Just got back, spent about 3 hours playing and watching with 81, we also got some good Dodonpachi Daioujou in. 81 took the highscore!
KOF Neo wave Impressions.
Graphics-
Backgrounds were beautiful. They seemed to have the kof 98 color pallet (spelling!). The were nicely rendered but INCREDIBLY DULL! There was a little animation here and there, but it just felt really empty and lifeless.
The characters were ok, but there is not a single frame of new animation. EVERYTHING is recycled.
The power bars, character portraits all that stuff looks like SHIT. You've seen the screen shots.
Gameplay-
There are 3 grooves (i dont know what else to call em) you can pick from. I chose the first which was called Super Cancel, it played just like kof 2k2.
From watching other matches it looks like there are a ton of combos, a lot of stuff is simillar to KOF 2k2 combos. Chris is a power house! He has some super cancels that combo a long time and do a lot of damage. Another strong player was Saishyu, he had some REALLY damaging stuff going on.
I played my favorite character Shermie, she's great, and powerful in this version. All of her kof 2k2 grab links seemed to work (light kick hit twice into anything)
Unfortunately I didn't get to play with the other grooves or the extra button. I saw some people do some damaging wire off the wall combos that did some damage.
Overall Feeling-
I liked playing it (im a kof WHORE who likes anything with KOF on it and shermie in it), but I just don't understand the character roster. Anyone who wants to play with these characters can play Kof 98, get the bright atmosphere and animation and have more characters. Sure theres some cool new gameplay elements added in, but I really don't see why this game was made.
I think the AW Net card is exciting, but Kof 2k3 is far more exciting in every catagory. Well..... We still have kof MI and kof 2k4 to look forward to. This is a crazy year for KOF.