The King of Fighters 2003

"First time KOF'ers read this!!!"

This review is geared towards players who may not have tried this game yet or are new to the KOF series. I truly believe that KOF 2003 is more of a spin off than a sequel and should be reviewed in the context of it's own game not so critically picked apart because of what it does or doesn't do compared to previous KOF's. And for some background for me, the only other previous KOF's I own are 94 thru 97, so here we go!!!!

Story: 5 out of 10. I have no clue what is going on here, maybe it's because my MVS version speaks in Japanese, but the text is all English and I still have no idea what is going on. All I know is that someone started yet another KOF tournament and invited contestants from all over to participate. There is one mid way point cut scene and 2 ending sequences and yet I still don't know what the point of the 2003 tournament is.

Graphics: 8 out of 10. The characters look phenomenal. The animations are fluid, the supers and desperation moves look great, though some are really not impressive what so ever. I think my biggest gripe about the graphics is the character portraits and after battle poses. I'm not to keen on the art style and Joe looks like Zoolander. What's up with that?? But everything else is in traditional SNK Playmore style, done very well, backgrounds look fantastic, everything but the stupid character portraits.

Sound: 8 out of 10: I'm not going to spend time on this category. It's a 2d fighter, it has all the sound effects of a 2d fighter. The character selection screen music sets the tone well and the stage musics work well for a fighter, all in all I feel it's above average, but it's still typical 2d fighter sounds and music.

Gameplay: 10 out of 10. This game plays great, absolutely great. It's a fast pace 2-d fighter. The team battle is now a tag battle instead of 3 man 1 on 1 fights. You can tag down or up depending on which tag buttons you use. A lot of people are critical of the tag system. There's really no incentive to tag. When you tag out, your character does not regain any health or anything. I don't really have a problem with this, but it does make the tag system a little more on the needless side. However, you can spend a stock to do a tag attack, this makes doing combos a little more interesting. With the new tag system you now have a leader system. The first person you pick is considered your team leader and with that comes Leader Desperation moves that only the leader can do. I really like this option and some of the LDM's are pretty impressive on the graphical end, I love Yamakuzi's. As for game difficulty, since I'm playing on an MVS at my home, I have it turned down real low so I slaughter the CPU, I can't comment on stock difficulty. As for multi player...this game is an absolute blast to play against other human players.

Character Selection: 9 out of 10. There are quite a few characters to chose from. I honestly expected more. I think there are the same amount of characters in 2003 as there are in 97, and I would expect there to be at least a few more. There are a lot of characters that I've never seen before and don't know where they came from, but there are familiar faces, from Joe and Terry (which 2003 is the best Terry version in my opinion) Billy Kane and Mai. You have other characters like the School Girl team that have Athena as their veteran fighter, I have no clue where the other 2 girls came from, and characters like Whip that use..well a whip. Then you have the standard Iori and Kyo etc. If you have this game as a home version or have an MVS at home, it's worth the time to play every character and see all of the Desperation moves and Super Desperation Moves.

Overall I think this is a solid game, and what a way to end the era of the MVS. It's pretty cheap to come by if you have an MVS, so I would definitely suggest picking this one up.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/11/08

Game Release: The King of Fighters 2003 (JP, Q4 2003)