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SNK, once on the brink of bankruptcy, is back with a marketing budget that would make genre titans Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat blush.

With Saudi Arabia’s untold riches powering it, the push behind niche 90s fighter revival Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has been unprecedented, adorning London buses and New York boxing rings.

But does the actual game have the chops to capitalise on its monstrous marketing cycle?

That’s perhaps the strangest thing about this latest effort from the revitalised KOF Studio: away from all of the advertising pizazz, it still feels relatively low-budget.

The game, effectively a sequel to 1999’s iconic Garou: Mark of the Wolves, features a fairly strong roster of returning faces – supplemented by two gimmicky guest characters, which we’ll touch on later.

We should note that the Special Edition – which is more or less the standard version of the game despite its name – comes with the release’s first Season Pass, promising five additional characters post-launch. Among those new challengers are Ken and Chun-Li from Street Fighter, continuing SNK and Capcom’s long history of crossover content.

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This is a generous package, then, and while it can all feel extremely no-frills while you’re browsing its stiff and ugly user interface, you can tell a lot of care’s gone into it.

The fighting system is really fun, but there are a few systems we’d like to draw attention to.

REV is the release’s headline feature, and everything revolves around it. Before a bout, regardless of which character you pick, you can select the placement of your SPG – or Selective Potential Gear.

When your health bar hits your determined SPG zone, your character’s combat arsenal opens up, including devastating REV Blows (a little bit like the Drive Impacts in Street Fighter 6) and Hidden Gear super-attacks, which work in conjunction with your Power Gauge.

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Outside of the SPG sweet spot, you can also use REV on powered-up special attacks and defensive manoeuvres, but these cause your character’s overall heat to increase. If you get too hot, then you’ll be locked out of certain special attacks for a while, unless you can effectively cool down through combat and by dashing around the stage.

So, there’s quite a lot to consider about the overall combat system, then – but it works. Fights are fast and frenetic, and there’s an underlying tactical aspect: will you go on the offensive from the outset by starting with your SPG active, or save it for the end of a fight as you eke out an unexpected comeback?

While the core mechanics are consistent across the entire cast, each fighter presents new potential and problems for you to grapple with. SNK stalwarts Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui maintain their tried and tested fighting styles from past games, while newcomer Preecha is a kind of kickboxer with tornado-style capabilities.

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All of the core characters are beautifully animated, with the exception of the guest characters Salvatore Ganacci and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The DJ presents as a kind of Dan-like joke character, so we can somewhat get behind his ludicrous music video-inspired moves – but the Portuguese football phenom doesn’t really make any sense at all, to the point where he isn’t even featured in the traditional Arcade mode.

Speaking of which, in addition to the aforementioned – which consists of a series of bouts bookended by some simple cutscenes – the main single player mode here is Episodes of South Town.

While this is described as an RPG, it’s effectively a list of combat scenarios placed on a static map, interspersed with visual novel sequences. Each character has his or her own storyline – again, apart from CR7 – and you earn EXP after each fight which levels you up.

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Unfortunately, there’s very little more to it than that.

As you level up you gain more HP and more powerful attacks, but your opponents will also get stronger so there’s no real sense of progression. You do eventually begin to unlock perks which allow you to marginally tailor your playstyle, but it’s basic stuff.

Of course, fighting games don’t need epic campaigns to be enjoyable, but when you compare what’s here to Street Fighter 6’s ambitious World Tour and Mortal Kombat 1’s cinematic storylines, those budgetary constraints come into focus once again.

While we haven’t been able to test the online play on live retail servers yet, the rollback netcode felt robust in previous beta tests, and the multiplayer content is accompanied by a “clone” mode, which allows you to battle against AI facsimiles of an opponent’s playstyle. It’s a bit like the ghosts you can find in recent Tekken games.

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You’ll also find the traditional genre staples: a gallery which collates all of the unlocked artwork you’ve discovered thus far, a jukebox which allows you to listen to both the new game’s slamming soundtrack and all of the songs from past entries in the property, and various robust training options.

It’s a complete package, then, and one that feels well-positioned to expand with future updates and DLC packs. If we have any one criticism outside of the core fighting, it’s that the menus really do feel remarkably slow to navigate.

Conclusion

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves won’t blow you away like Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8, but as a more rudimentary fighter, it’s got guile. Its layered fighting system and vibrant, well-animated characters make for an entertaining overall package that’s been 26 years in the making.

While the gimmicky guest fighters feel out of place and the supposed RPG-inspired single player mode is insultingly basic, if you’re looking for a fine alternative to the more established fighters already on the market, this is more than up to the task.

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