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Mid Boss: Dark "Bloodlust" Ash
Boss 1: Saiki
Boss 2: A transformed Saiki

( Boss Spoiler )

Биг Босс Saiki


Мне вот что-то комиксы Марвел вспомнились.

II-Boss Path
After beating the last opponent at Rose Stadium, the screen zooms into the stadium's back monitor where Rose is talking. She suddenly freezes in the middle of the conversation, and we find out that... someone has frozen time.

Suddenly, the Ka No Chi cult members all appear in the stadium (you've seen the scene in previous trailers), and by orders from Saiki, they all fly off to different locations to finish off their last task.

Well, all of them.. except Mukai.
Mukai is looking pissed (because he lost in KOF2003） and he asks Saiki to give him another chance against the fighters. Saiki, pissed at Mukai, drains the living life out of him and then shows his ultimate form, transforming into a red being that looks a lot like Magaki from KOFXI, except a lot more muscular and no pants (he looks like a Magaki with the muscles of SF3's Urien).

The boss battle takes place in the ruins of Rose Stadium; the ground looks like the black hardened aftermath of molten lava.

Saiki's name is written something like 斎己 or 斎忌 in phonetic Kanji letters as we learn from his pre-bout conversations. Again, he looks like a red muscular Magaki, but with something that looks like black tar on his hands. The tar-like substance is pretty much the single weapon he uses in his fight. And sweet cripes, he's probably one of the slowest KOF bosses in history.

Unlike Magaki, Saiki's not too agressive, but it's still pretty hard to beat him. He can get hit at times by the most simplest moves like a foot sweep, but he can also grab you since your foot goes into his throw range. His four main attacks are- a tar projectile that holds you down for additional attacks, a grab that coats you with tar and chips down your life, a projectile counter that returns your fireball as the aformentioned tar, and a full-screen multihit counter like Orochi's, except the screen turns black with tar, not white. He moves very slow, but he has a teleport so you can't corner him.

[edit]According to reports, Saiki is apparently just the middle boss...? An Ash posessed by Saiki (plays like Ash with all moves EX) is said to come out afterwards, and possibly yet another character after that

( I- Bad Ending Path )

The screen switches to Saiki and his minions at that throne-looking location in the trailers, and they're all bowing down to him. They all look worried; the screen zooms to Botan and you can see a streak of sweat running across her face. Saiki is sitting down on his chair, looking a bit pissed.

A conversation like this takes place: "Damn, you guys are useless. We have just about enough energy to open the gate. We're going to have to rewind time. But don't think that this kind of miracle is gonna happen again!"

The scene then changes and Ash is seen in a dark location where there's the red orb from the intermission. Except, the red orb has totally lost its glow. Ash smiles and walks away. The screen fades, and you see "Game Over".

( Впечатления о полной версии )

Quick notes from lunch break-

1.Story Mode-

The first two stages are dirt easy, then things get harder. But the game is overall easy to beat since the CPU isn't that strong at least by default, and you can always get mission bonuses by rolling around a few times or whatnot. The missions seem to be the same for every round.. or fighter, not sure. You keep getting the same easy quests over and over throughout the game, and you eventually start to ignore the missions until you find yourself in a tight spot.

I didn't meet a mid-boss, probably because I was trying out too many things and not aiming for a good score. There's an intermission after the 3rd or 4th stage-- it's the same thing we've seen in previous videos.

There's split paths at the end of the game. After the last match at Rose Stadium, you either get a bad ending, or advance to the boss. There might be other paths, but those were the two that I've saw during my limited time on the game. Details are at the bottom of this post.


2.Training Mode

Training mode seems to be something more for advanced players than novices, and here's why:

If you go into training mode, the game ends when the training mode's timer runs out. That is, you don't go into normal/arcade mode; goodbye game credit. In normal mode, I think the game runs about 8 stages, and again, the AI in the first two stages are brain-dead at default setting. So the mode seems to be more of a something for advanced players who want to try out some specific combos with plentiful meters.



3.Other Tidibits

Overall, the game is fun to play so far. The game's speed seems to be slower than the more recent KOFs (excluding XII); it's nowhere as hard to punish jumps as say, XI or NeoWave. Because of the speed, the timing on doing cancels/buffers may seem off for first-time players.

As seen in videos already on the net, there's lots of tidbits in the background. Duck King's chick with blue hair is in the USA stage, for example.

King and Yuri have kept their special KO motions in the product release. In fact, they not just have one, but two animations. The usual motion where they fall back, and a new one for chip damage, in which they fall forward.

K' doesn't have any palettes that erases his shades. His pants uses two seperate palette sets for his left and right legs, and there's a coloring where one side turns red.

Iori's palette with the crecent looks nice. Kyo's looks like a simple circle and it seems a bit weird.

( Еще впечатления от того же чела )

My personal impression, it feels different from any of the previous KOFs. The game speed, hit delay, and character's size ratio to the whole screen makes it feel a bit to me like, say, somewhere in between Real Bout 2 and KOF98. You'll still be seeing a lot of jumps, but they can be punished from reaction. It feels like a step back into the old days, and at the same time, a step forward into the next decade with the new systems. Which is probably why I'm liking the game thus far.


The combos that worked in previous games still generally work, but there's a lot more to learn thanks to the drive meter. Though, I have a feeling that in the end, people might conclude that long combos scales away too much damage and drain meters ineffectively. Still, it's an additional freedom and option of strategy that's been added to the game.

Some of the Neomaxes comes out so fast that you can hit it right after a guard, and that takes away a nice chunk of life because there's no scaling. The way some of the Neomaxes can punish you after a careless move feels almost like the Revenge Attacks from vanilla SF4. Though of course it's justified in XIII when keeping in mind the required meters. And again, you have to think about whether it's worthwhile to burst out all that meter, or to hold on it for the later rounds. Strategy, strategy.

Of course, if there's any abusive bugs or moves, that spoils all the efforts that's been put into the game system. Hopefully that won't be much of the case.

( Концовка Елизабет тим )

Someone on 2ch beat the game with the Liz team and had the following to report. Note that KOFXIII has to be played though multiple teams to figure out the whole story.

After beating Saiki, the "gate" which was supposed to open from all the energy collected during the tourament starts closing, much to Saiki's surprise. A few of his minions have apparently been defeated before completing their jobs. Saiki and Botan are stunned, and Ash takes advantage of the situation to grab Saiki's energy out of him, saying that the Ka No Chi members should perish, "just as according to history". However, Ash gets possesed by Saiki instead, because his body for some reason "suits well". The energy emmited from the fusion is so strong that it blasts away the nearby Botan.

Ending
Though Dark Ash is beaten, the gate is still a bit opened. Saiki screams for his life, saying that they can keep on trying over and over again by passing though the gate and traveling through time. But Ash stands in the way and the gate closes. Telling Liz that he was planning to do things more smartly, Ash fades away. It turns out that Saiki is his ancestor, so Ash wiped out his own existance by stopping him.

Time starts to move again, and Rose finishes her closing ceremony speech. Sheng and Duolong remain in the stadium even after closing. Liz finds herself inbetween her two team members. A tear of drop falls from her face. The only thing remaining is Ash's hairband.

Credit roll.

( Впечатления от разных людей )

-The tragedy that was XII has ended
-The game's touch, its "rythm", is so different from past KOFs, it shouldn't carry the franchise's name
-The game's taken the same path as SF4 and returned to its roots
-The game's speed is slow. But it's probably going to still end up being unbalanced, and with insta-death combos like all other KOFs
-As usual, Kim is broken
-Simple, stressless. Not the crap that XII was.
-The rom-only set is cheap
-People stop coming in when you're using the K' team
-My favorite characters are like, so different from before
-This isn't the KOF that I remember. The last boss is so butt naked
-The Ikari team has got a serious case of metabolic syndrome
-K', Ash, Liz, Duolong. Top tiers.
-Hey you can rip the girls again. But the boss is even more damn nude
-Everyone's just using the old characters.. but at least the old players are coming back to the arcades

( Еще впечатления )

Well its 9pm in japan right now and I just got in, my arcade only got ONE damn machine so I was battling fools all day. So I didnt take any vids or anything (after looking at the forums I see I didnt need to) but I must say I am loving the game.

Here might be some gameplay news (mostly speculation)

Canceling into BC activate is a little harder than it was at the lok test (but not much harder) at the lok test when I hit BC it would automatically send out a C attack if I was attack, now I have to press it again after I hit BC (like I said nothing crazy just surprised me)

King is going to be a pain in the ass when people get good she has good long range and that damn air fire ball is a pain in the ass. Her Neo max is good since you can do it in mid air I kept trying to counter her but got a face full of white stuff (ewwww) but if you do it on its on it appears to do little damage but it goes everywhere (good way to get someone mid roll)

DC seem to have stricter timing, at the lok test i was doing them by accident but now i got to try a bit harder to make them come out.

I think that is the only stuff I wanted to inform people about. Most used characters today were Kyo, Terry and Andy (not as a team) the matches ranged from crazy high tier to newb (most people arent using the DC or max cancels yet)