Overall though it's extremely charming if you've got the friends to play it with. Would recommend.

That said, it has a weird difficulty curve. I feel level 2 is heads and soldiers above level 1 in challenge, level 3 is long and challenging, but fair, and then level 4 is relatively simple. Then the last stage practically feels like a coin flip.

Still, it's a strong value for what it is: it's often on sale and as of right now Season 1 is still free, featuring more appropriate SF guest characters and, y'know, the other two original Fatal Fury protagonists.

And while the 90s/early 2000s aesthetic mostly pops, it makes for a few confusing menus and not every character model is a winner

The roster mostly brings back MotW's cast along with some FF favs like Mai, but unfortunately there's no getting around the weird real-life celebrity guest fighters, especially since some MotW characters are still missing. Their models look poor against the rest of the cast and have lots of baggage.

As for the story elements, it feels like they wrote this one as a "we might not get another game after this so let's get some happy endings." Lots of characters get along who seem like they shouldn't and their plots from past games get wrapped with a bow.

The single player mode is kind of a SF6-lite; In addition to the standard arcade mode, there's an equivalent to World Tour that just has you select fights on a map as your fav character. There's not as much customization as the SF6 avatar, but it's very streamlined if you thought WT was too big.

It feels like a culmination of recent SNK games, the original MotW, and a scuffed version of Street Fighter 6's system mechanics that creates a hearty meal of options to learn to take advantage of.

Unfortunately some characters have a little TOO many options, but hopefully they'll get ironed out.

Love love LOVE this thing. Such a fun variant.

Top 10 Switch game, completely unironically.