After hearing so much of the hype surrounding this game, I honestly expected more. I've owned this game for almost over a year at this point and I've only played it for a total of three hours. It's just not very engaging to me especially compared to most of KOF '94-XI.
Firstly, let's talk about the presentation, because this is what everyone who discusses this game ever will bring up. I honestly just think it looks ok. The sprites are cool I guess but most of them just don't really feel like the characters they're meant to represent, like Ryo, Yuri, and Leona for example. I like a couple of the new sprites, especially Athena and K', those are cool! Also the stages are so boring. I see people give KOF XI shit for having boring stages but these are infinitely worse. Where is all the color? Actually that applies to the sprites too, why is everything so desaturated looking. I might be crazy but it seems that the sprites have some sort of anti aliasing on them, which just makes them look blurry and ugly. I don't think the game looks bad, but I feel it looks lamer than alot of the earlier games, especially '97-'00.
The gameplay is just your average KOF fare. It's very combo focused compared to other entries and that's neat. Even as someone who loves KOF XI I don't really miss the tag feature much, but I feel they should've kept it in this one just to stay consistent with the other two games in the saga. What I don't like about the gameplay is that most character movesets feel kinda gimped which is lame. KOF has always had an issue of adding and removing moves for characters every entry, but it's stripped down a fair margin here which is disappointing.
The bosses in this game are also boring. What is it with the Ash Saga and having bosses that aren't even shitty in an ironically funny way like the original SNK and Eolith era, instead just being giant enemies that spam projectiles and command grabs everywhere? They're just annoying.
I legitimately do not care for the music in this one, none of the tracks I heard during gameplay made me feel enticed to listen to them in my free time unlike many of the other entries. The music isn't bad, but compared to '94-'00 and XI it's not as impactful.
I don't hate this game. I think it's pretty solid, and I understand why so many fans love this game. But for me, this one just is missing something that many earlier entries had. Especially after the super unique and fun KOF XI, this is such a basic return to form that it hurts. After three hours of game time, I feel like I have exhausted almost all entertainment from this game, and that's honestly kinda sad. Hopefully I can pick up KOF XV this christmas and possibly enjoy that one though!