Fatal Fury: City of Wolves Open Beta – A Nostalgic Comeback with Some Rough Edges
After 26 years, SNK’s legendary fighting series is back, and we got to play the open beta. Here’s why it’s fun but still needs some work.
Like I’ve said before, the hype for fighting games is back and better than ever, and the next big release on the block is Fatal Fury: City of Wolves. Don’t confuse it with King of Fighters—though we’ve seen Terry Bogard pop up in various games, he actually debuted in Fatal Fury. It’s been 26 years since the last mainline Fatal Fury game (not counting the compilation games or mobile game), and I feel like an old fart getting nostalgic about it. I remember playing Fatal Fury 3 with my uncle, who showed me the ropes, and later growing up thinking Street Fighter II was Fatal Fury because they looked so similar.
But nostalgia aside, a new Fatal Fury is here, and it’s looking sharp. This past weekend, from February 20th to February 24th, we got to dive into the Fatal Fury: City of Wolves open beta. Jumping into the beta without even glancing at the command list or tutorial was both fun and hilarious. Learning the combos on the fly and realizing the controls were similar to Street Fighter—just backwards—was a cool twist. SNK is coming back swinging, and while the game has a few rough edges, it’s clear they’re giving it their all.
The Beta Experience
The beta was an okay experience for the most part. I didn’t encounter any lag when playing with my brother; the servers were decent. However, my brother tried playing online against someone with a full five-bar connection, and the match kept stuttering, breaking his combo flow. It sucks, too, because he chose to face people who only had the best connection, and it was still wonky. Thankfully, when we played on the same Wi-Fi, it was flawless. There were some things I feel like they should work on still, and they mainly have to do with things other than the gameplay.
The Characters
The beta featured eight characters, blending classic favorites with new faces:
Terry Bogard: The iconic brawler and spiritual cousin of Street Fighter’s Ken Masters.
Rock Howard: The son of Geese Howard, who fights like Terry—likely because Terry trained him.
Mai Shiranui: The fan-favorite kunoichi.
B. Jenet: My personal favorite for her slick combos.
Vox Reaper: A badass newcomer with a mysterious vibe.
Preecha: A combo-heavy martial artist who reminded me of Street Fighter 6’s Rashid.
Hotaru Futaba: Chun-Li’s spiritual sister with her own unique flair.
Kain: M. Bison’s nephew, bringing his own brand of chaos.
Each character felt strong and unique, and once you learned a good mix-up, you could end matches quickly if your opponent wasn’t paying attention.
New Mechanics
They introduced new mechanics for the gameplay, similar to how Street Fighter 4/5/6 did. They have an S.P.G system (Selective Potential Gear) where you can choose when it activates. It’s on your health bar, and at the beginning of every match, you can decide if it’s at the beginning, middle, or end of your health bar. At first, we didn’t know what that was; we just chose a random name/option. Still, we realized we were able to make cool attacks while it was activated (and you’d know when it was activated because it’ll yell out “S.P.G” when your health bar reaches that point). Basically, S.P.G is when you can have an increased attack and use Rev Blows.
The Rev System is also something new that they introduced, with strong attacks that you can mix into combos or even guard. It reminds me of the Focus Attack from Street Fighter 4. You can do a Rev Guard that helps you guard better than the regular way (moving your left stick away from the person you’re fighting). It can stop chip damage from opponents’ special moves, which is insane. Rev Arts are special moves you can use, and Rev Accel is mixing into other Rev Art moves that can make into a really cool combo. Rev Blows happen when the S.P.G is active—a powerful attack. All of this sounds complicated because it seems like entirely separate things at first, but it all blends together when you play the game.
There is a Rev Meter that increases throughout your battle. At first, we thought we had to let the meter go up to use Rev Attacks, but it was quite the opposite. You’d want to do your best to avoid having that reach the maximum percentage because it can cause you to be unable to block efficiently. It can have your opponent break your guard and you won’t be able to do Rev Attacks —this is called Overheat Status. It can make or break your round if you get that one too many times.
One of my favorite mechanics I had to find out through the tutorial was dodging attacks. It does a cool slow-motion animation and can really make your opponents shook; I know it did for me when a CPU did that to me and started going wild with the combos.
Stages and Selecting Characters
We could play on four stages: Training, Freight Express, B. Port, and Training Ground (I’m not sure why there are two training spots, but they look different from each other). They all had their own quirks, and I generally enjoyed them all. I want something similar to B. Port; it seemed lively, and I would like to see that more. The map that made me really dizzy/feel off was Freight Express because, as the train was moving the entire time, the background had a very heavy motion blur on the mountains passing by—it was messing both my brother and me up during those matches, so we mainly just played on the other three. But regardless of that, I still thought the map was cool!
Each character that we were able to pick had their own colors we could choose from; it was cool to see, though, because it didn’t feel like random colors being put together; the other outfits they had were fire to look at, and some were better than the default outfits the characters had. I liked that the game had a lot of style for them. You can also select one of them as your favorite character so people know who you are. It sucked, though, because the process of selecting a character was weird. You had to go through the battle settings rather than enter a character select menu when y’all start fighting. Things were complicated for unknown reasons, and if they did a bit of rework on those things, it’d be awesome to play without feeling annoyed.
Every character was unique in all of their attacks. I enjoyed experimenting with each of them, and truthfully, it’s hard for me to find someone to main since I enjoyed them all. Still, Preecha is definitely someone I’ll start fighting people with a lot. She’s quick with her martial arts and reminded me so much of Rashid from Street Fighter 6 with her tornado attacks, which was insane. My brother hated facing me when I was playing as her!
Online Play and Room Matches
Outside the Tutorial mode, we could also play online with Ranked Matches, Casual Matches, and Room Matches. I played a couple of casual matches. I didn’t try Ranked Matches because of my brother’s online lag in facing people, but I am sure it will improve. Casual matches were fun and straightforward. I just wish there was a way to add someone after facing them so we could face each other in a room match.
Room matches were such a hassle to get working in this game. It was very tedious to join a friend’s game and face each other. My brother and I were in different rooms, and it was a lot, so I can imagine trying to do this online. But the process went like this: We tried to join using a room ID. He started a private room where only people with the room ID could join. I put the room ID correctly to search, but I couldn’t find it.
We did this a couple of times and decided to add each other. Doing that was a chore in itself—it wasn’t somewhere simple. We had to go through a different menu on our profile, go to search player, and then put in their name… or so we thought. We had to put in this long ID number to add people, not use their names, which is odd because why have us set up our name for our profiles if people cannot search for people with it? After putting in that long ID, I set up a room and invited him through the game. Unfortunately, you get no notification about a game invite. To find it, you have to go back to the home menu and click open your Invite List, which is at the bottom right of the home menu with the right stick. Very odd with how they did everything.
Final Thoughts
All of that to say… SNK has a solid game at its core, but there’s no denying the menus need a serious overhaul before the full release. While they look cool, they’re slow to load, clunky, and unintuitive. It’s a hassle to navigate, and that’s something they really need to fix. I also hope they improve the online play—it’s frustrating when matches stutter every few seconds, even with a good connection. The rollback netcode definitely needs some work, but I’m confident they’ll get it right eventually.
Once you get past the clunkiness, though, the game is a blast. Room matches, for example, are a ton of fun. You can have multiple people in one room, with matches and waiting areas so everyone gets a turn—it’s like having your own little tournament, which is super exciting.
At the end of the day, I really enjoyed my time with Fatal Fury: City of Wolves. The gameplay is fun, the characters feel unique, and the new art style is a fresh take on the series. It’s shaping up to be a solid entry, and I think it’ll do well in the long run. I’m excited to see what’s next—new stages, new characters, and hopefully some polish on the rough edges. The future looks bright for Fatal Fury, and I can’t wait to see where SNK takes it from here.