Why i am bad at KOF?

[Heihachi Mishima]

Hi,
I like to play Fighting games a lot back in the days: Tekken, Soulcalibur, MK, Street Fighter, Blazblue etc.

But when it comes to KOF, i can´t even land propher combos. I like KOF alot but i can´t really get in to it, I have been in practice mode a lot in KOF13, KOF98 (on steam) and KOF12 (on PS3)

I Just Pre-Ordered the upcoming KOF2002.

Any hints/tips for me, how to get in to the game.

It seems it is very hard to learn really anything in this KOF series, or then i am too old to learn any new fighting games...

[КРАСИВАЯ ЛЕНОЧКА]

I wonder where do you live? I am from China, and asian countries just have better environment for fighting fans, because friends could communicate in the reality, that helps you improve a lot! we actually participate tournament every month

[КРАСИВАЯ ЛЕНОЧКА]

it is never fun to learn this game by yourself, find some friends to play with you

[Heihachi Mishima]

My friends don´t like fighting games.. I have always played alone majority of time. And by the way i am from Finland. Here only Sports games and FPS games sell mostly.

[Laivasse]

I used to play fighting games casually a lot in the 90s at a zero skill level on console and arcades, just playing the CPU and a skill-less friend of mine. Then I took something like a 15-17 year break where I didn't have the opportunity to play fighting games at all.

When SF4 came out I puchased that and remained at a pretty terrible talentless level, although I abused online tricks with zangief to delude myself into thinking I was average. I never improved and then when SSF4AE came out and everyone was good enough to destroy me - even the newbies - I got depressed and gave up. Honestly SF4 never really clicked with me anyway... I hate link-intensive comos.

At 30 years old I picked up KOF13 and now, 2 years and hundreds of hours of gameplay later, I feel like I'm finally getting a grasp of how to play KOF (and other fighting games) properly. I'm still terrible and haven't played enough online - but the route to becoming average is in sight. I have my favourite team, I know some tech, and I don't lose to button mashers any more.

My point is you almost certainly aren't too old (unless you're too old to have any practice time). It's all just a matter of practice and perspective. Find the characters that feel the most fun to play, learn what they can do in different situations (eg against projectiles, against jump-ins etc.), learn their bread and butter combos, and learn the easiest ways to land them.

Check online resources like the dreamcancel wiki, juice's vids and streams (juiceboxabel on YT and Twitch), streamed KOF tournaments and stuff like that (speaking of which, Cannes Winter Clash is this weekend and there should be some decent KOF play there).

Find someone - hopefully of a similar skell level - you can play casual matches online, if there's nobody around to play offline. While you can learn a lot from watching great players, you don't learn all that much from just being the punchbag in an endless combo video, so personally I advocate playing other beginners/intermediates when you're a beginner - at least someone who won't mash and is also trying to get better at the game. It takes some learning and all learning's got to start somewhere.

[КРАСИВАЯ ЛЕНОЧКА]

I understand, most of my foreign friends never heard of kof series; 02um may be hard for players on the other side of the earth, because there aren't much resource in your language about this game, especially there are tuns of jargons in the game

Yes, I would suggest choose 3 characters, focus on them, practice their basic combos until you can land them, and find videos online to see how other players play them, it is also helpful to make notes while watching, record some ideas

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=02UM+红白战，those are the tournaments just come out from my country, would be a great source to learn! They are the best players in China

[КРАСИВАЯ ЛЕНОЧКА]

Also, I forget the mention something. I used to be a very weak player, but I played it for 5 years, you will improve automatically after each game, and eventually be very strong. Trust yourself, this game takes time to digest

[Vassago Rain]

I never played KOF until 13 released on steam. Play against people and you'll get better. I've still not touched singleplayer, and probably never will.

[Gasp]

KOF is notorious for it's unforgiving input registry. In sf4 you can hit down foward twice in a row and a dragon punch will come out, in this game it just won't forgive you for many input errors other games forgive you for. Seriously though you can toughen it out by just playing this game more, it happens naturally.

[Shui]

I'm not going to claim to be good at KoF myself, but I've been playing for about 12 years now (off-and-on) and have picked up some things. At the very least, I can do basic combos. I'd say that I can combo better in KoF games than I can in stuff like Street Fighter for sure. To me, it seems easier, because it's what I know.

I think that's part of it. What you're used to will be easier for you. With the exception of games like MvC or BlazBlue that are extra combo happy and give easy stuff that any newb can do, basic combos in 2D fighters take some practice.

The first step is figuring out what the combos even are. Who do you play? I'd be willing to show you basic stuff you can do with some of the characters if you'd like.

In XIII, I highly recommend their Challenge mode that has you pick a character and then do the combo it says on the screen. This will teach you a lot of the things that character has that combo and if you practice doing what they say, you can learn some (as well as use the watch feature to see it performed so you know how it looks)