"An improvement over the first MI."

The King of Fighters is the most popular fighting game in Japan. It has survived the ages with its outdated, yet charming graphics that we all remember and still love today. For the 10th anniversary of the KoF franchise, SNKP decided to bring the popular franchise into the 3rd dimension. Althought it did not do well enough to compete with the other big 3D fighters out there, it was a good first attempt. That did not stop SNKP from trying, and now we finnaly have the long awaited sequel to this highly anticipated game.

Graphics: 7/10
While the graphics for this game could be better, it's certainly good enough to satisfy gamers. It is a nice improvement from the last Maximum Impact game. The character's faces are more detailed than the last, and the outfits looks much smoother also. The only bad part is the actual bodies that arent hidden in clothing. Some parts of the character's skin looks very bland and you can see polygon edges, while other glitches such as Mr.Karate's hand being slightly "cut" off from the arm in certain pose.

The stages are very nice however. Stages like the War Memorial has many dymanic parts in the background that are moving while you are fighitng. Other stages like the Grand Mosque has very nice looking lighting effects. You have all sort of different environment to fight in. From arenas, to ruins to catacombs to mountain caves. Classic stages like Esaka and Infernal Hall also makes a reappearance while other stages like Emperor's Throne and Mizuki's stage will all bring back some nostalgia to fans.

The special moves however needs an improvement. While some moves do have very nice special effects, other moves like Wild Wolf's Overheat Geyser DM, Hanzo's flame pillar DM, and Mai's Kagerou no Mai move all seems to utilize the same graphics, and they have too much "empty spaces" in them, as you don't seem like it would hurt as much. These moves really dont compare to most RPG game's magic spell graphics. If I had to critic anything about the graphics for this game, it would be that they would have done better for a couple of the special moves and desperate moves. But overall it will satisfy fans of the series.

Gameplay: 8/10
Another great improvement this game made over the last is the gameplay mechanics. Althought the engine is exactly the same as the last game, the pace has been slightly slowed down, but not enough to notice the difference easily. There are 2 new techniques in this game, super cancels and parry. Super Cancel does exactly what they did in the 2D KoF counterparts, which allows you to cancel a special move right into a super move. However this hardly makes a difference since you can already freely cancel super moves from the stylish moves anyway, stylish moves being build-in combo commands similar to Tekken's. Parrying is exactly what it sounds like. The default button for this is on the L2 button, and it works exactly the same as it does in Soul Calibur 2 and 3, where with perfect timing, you will deflect the opponent's attack and leave them stunned, but just enough so that they are able to react to you by parrying your following action, just like in Soul Calibur 2 and 3. However, due to the faster pace of this game as opposed to SC, it is much harder to react fast enough to re-parry your opponent, which is a good thing.

The most important change however, is the judgement system. This build-in programming helps prevent incredibly cheap and abusive combo's that would have taken 70-80% of your life in the original Maximum Impact. In fact now you can barely do combo's that take about 50% of your life. The way it works is anytime a special move or/and super move is chained or combo'd from normal attacks or stylish moves, their damage drop significantly. Take example of the boss Jivatma's poison breath super and classic Kyo's final showdown. Both of these moves would normally eat 50% of your life. But if they are comboed into, even if it was just one hit before the move, you will only loose about 25-33% of your life total, counting the damage from the combo hits. Also, getting combo'd from hitting a wall or off the ground will also drastically reduce the damage. This is a much needed change.

Interactions: 10/10
This game has added plenty of extra things to keep fan's occupied. For starters, the roster of fighters is nearly doubled compared to the previous MI, with a grand total of 38 characters, including the boss. Few of these characters are fan-services, such has having both the classic original Kyo and the new Kyo that we are all used to. Having the classic KoF/Fatal Fury Terry Bogard along with the Mark of the Wolves Terry Bogard from MotW and Neo Geo Battle Colliseum.

There are plenty of extra modes to play which unlocks various costumes and colors for all the characters. There are the "Easy Missions" which are the same as Challenge missions from the first game, with a grand total of over 100 missions, some that are laughably easy to others who are so tough that you just have to keep trying until you fullfill the goal. There are also many mini games such as having a character destroy a car, similar to Capcom's Street Fighter and Final Fight, to you having to go toe-to-toe with a Metal Slug, which will not think twice about blasting you with its cannon. All of these things are a nice side-distraction. Each character also will have their profile unlocked once you beat story mode with them, which will display their character's stat's, bio, prologue story, and lets you zoom in/out and rotate the character model for you to look at.

There is also a new Party Roulette mode, where you fight either a CPU or a friend with either a good or bad handicap. These include many of the conditions from Challenge mode, such as no guard, more life, max super gauge, auto guard break e.t.c. This mode adds some interesting twist to your battles, depending on your luck, you could totally easily overwhelm your opponent or be the one driven to a corner.

Replay Value: 9/10
As a fighting game, the replay value is always high. It is no surprise there. If you are a KoF fan, you will be playing this for hours strait just to unlock everything. The versus mode has the classic Team Battle or Team VS, which is 3 vs 3, which will leave you to duke it out with a friend for a nice amount of time. Also with the more tolerable damage dealed while fighitng, this game will definitely live longer than the last.

Buy or Rent?
If you are a KoF fan, a buy is a must, the limited edition even comes with a DVD of the KoF anime, this is in Japan only. If you never heard of the King of Fighter's before, you should probably rent this first to see if you like the style of this game. But if you are use to playing fast-paced combo crazy games like the Capcom VS series or Guilty Gear, then you should enjoy this game as well.

Overall - 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/06, Updated 09/04/07

Game Release: King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2 (JP, 04/27/06)