Fatal Fury is a long-standing franchise that hasn’t had a new entry in 25 or so years, making the release of Fatal Fury: City of Wolves, all that much more exciting. Is the return of Terry, Mai and the rest a worthwhile successor to previous titles? Well, I can’t actually tell you that as this is the first game in the series that I played, but I can tell you about what I thought of this game and its fighting mechanics!
Quick disclaimer before we begin, while I accepted the task of covering this game, I am in no shape or form an avid fighting game player. The last fighting game I took even remotely seriously was Killer Instinct back in 2013. So if you’re looking for the opinion of someone who already knows the ins and outs of the genre, you’d best look elsewhere. But if you want to see what someone both new to the franchise (and essentially the genre) thought, then keep reading our XboxEra Review-In-Progress for Fatal Fury: City of Wolves.
Welcome to South Town
I’m sure those familiar with the series would right away recognize the iconic sights and characters this game has, such as the setting of the series, South Town and the relationships between cast members like Terry and Billy. This game is a clear continuation of the story, with characters that have known each other for years and new characters with various relationships and connections. But of course, this is a fighting game, so while the few sentences of story we get per character through either the Arcade or South Town mode are fun, we’re really here for the brawling.
Before I touch on the various game modes available and the variety the game offers, I wanted to talk about the core of the game, the fighting.
Fatal Fury: City of Wolves is a modern, single-character vs single-character fighting game. This means there are no tag battles, no second character to play, but the more traditional style. It has light and heavy punches and then light and heavy kicks, you move away to block (or press the REV button), and you can grab by pressing the light attacks at the same time. You can also jump, of course.
Comb To The Max
You use a mix of movement inputs (such as moving your left stick from the right to the bottom) and button inputs (such as a light or heavy attack) to do special moves, and you link together moves and regular attacks to form combos. This is pretty standard for fighting games of course, but City of Wolves also has unique elements such as the REV system, which builds up when you use certain REV moves and runs the risk of “overheating” if it goes too high. This forces you to learn how to balance and control the various special moves you have, especially alongside the S.P.G. meter (a small bar that’s placed somewhere along your healthbar), which allows for even stronger REV moves.
I could spend a long time going through each feature in the game, but the gist of it is that there’s a fair bit to learn and master. The game does have a decent tutorial though, which has you go through every major feature of the combat and something I’d highly recommend anyone new to the genre to play first. I also did ask a friend who plays fighting games much more often, and here’s what he thought of the systems:
“The combat is really smooth and the animations are clean and easy to follow. I don’t know how it compares to previous games, but the move list per character is small and it’s mostly the fighting systems that create complexity. You can have combos have very precise and fast inputs, and being able to cancel moves into another allows you to get really complex with it.
“I also really like how the meter works, letting you use your strong moves right away but at the cost of building up your gauge and risking overheating. Pretty similar to SF6 here. I do think because the move set is so small, the game should be easier for beginners and newbies to pick up. Some of the characters are pretty bland looking, especially compared to other fighting games, but they have nostalgia going for them. It makes me think that the new characters, Preecha and Vox will be pretty popular.
“Of course, like any fighting game, the make or break is going to be the online play, which I couldn’t test. The game’s netcode and matchmaking will determine its longevity.”
A Lonely City
And now, back to me.
In terms of content variety, City of Wolves felt lacking. Each of the 17 base characters has their own arcade mode of course, which is made up of an intro storyboard (just a few lines of text setting up their story), 7 matches, and then some ending story moments. There’s also another major mode called “Episodes of South Town” that feels more involved than the simple arcade mode, but sadly not by much. This mode also has you select a character and then “explore” three maps that make up one city. And by “explore”, I mean you simply move a cursor around a 2D image selecting icons, which were almost always simple fights with maybe a few modifiers. They did add some variety by allowing you to customize or add skills/upgrades to your character, but even these felt minor, such as having your REV bar fill slower or gaining a small amount of health on every hit you land. You also get some dialogue between characters here, which I’m sure is a fun addition for those attached to their stories.
Fatal Fury City of Wolves was not an easy game for me, which makes sense considering my lack of experience in the genre. I had trouble beating opponents higher than 2 stars in their 5 star difficulty system. I spent many of my first few matches trying to force special moves when I should have been working on the basics, and it never ended well. What did help me was switching around and experimenting with different characters. While the game’s tutorial has you play as Rock, I eventually settled on Billy as my go to character, and my enjoyment of the game went way up once I started to settle in with his moves. For anyone else new to fighting games, I’d say don’t be scared to experiment with other characters before settling on one to try and really learn.
Nice and Clean
Visually, Fatal Fury: City of Wolves is a very clean game. Meaning you can always tell what’s happening and even the most visually intensive moves are readable and don’t hog up the screen for long. I really appreciated this as someone trying to learn the ropes; it made it easier for me to figure out what to do and when to do it.
For fans of the franchise, the game has both a gallery where you can look at previously seen story moments, and a jukebox where you can listen to music from various games in the series. I also appreciated how the game lets you customize the colour tones for the characters, such as making Billy’s jacket a bright neon green. I didn’t come across any bugs at all in my time with the game; everything felt polished and smooth playing on an Xbox Series X. Oh, and Ronaldo is in this game. Like the football player Ronaldo. Not really sure how I feel about that still…
Conclusion Not Yet Finalized
You might have noticed that this is an unscored review in progress, and the primary reason for that is the lack of online play while reviewing the game. As mentioned earlier in the review, a fighting game lives and dies by its online experience. Until I can really try my hand at that, especially to see how the newcomer experience is, I’m unable to justify a score for the review. Keep an eye out here for when the final score and review for Fatal Fury: City of Wolves, drops.
