The King of Fighters franchise is older than many of the readers of this website. It may not register to a lot of people how significant the announcement of The King of Fighters XII was. This is the first major graphics overhaul for the series. Sure, characters have had costume changes and new characters have come and gone from the series. But the sprites have remained at relatively the same size and resolution for the entirety of the series. Even as SNK, the original company behind the series succumbed to the unforgiving market, the series was kept neatly in line, with little in the way of noticeable changes. So when fans were given the promise of hand-drawn, larger than life, new graphics, it was almost unbelievable.

And the sad truth is: there was a reason. Don't get me wrong, this game is gorgeous. It's full of color and the special effects are big and flashy. The backgrounds are filled from top to bottom with detail and movement. Shadows from the environment and highlights from light sources like special moves are nicely rendered on individual characters. Yet, it is underwhelming. The sprites aren't what you would describe as "HD." Yes, they are gigantic, but they're lacking in a smooth, finished quality. There are visible blocky pixels in some areas on characters, and others are lacking detail in areas that you know should be there. It's as if now you can at least see the expressions on faces, but that's about as far as the improvement goes. And the "soft" filter is back! This is the biggest red flag for "more of the same" that you could find. Why would we need the blurry filter for graphics that are supposed to be enhanced? Why continue to make the background look sharper than the characters in front of it?

The audio can't make up for the shortcomings in the graphics, but things here are at least adequate. You do get the option for Japanese or English voices, but you can't customize it by character as you can in Street Fighter IV. That's a shame, because someone took the translation a little too literally for some of the characters. Still, it's funny for a while to listen to Shen Woo say "Son of a!" over and over like a surly old man. Background music is your usual techno-rock fare, but it's good for a fighting game. It brings you back again to fighting game roots, where the music stages that are set in certain countries like Russia and China have some typical local flavor to them.

The King of Fighters XII opens with a flashy montage of footage gathered from the game itself. Actually, this feels a lot like the teaser trailers that were released for the game (if it isn't actually just one of the trailers), and it doesn't bode well for the rest of the game.

At first glance, KOF XII appears to have all the standard fighting game modes. You've got Versus, Online Play, Practice and an Arcade mode. But wait, that's not really an Arcade mode, it's actually a Time-Attack mode. Ok, well is there at least a boss? No, there's no boss, and no story. Well, there's a very peripheral story if you count the short animated scenes where reporters basically say "The crowd is going wild for this King of Fighters tournament!"

As of the time of writing this review, online play was basically unplayable due to crippling lag - a problem that will hopefully get patched soon. We're talking lag during the Character Select Screen, not to mention during the entire match. But from what was there, online boasts a decent, perhaps only slightly cumbersome lobby system. You can chat, painstakingly if you don't have the keyboard add-on for your controller, to pass the time while you wait for a match, but other than that, there's not much new in this arena.

The King of Fighters XII isn't terribly difficult. In fact, when you have difficulty set to Normal (out the choices of Easy, Normal or Hard), the CPU will rarely even attempt to make a move to your half of the territory on the playing field. It prefers to remain planted in place, randomly punching and kicking, waiting for you to throw yourself headfirst into it. This is, to say the least, odd, but it also points to a depressing thought. What if this is the designers' way of telling you that this is the best way to play the game? What if there's no point to learning special moves and combos and the best thing to do is just randomly punch and kick?

Well, even if you rise above the silly tactics of the CPU, you're really only fighting against yourself. You can continually try to beat your own time attack record, or go for achievements. There's no story (or characters) to unlock, but there are artwork rewards to unlock in the gallery. The criteria you have to meet for these goals are pretty specific, and it's about the only thing you can count that makes this game somewhat difficult.

The King of Fighters XII has some shortcomings in areas you wouldn't expect. Things that seem like they would be the top item in a menu are buried inexplicably under more menus. For example, the movelist is something you'd expect to see right away when you pause during a practice session. Nope, it's hidden two menus away. And it seems like this everywhere: things are hidden or unintuitive when all you want to do is start a fight.

More importantly, if you were expecting an overhauled fighter, you're going to be a bit disappointed. KOF XII pays a bit too much of an homage to its early roots and slows the game down. The game doesn't have the feel of a more quickly-paced, complex, modern fighter. Overall, characters have a pretty bare and stripped down moveset as well. The counter move that has been added to the game is somewhat indicative of the way things have gone for the entire game. You basically have a two-button move that will make your character do a counter move that breaks through pretty much anything the opponent is doing. It's an excellent way for novices to keep the heat off, but it's also a pretty simplistic mechanic. Things can start to feel like a game of chance after a while. Of course this isn't entirely bad for people who aren't hardcore fighting fanatics, but there's another problem.

This King of Fighters seems to have lost its soul. There's a lot of personality in some of the characters, such as Ash Crimson with all his flamboyance, but in others, it feels lacking. The little nuances are missing. There are no taunts, and no pre-match animations. These aren't really vital, but they serve to give characters some depth, and a bit of a cool factor. It's hard to become a fan of a character that has no story, not even a small hint of one. Add that to the fact that a lot of fan favorite characters didn't make it (Mai, K', Rugal, and plenty of others) and you have to wonder just where the rest of the game is hiding. This is a game a lot of KOF fans, including myself, wanted to love. After this, fans may still have to wait for a KOF that will deliver.