When SNK was bought by the Saudi Arabian Electronic Gaming Development Company back in 2022, they reassured the general public that this would not affect the content of their games at all. It happened during a pretty tumultuous period of foreign investment funds and corporations buying their way into several gaming companies, so people were rightfully pretty concerned about how it would affect the legendary fighting game developer. After playing Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, it feels like that promise from 2022 has been broken, draining away any chance of this game having a cohesive aesthetic or style. Beyond some interesting combat mechanics and a handful of promising new character designs, there isn’t a whole lot to this game that would make it feel like a standout hit, anyway.
The most memorable fighting games are often tied together not just by their tight gameplay or number of characters, but by a cohesive vibe that flows through every level of the game. The striking style of games like Skullgirls or Tekken speak volumes, but there’s very little of that in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Instead, each piece of the package feels plucked from an entirely different source. Some menus are sleek and stylish, while others are barebones and basic. Characters occupy such a wide spread of tropes and styles that there’s no way to understand what or where or when this game is unless you’re knee-deep in SNK universe lore. Plus, two of these characters are real life dudes – soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, who currently playing in the Saudi Pro League and with a cloud of controversies that still hang over him, and DJ Salvatore Ganacci, whose links to the country can be seen with him being tied in with another of Saudi Arabia’s big sporting ventures, LIV Golf.
Fighting games have thrived on wild guest characters for ages now, but I can’t understand any of the reasoning behind these two picks. You would generally see a guest character dip into a fanbase or piece of media that is either tied closely to the game they’re cameo-ing in, or appeals to a fanbase that would be likely to pick up a new fighting game just for that character, but I can’t imagine that the fandom of these two men correlates at all to the competitive, nostalgia-driven fanbase of gamers who would care about a new Fatal Fury game. Even the soundtrack for the game is questionably convoluted – every stage song has been created by a variety of English and European DJs, but almost every song falls into an identical snooze-worthy beat that not only fails to match the vibe of their stages, but fails to sound good whatsoever.
There’s so much of this sort of uninspired or cameo-fueled content sprinkled throughout Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves that it’s hard to appreciate the game on its own merits. Which is a shame, because there is some interesting stuff here. Much like the original game that this is a decades-in-the-waiting sequel to, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a intricate fighter made exclusively for the freaks. The biggest example of that is the new REV system, giving each fighter an additional meter that fills and empties throughout battles depending on how offensive or defensive you behave. Rather than spending the meter to perform stronger actions, you can perform a variety of techniques like Rev Arts, Rev Blow, Rev Accel, and Rev Guard freely. The catch is that they all increase your Rev meter when you perform them and going over 100% into Overheat disables Rev actions entirely and makes you susceptible to guard breaks.
The REV system is arguably the one universally approachable element of combat in this game – it’s easy to wrap your head around managing the meter, and it adds an extra layer of push-and-pull to combat that plays out like a way less convoluted version of the Grind Grid from Under Night-in Birth.
The unfortunate thing about Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, though, is that it relies so much on these advanced techniques and systems that casual players and newcomers will likely struggle to tap into. Even with the Smart controls system that gives you auto-combos and easy one-button presses for a few techniques, there are so many other minute systems like feinting and braking and the numerous defence mechanics that will remain out of reach. The game thrives when it’s played at it’s highest skill ceiling, but when it’s being played at it’s lowest, it doesn’t spark nearly as much joy compared to flashier and more approachable contemporaries like Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6.
There are some single-player modes in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves that help add some casually-approachable content to the game. Arcade mode is a pretty simple piece of the pie, but Episodes of South Town is a much meatier single-player campaign experience. Each character gets their own story that plays out through textbox dialogue and a variety of fights you pick from via a map of the city. It’s nothing special in terms of writing, and a lot of the fights are against random non-playable mob characters. Still, it’s enough of a consistent loop that it does give you a more engaging reason to do a bunch of casual battling in the game beyond just endlessly hopping into online play.