KoF XV's Team Samurai brings "cool moves you couldn't do" in Shodown

The King of Fighters XV will sign Haohmaru, Nakoruru, and Darli Dagger in the autumn to increase the roster to 53 characters. We talk balance with Oda-san.

As announced earlier in August within the Evo framework and upon release of DLC Team Awakened Orochi, the popular brawler The King of Fighters XV - which only released in February but looks like it's been there for longer given its sheer amount of content - will expand its playable roster even further with the upcoming Team Samurai DLC, a pack including the trio of Haohmaru, Nakoruru, and Darli Dagger coming from Samurai Shodown series. At Gamescom the other day we played a few matches to fall in love with Nakoruru and her hawk Mamahaha once again, and beware they pack some strong punches as they opt for a slower, focused fighting approach which isn't the norm with female characters. After that, we got to talk with Yasuyuki Oda to learn more about the fighters.

"Coming in this autumn we have the Team Samurai which is going to be the final part of this season of KoF XV coming out", Oda-san recalls. "I would say that since the original game they come from, Samurai Shodown, is very different, but this time they're a lot more fun... not more fun but very KoF style, so there's a lot of really cool moves and things you can do with them that you wouldn't be able to do with them in the previous games".

With these KoF XV will have gathered no fewer than 53 characters by this year's end, so we wondered how the team at SNK work to keep things balanced, which is vital when it comes to competitive games.

"Obviously there's a lot of different things and characters have a lot of unique properties" Oda-san explains in the video interview, "especially in KoF coming from different games and things like that, so it's very difficult. We usually are looking at things like tournament results and also just general gameplay data and such, and we kind of come in together to talk as a team to come up with what we think is the best solution. It's very hard to get the perfect balance, obviously, every developer out there knows that, but we do our best to get as close to that as possible".

Who is your main for KoF XV? Play on for more on Nakoruru, the fighting genre, and the upcoming Fatal Fury...