Hiya!

You probably know I play a lot of Street Fighter 6 but that doesn’t mean I play all of the fighting games. I’ve tried the most popular ones like Tekken and Mortal Kombat but I haven’t really gotten too deep into them. It’s probably because I grew up playing the older Street Fighter games and I’ve gotten so used to its general mechanics it’s become problematic for me to re-learn the ones in other fighting games.

There was one game which I thought would be able to wrap my brain around. I had high hopes SNK‘s latest Fatal Fury game, City of the Wolves, would get me to break out of my Street Fighter shell. From what I’ve seen, Fatal Fury games in general looked and played a lot like Street Fighter. I’ve played a good amount of King of Fighters XV a while ago so I know I can adapt to SNK’s game mechanics. Heck, SNK even made a deal with Capcom allowing Fatal Fury mainstays like Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui to appear in Street Fighter 6. I’ve even played those characters in Street Fighter 6 and I love them! Not only that, Capcom is allowing Street Fighter mainstays Ken Masters and Chun-Li to join City of the Wolves’ roster! Ken is even playable right now!

So, why am I still playing Street Fighter 6 almost every day and not Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves?

The weird thing is I’m not alone here! Despite starting off very strong when it was released, I and a lot of people who got SNK’s latest Fatal Fury game just stopped playing it. I’m not joking! If you look at Steam Charts for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, there were more than 4 thousand fighting game enthusiasts playing the game at launch.

After 2 months, there were only around 300 people playing the game. That’s a huge drop-off. Sure, it picked up again at the start of August… at around the same time Street Fighter’s Ken Masters became playable! After that, things soured again to around just 200 players per day. What the heck happened?

Well, I can’t really say why a lot of gamers just dropped Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves like a beginner dropping a 3-hit combo (zing!). I can only speak for myself as to why I simply just stopped playing it.

Before I try to explain why I stopped playing City of the Wolves, I do have to say I liked the game when it first came out. I even said so when I reviewed it. So, this is not me bashing SNK or the Fatal Fury franchise. I really gave it a good old’ fashioned try to get good at the game! However, even during my initial days giving City of the Wolves a spin, I already knew one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to getting good at it: it is mechanically dense!

I’m not saying the mechanics are not good. I do love the entire REV Gauge engine, chaining together REV Arts but also restraining yourself to avoid going to Overheat status. There’s also the ability to Brake some special attacks and even perform Feints, which you can actually cancel into and would allow you to link some normals into a combo. There’s also the entire SPG positioning gimmick of your life meter and, when you’re in that portion of the life meter, you can do a REV Blow. There’s also actually a way to regain life by blocking at the right time with both Just Defense and Hyper Defense as well as allowing you to counter with a Guard Cancel move.

The problem is keeping track of all of those game mechanics. I mean, that’s a lot of stuff to think about while playing a fighting game!

It wouldn’t be so bad if SNK made the game a little bit more lenient with the player’s execution. I hate to say it but Capcom understood this as Street Fighter 6 is an incredibly beginner friendly fighting game. While this may have upset some of the hardcore members of the fighting game community as it did lower the bar when it comes to execution and timing, making Street Fighter 6 easier to pick up and play for total beginners infused the game with a wide audience. Not only that, this also allowed gamers like myself to enjoy playing the game as the barrier for actually getting good is lower and encourages us to keep on playing and actually try to get better.

SNK kind of did the opposite. Although they added a Simple mode, performing special moves, combos and links feel much more difficult to do consistently. There is very little room for error when executing some of the fancier combos which involves doing a Feint to link a normal then cancelling that into a special move you Brake to then hit a REV Art into another REV art and closing it out with an Ignition Gear, Redline Gear or Hidden Gear.

Sure, you can keep on practicing and practicing until you get the timing right. However, you have to also look at it from someone who is just getting into City of the Wolves for the first time! Imagine trying out a combo for an hour and just barely being able to do it just 50% of the time! It’s frustrating! Then you see pros doing these same combos seemingly with ease. How do you think that’ll make you feel? I know you’re not supposed to compare yourself but it’s just not fun if you can’t play the game the way you want to play it!

I also have to comment how SNK didn’t do a good job of teaching new players how to play the game! I know it’s boring but, for a new fighting game, I like to go through the tutorials and also go through the combo trials to get a handle on the controls and the combo system. I got stuck on one part of the tutorial on how to do a Hyper Defense. I couldn’t figure it out because the explanation on how to do it wasn’t clear and that you had to do a Just Defense first before doing the Hyper Defense for the next attack.

Then I went through the combo trials… and they were pretty easy to do! When City of the Wolves came out, there were only 5 combo trials per character and they were pretty simplistic! It does teach you about some of the more common Brake and REV Accel combos but it doesn’t really teach you a character’s full potential. SNK did eventually up the combo trials for each character later on but, based on what they had at the start, I’m not even sure SNK knew more complex combos were even possible!

However, the biggest problem, in my opinion, is the character balance is just super wonky in City of the Wolves. While there are always going to be top tier and low tier characters in every fighting game, SNK didn’t do a good job of keeping things close. Some characters, like Tizoc, feel too slow, even for a high damage grappler. Other characters, like Hokutomaru and Kain, are given too many tools so they can overwhelm your mental stack. That’s not good for the longevity of a fighting game if a good chunk of your roster can’t become competitive. SNK has to do a lot more fine-tuning with the weaker characters to make them go against the top tiers at this time!

Now, I’m not counting out SNK as City of the Wolves is still very young. It hasn’t even been out for 6 months yet. They do have a lot of work to do to win back the audience who were willing to give the latest Fatal Fury a chance. I do think they’re sort of on the right track as, like I said, they’ve added more complex combos to the combo trials. It’s going to be a long road but, hopefully, they can make City of the Wolves the legendary game we all hoped it could be when we first laid our eyes on it.

Byee!

What do you think went wrong with City of the Wolves? Do you think SNK can still bounce back? Let me know in the comments section below!