high level play and trying to implement what they do but you should only do so if you understand it. I think you should try to understand what they do first, and if you think you do and that it is good what they are doing then you should implement it from there. Rely on your own skills and thoughts on the game, not in what someone else is doing that you don’t understand. You may face them one day and because they understand what they do, they will know what you do, and they will understand its weakness where you will not.

I feel like I should have a lot more to say but I really don’t. I decided to piece this together because I have been asked it a lot and I find it hard to give an answer on the spot. I feel as a technical player this approach to the game works best for me and that understanding every piece of it in my own way is how I make things work so hopefully other players can take from that. I’m not much of a writer so I understand that this might be a bit messy and undoubtedly the grammar is terrible but so long as it can be understood I’m not that concerned. I’ll do my best in the future to write how I piece things together for myself as this is intended to be my idea in approaching it in the first place though maybe it didn’t stay on that track towards the end? I’m not too sure.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far, feedback is appreciated as always. Questions are welcome. Hit me up on twitter @TSSAtma, my DM’s should be open if you want to go that route.