During the 90’s and early 2000’s, SNK was largely considered the major opposition to Capcom’s dominance of the fighting game genre with its Street Fighter series. SNK’s counterpart, The King of Fighters, would release new games nearly every year, giving players a more linear option compared to Capcom’s approach of re-releasing their Street Fighter titles with new features and characters each year.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
Developer: SNK
Platforms: PC (Reviewed on), Playstation 4/5, Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: April 21, 2025
The King of Fighters, however, was actually a spinoff/alternate universe to SNK’s core fighting game series from the 90’s, Fatal Fury. The last Fatal Fury game, Mark of the Wolves, came out in 1999, before SNK decided to devote most of their fighting energy towards the more popular and more easily marketed King of Fighters games. This is why it came as such a surprise to all when, after the decent success of their latest entry, The King of Fighters XV, SNK announced their next game would, in fact, be a new sequel 27 years in waiting, a Fatal Fury game known as City of the Wolves.
Now, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has finally released, and after spending a few days poring over the systems and getting my butt handed to me online, I’m happy to say that my excitement was well-founded and that SNK has released yet another banger of a fighting game that will easily stand up to an already stacked competition. Let’s dive into it!
Gameplay
I often like to start with more visual or peripheral aspects of a game when reviewing them, but this is a fighting game we’re talking about. The gameplay is THE draw for games in this genre. The competitive scene of a fighting game lives and dies by how well-tuned its gameplay is, and even the casual fans of these games won’t stick around if the game doesn’t feel responsive and interactive, even if they can’t fully articulate why that is.
Thankfully, City of the Wolves has delivered in this aspect. As a four-button fighter, the controls feel like they fit perfectly into the “easy to learn, tough to master” category, with basic light and heavy punches and kicks forming the building blocks of a fighter’s repertoire, constructing additional special moves and commands by inputting the usual motion inputs or multi-button combinations that 2D fighting game fans are accustomed to at this point. Newbies will be happy to see that SNK has adopted the popular concept of easy-access special moves and combos, referred to in City of the Wolves as “Smart” controls as opposed to the customary “Arcade” controls. Smart controls condense your basic attacks into two buttons, leaving the former heavy punch and heavy kick buttons free to stand in as your special attack and “smart combo” buttons, respectively. Using the special attack button in combination with various directions on the control pad allows for the use of a character’s special moves without having to do the usual, more complicated motion inputs. The smart combo button gives players a one-stop-shop for those exciting combination attacks fighting games are known for. They are usually fairly simple, but depending on a player’s position and the resources available to them, this combo could include specials or even super moves, all without needing to worry about the execution timing normally involved.
The one “special” button that’s universal to both modes is the Rev Guard button, which is core to the game’s more advanced mechanics. The Rev Guard serves as a more powerful block on its own, pushing back an attacking opponent further than would a regular block and opening up more space, but it also fills up the Rev Meter (more on that later) a bit with each block. The Rev Guard can also be combined with the heavy punch button for a “dodge attack” which can slip past an opponent’s attack to counter it, or with a heavy kick for a special feint that fakes the beginning of a special move to juke your foe.
Past that, other features unique to City of the Wolves include the “Selective Potential Gear,” or “SPG” meters that overlay your health bar. The SPG can be set to overlay the first section of your health, the middle section, or the final section, and while your health and this meter are at the same level, it is considered active, allowing you to use the powerful Rev Blow attack. These are similar to Street Fighter 6′s Drive Rush attacks, in that they are strong moves that can power through an opponent’s attack to connect anyway. Unlike in Street Fighter, though, instead of expending a meter to use these, you are filling one: the aforementioned Rev Meter.
The Rev Meter is involved in the use of these Rev Blows, the Rev Guard, and also Rev Arts, more powerful versions of your special moves. Each of these will increase the Rev Meter, and once it is full, you enter an Overheat status, removing your access to all of these Rev abilities and also unlocking your Guard meter for depletion. If you block too often during this affliction and your Guard meter is fully exhausted, your Guard is crushed, leaving you fully open for whatever nasty combo your opponent wants to perform on you. Needless to say, management of your Rev Meter becomes an important task during a battle!
Speaking of combos, linking moves together in City of the Wolves feels fairly reminiscent of prior SNK fighters. Light attacks combo into heavies, and heavies can often be canceled into specials. Rev Arts can uniquely be canceled into each other, meaning that engaging your Rev Meter allows you to chain even more attacks together into even more deadly combinations. Many moves can also “brake” with a special input after they start, canceling the rest of the attack animation and opening you up to even more unique combos after the fact. Though the timing of these inputs are often less forgiving than players of other 2D fighters may be used to, there is a certain freedom to the system that allows for lots of experimentation with different setups and payoffs once you can wrap your head around it.
Modes and Characters
Even the most intricate fighting game would be nothing without a plethora of game modes and characters to choose from, and City of the Wolves proves to be no slouch in this department, either. There’s the usual Training mode common to the genre by now that allows players to lab their techniques in a controlled setting, as well as a set of “Missions” for each character, offering a series of eight increasingly more difficult combos to pull off as a sort of guided training exercise. These missions are not only perfect for learning the “bread and butter” combos that will help you in a fight once committed to muscle memory, but also the more complex later combos provide hands-on experience towards understanding exactly how these moves interact with each other. Even if you never pull one of these off in an actual game, being able to complete it in the Missions mode will at least help you understand what sorts of things you can achieve in the heat of battle.
The other mostly ubiquitous mode, the head-to-head Versus mode, isn’t without it’s own new twists. You can, of course, play the regular one-on-one battles in this mode using Classic Versus, but City of the Wolves also features a new “Special Versus” that lets you customize the ruleset to give the players things like constant full power for super combos or an SPG meter that fills the entire healthbar for more exciting bouts.
For those who aren’t playing with friends at home, there is also a fairly robust section of Online modes as well. As with many games in the genre, the Ranked Matches will track your wins and losses, taking you up and down a competitive ladder as you hone your skills. The Casual Matches, as the name implies, are unranked and do not keep track of your wins and losses. Unlike other games in the genre, however, it seems that even Casual matches are held within a certain band of skill, attempting to match you up with other players of your same level of proficiency. For people interested in something a little more involved, there’s also the ability to set up Room Matches, inviting groups of people to compete in multiple concurrent battles depending on who all has joined the room. These can range from private rooms with just your friends taking turns to huge public rooms where five or six matches are happening at once, or even 3 on 3 “party versus” matches where up to 6 players can engage in battles more reminiscent of The King of Fighters style bouts.
It’s my opinion that a fighting game truly lives and dies by its single-player content, however. For every player that wants to engage in the competitive community, there are countless others who want to test themselves solely against the CPU. Sadly, this is where many fighters fall, even though games like Tekken and Street Fighter have been pushing back against this with their story modes. City of the Wolves also makes a valiant effort towards catering to this crowd. There is the standard Arcade Mode, that lets a player go through six random opponents before facing their chosen character’s rival and then finally going into the ultimate boss battle. It can be tough, though. Even at a median difficulty, I was finding the computer opponents to be perfectly blocking and reading all of my attacks and responding with lengthy combos by the second or third match in. Arcade mode is likely the best place for a player to train by themselves for an online experience.
For a more measured approach, however, the game also provides the much more robust single-player experience known as “Episodes of South Town.” This mode is a more RPG-like experience, as you select your character and engage in battles of your choice throughout the game’s setting, known as (believe it or not) South Town. As you fight, your character will level up, gaining more maximum health and eventually unlocking the ability to engage with the SPG functionality. Past that, you’ll unlock special skills that can be equipped to your character to further customize their abilities, gated by a limiter that will also raise as you increase in level. As you do, you will also slowly unfurl a more expansive version of the Arcade mode’s storyline, both for your chosen character as well as the overall plot, to find out what’s really going on in South Town in the wake of Geese Howard’s supposed passing.
As far as characters go, City of the Wolves offers a fairly diverse selection to choose from as well. At seventeen fighters, the launch roster is a tiny bit more thin than, say, Street Fighter 6′s, but each character brings a unique flavor to the fight even when their general styles overlap. From all-rounders like Terry Bogard and Rock Howard to rushdown fighters like Preecha and Gato to brawlers like Vox Reaper and Kevin Rian, everyone plays just a little bit differently. Vox, for example, utilizes speed to get inside an opponent’s range and unleash a series of heavy attacks, where Kevin, despite also being a very in-your-face character, instead relies on natural armor from his specials to tank incoming attacks and get into smashing distance. That being said, every character’s most powerful move, the “Hidden Gear” that’s only available during SPG mode with two bars of meter, shares the same input. These moves are also the most cinematic and entertaining of the supers, so making them relatively easy to pull off (given the strict requirements) allows for flashier matches.
Apart from their mechanical differences, the characters also make up an interesting combination of classic, legacy, and brand new characters, with some fitting into multiple of these classifications. Some of the classic Fatal Fury cast are here, like the iconic fighting game legend Terry Bogard, and Mai Shiranui. Most of the cast of the previous game, Mark of the Wolves, have returned, with only Freeman and Kim Jae Hoon not making the jump. In their places are the newcomers Preecha and Vox Reaper, proteges of Joe Higashi and Grant, respectively. In keeping with the theme of generational combat, many of the characters from City of the Wolves are students or offspring of classic Fatal Fury icons. Protagonist Rock Howard, for example, is the son of Fatal Fury big bad Geese Howard and the adopted son of the unflappable Terry Bogard. Hokutomaru is a ninja who trained under Terry’s brother, Andy Bogard, in the Shiranui style ninjitsu developed by the family of Andy’s girlfriend, Mai. So many of these characters have deep ties to not only other characters in the series, but to each other. Which brings us to the elephant in the room.
Also featured in the City of the Wolves base roster are two characters that are directly pulled from the real world – soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and world-renowned DJ, Salvatore Ganacci. The inclusion of these characters was met with much resistance by fighting game aficionados, and understandably so – when a game can only ship with so many characters, it’s hard to understand why SNK would pass over Fatal Fury or even Mark of the Wolves characters like Duck King or Kim Jae Hoon for some real-life people that don’t fit into the setting. Luckily, the characters themselves are, at least, very fun to play as fighters. Ronaldo’s ball-based attacks involve chaining multiple kicks and attacks into the ball instead of the opponent to slam the ball into them over and over from different angles, with a depth of potential that we have only just begun to delve. I suspect that, in a year from now, there will be some outrageous CR7 mains who are nigh-untouchable in a battle. Ganacci, on the other hand, comes off as something of a joke character, with a lot of goofy attack animations pulled from his music videos and live performances. That being said, his stance-based offense involves a lot of crazy mixups and creates a lot of pressure to keep opponents guessing, making him a surprisingly effective fighter and potentially a high tier competitor once we get some tournaments under this game’s belt.
That being said, it’s still hard to say that these characters feel like they belong within South Town. Their overall visual designs cling closely to their real-life appearances, which makes sense so as to keep them recognizable, but also results in them appearing simply out of place next to the more flamboyant fictional characters they fight alongside. The devs have made an admirable effort to involve Ganacci, at the very least, giving him not only his own unique stage background, but also his own storyline in both the Arcade and Episodes of South Town modes that at least attempt to place him into the greater Fatal Fury narrative. No such work was done with Ronaldo, though, oddly enough, making him feel even more like a strange after-thought, or perhaps a mandate pressured from higher places. Few things signify this in my mind more than his idle animations during a battle, however. While every other character bobs and weaves or dances about, Ronaldo just… stands there.
Music and Sound
While it may not be of foremost importance, many fighting games have come to be known for their music as well. Certain stage select themes have become iconic, and Guilty Gear games in particular are often considered as having soundtracks that match up to any of the best gaming soundtracks out there. Even beyond that, a distinct sound profile is important for these games too.
This is the place where I think we will see the most contention in reviews and opinions for City of the Wolves. SNK has brought forth a legion of DJs, led by Salvatore Ganacci himself, to bring their own take on stage themes. Despite some of these DJs being incredibly well-known artists, like Afrojack and Steve Aoki, this decision makes the game’s oeuvre of music distinctly electronic in flavor, and ultimately lacking in the diversity of sounds that some of its competitors are bringing to the table. For what it is, though, it’s all quite good, in my opinion – the tunes are catchy and just the right amount of repetitive for helping you get into the fighting groove without distracting you from the tasks at hand.
The game’s sound profile is also perfectly apt, even if not particularly interesting. There are unique noises for every type of special hit connection, from Just Defends to Wild Punishes, that help you understand in an instant what is happening. Other games have certainly done this better, and others still much punchier, but City of the Wolves provides a serviceable suite of sounds that perfectly helps you keep track of the action.
Graphics, Visuals and Aesthetics
I’m ending on this particular aspect of the game because it is, in my opinion, perhaps the least important feature of a fighting game, even though such a statement belies how important it actually is. While it’s true that a fighting game should be a good game about fighting first and foremost, having a distinct, unique, and expressive art-style is what sets so many fighting games apart from the rest. A lot of fighting games have solid and responsive gameplay, but not every fighting game has a snappy visual aesthetic to help draw your attention to it over its closest competitor.
City of the Wolves, at the very least, strives to maintain a consistent and distinct style. There’s a real American comic book feel to the whole thing, from the character designs to the visual filters to the way the Arcade mode cutscenes play out primarily as still images within a panel. It’s an interesting choice for a Japanese developer, and once again, probably not one that will immediately resonate with everyone. For one thing, it lacks the sort of immediate eye-catching pizzazz of something like Street Fighter 6 and its paint-splashing graffiti theming. For another, this is the first foray for Fatal Fury from its sprite-based 2D origins into fully 3D modeled character designs. This is no surprise for anyone who’s been following the development of SNK’s other fighting games like The King of Fighters or Samurai Shodown, but there are no doubt a not-insignificant cadre of old-school fans who would have loved to see the series retain its pixelated roots, hewing closer to new-school fighters like Guilty Gear Strive and its gorgeous sprites.
For those who are willing to give the game’s graphics a chance, though, there’s a lot to love here. The colors, in particular, are a standout to me. Though not as flashy as its competitors, the high saturation makes each character pop, and the robust Color Edit mode lets you create up to eight new schemes for every single character with a level of detail never before available for a game in this or its sister series.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I’ve been having a blast with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. The pacing of it isn’t as fast as some games, and isn’t quite as fluid as others, but it still hits that Baby Bear feeling of being just right, sitting squarely in the middle as a solid entry into the modern era of fighting games. It is a game that asks a lot of you as a player, but then in turn offers to give just as much back. You will not be able to instantly pick up and master City of the Wolves, there is much to learn and lots to unlearn from other games. There are no easy paths into your offense, making it imperative to not only learn each character’s unique approaches, but also your opponent’s particular style of defense. Once you have gotten a handle on the depth of the game’s systems, however, you are rewarded with the ability to create combos on the fly, building and building on both the system and your own mastery to come up with flashier series of moves than a lot of its competitors could even dream of.
Where so many of its competitors have taken strides to revamp their systems to appeal to broader audiences, City of the Wolves feels like it has simply iterated on the brutal but classic approach of older era fighters to invite audiences to a trial by fire at the school of hard knocks. It may not be for everyone, but for those who vibe with it, they’re going to vibe with it hard.
