Hiya!

One of my most anticipated games of 2025 is, hands down, SNK‘s upcoming entry to the Fatal Fury series, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. It’s a gorgeous looking fighting game, with its stylish bright color palette and some really handsome character designs.

So, you can imagine how excited I was when SNK revealed they were having an open beta test for it! I wanted to get my hands on the game so I can see if the game plays as beautifully as it looks. Well, I did try out for the open beta test over the weekend and I can say, while the game is indeed fun to play, I just don’t think I’ll ever be really decent in it.

I do have to go into some of my history with fighting games and I guess SNK fighting games as a whole first. I used to be what you would call a very strict single player gamer girl and more of a backseat gamer. Growing up, I would just play games like The Sims or other rather casual video games. Games that weren’t really stressful and you could just play at your own pace. I would, however, enjoy watching my brother play these more stressful and action focused video games such as Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil 4. The original ones, mind you. Not the Remakes. So, this was a good while ago.

Then came Street Fighter IV. I have watched my brother play fighting games before like Tekken 3 and I tried playing them as well. They never really clicked with me as I would get all panicked when my opponent would get close and start pummeling me with blows left and right. Street Fighter IV was different to me somehow. This was the first fighting game when I instinctively understood when to block and when to attack. This was also the first time I played a fighting game with charge characters and, counterintuitively, I figured out I loved charge motions because I find them easier to use. No guide necessary.

So, Street Fighter IV was my entry point. This did lead to opening the doors to other fighting games for me and I finally got the joy of competitive gaming. I tried out other fighting games like the aforementioned Tekken, Mortal Kombat and, of course, SNK’s other big fighting game, The King of Fighters series. Unfortunately for me, although Street Fighter IV opened up new horizons in the gaming world for me, it also inadvertently stunted my growth when it comes to adapting to other fighting games.

You see, although I love the Street Fighter games a whole lot, I will admit they are fundamentally the simplest fighting games out there. Sure, there are some complexities with every entry, such as the Drive Meter in Street Fighter 6. At their core, however, they are the least dense when it comes to gameplay mechanics. Essentially, Street Fighter games can be like the gateway drug for potential members of the fighting game community as they are easy to pick up and play, especially now with Street Fighter 6’s Modern controls and single button special and Super attacks.

Getting to be an expert and playing in tournaments is a whole other level, to be sure. However, they are very easy to understand as there really isn’t a whole lot to keep track off. That’s not to say they aren’t exciting, especially in a close match. It’s just that Street Fighter games can be enjoyed and played competitively at all levels and, if you put in the time, you can get really good really fast.

This is certainly not the case with a lot of SNK fighting games and, namely, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. City of the Wolves has a ton of mechanics built into the gameplay engine and I don’t think I can keep track of them all in the heat of battle.

Like with any new game, I do like to go through the tutorial mode. Yeah, it can be a pain, especially if you have experience with other fighting games. I am humble enough, however, to understand each fighting game is different. So, I’m going to have to learn how they’re different first before I jump in. It all starts out simple enough. It teaches you the basics, like how to move around the screen, how to throw and break out of throws, how to block high and low and whatnot. Things get kind of hairy when it teaches you things like what the REV meter, how to do a REV Blow and the like. After this, they tried to teach me the more advanced stuff and this is when my eyes glazed over.

The tutorial essentially crashed my mental stack as it turns out SNK programed a ton of gameplay mechanics to track in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves! There are suddenly things like Just Defense, Hyper Defense, Guard Cancels, Braking special attack, short hops and I’m probably forgetting some stuff but you get the idea! There’s just a lot of things to learn! While the tutorials does give me enough information to get the gist of how to do those things, I cannot figure out why I should be doing what and why!

It certainly doesn’t help how SNK didn’t include a training mode in the beta nor a combo trial so fighting game fans who want to make this their first Fatal Fury game test them out! I sure don’t want to be experimenting against someone else online who’s trying to beat my butt! I just want to see what’s what first! So, you can imagine my online matches during City of the Wolves’ open beta test were horrendous! I was facing off against guys who were whipping out combos and Just Defending my anti-air while all I could do was to try out special moves and regular blocking!

Just from the density of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves’ gameplay mechanics, I can already tell I’m going to be terrible at it. All of this may be great fun for full-fledged members of the fighting game community but, for someone like me who’s essentially a scrub, I’m not going to be able to retain all of this info early on. It’s going to take some time while I wrap my head around what to do and, while I’m leveling up, other players who have grasped these ideas early on, will have leveled up as well, leaving me in the dust.

I’m not really complaining all that much. I do accept how I’ll never really be exceptional in fighting games in general but I do still love playing them. I know enough to enjoy other players, much better players than myself in fact, do fantastic things I will never be able to figure out on my own. I also know enough to realize Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is going to be a great fighting game… but it is going to be another fighting game where I’ll never be top tier. Don’t shed a tear for me. I already know.

Byee!

What did you think of the Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves open beta test? Do you think the game is shaping up well? Let me know in the comments section below!