SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy Review

Player(s): 1-2
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4

From the developers of one of my favorite fighting games franchises, comes a video game featuring some of the more prominent women of past King of Fighters games. We will be taking a look into SNK HEROINES: Tag Team Frenzy. It boasts simple controls, a new win scenario, and customization. Do simple controls really make it stand out and easy to approach? Let's find out!

The story is set inside a mansion where our beautiful heroines awake to a mysterious voice over a loudspeaker that says it created a pocket dimension, trapping the women inside. It states that in order to win their freedom from that world, they must battle their way to victory. Fighting games often have little to no story, but it would have been nice to get at least a little bit more creative here. Each cutscene only lasts 15 to 40 seconds in length, with some uncomfortable moments, and one of which has 20 seconds of nothing. It may take an average player no more than 20 minutes to complete the story on regular difficulty, considering the fact your 2 heroines are fighting a roster of 12 characters in a 2v2 match setting, plus one boss tougher than the rest.

Aside from the story mode, you can choose to battle either the A.I. or a friend 2v2. With survival mode, you keep fighting as the difficulty increases, while regaining small amounts of health after defeating each CPU opponent. There is also a training mode and a basic tutorial. You can battle online, whether it's a quick match or creating a room. There is also a Gallery, Profile, and Customization menu. This is what SNK should have done properly, since it's where you will either spend the gold earned or the time playing story mode to unlock certain things. We will come back to these later...

Controls are simple, in fact they are oversimplified. You have your weak, strong, special attacks, throw, guard, dream finish, and tag all at the push of a button for each one. You use a directional button or two, and that's pretty much it. Unlike most other fighting games, reducing an opponent's health bar to 0 does not mean automatic victory. In order to secure victory, you must use a dream finisher move against your opponent when their health is in the red, although it feels like an unnecessary tweak to already existing game mechanics. Characters feel balanced, but possibly just due to the simplicity of their controls. As a 2v2 experience, you have the chance to switch between characters almost instantaneously and either continue a combo or execute a finisher. Your health here is called a "Life Gauge," while the energy needed for specials is the "Spirit Gauge." In order to increase the maximum size of one, you must sacrifice the other, so in order to increase the total maximum amount of Spirit Gauge you're able to hold, one must take damage and vise-versa.

Now, with that out of the way I unfortunately have to talk about what could have saved this title. Customization, to name the first. It's underwhelming in terms of content either thrown or not thrown in. You're given three costumes per character, one of which is already unlocked, the other two bought with in-game currency called "Gold." Accessories are very lackluster, as well as a portion of them not even fitting in with the database of other items or strictly have a theme in mind with the costumes. Since you gain Gold fairly quickly, win AND lose, you're able to afford quite a bit after finishing the story mode once or twice. That being said, you don't even have to particularly participate in fights to easily grind the Gold needed for what you would like to purchase. Raising or lowering difficulty adds and subtracts nothing from what you gain either. You never really feel a sense of accomplishment knowing this, but could easily be fixed.

The gallery was also very disappointing, with only one background image per character and one beautiful mosaic image per pairing between certain characters, this lead to a total of 21 pieces of showcased artwork. The mosaics really brought out the artistry in the illustrators, and it saddens me to not see more of their work aside from the end credits. Even though they're available for Gold purchase, just play through the story 7 times and you have them all!

You can also purchase different titles to use for your online profile, different voice styles, as well as stuff for an avatar that I genuinely had fun and experimented with. The graphics aren't amazing, but they are serviceable. Definitely the end-credit artwork is the most enjoyable, at least to myself.

The sound and music do this game probably the most justice. Every click in and out of menus sounded great. I loved the music, especially when you got to choose it yourself as they made a menu where you're able to access all the BGM of the game. All the sound effects from punching or using finishers sounded good. No complaints here. The music is certainly worth listening to.

Overall, it feels like a budget title. I can compare other SNK titles to this and come up with the same conclusions. It has that King of Fighters feel, the fighting is just as fluid. With only a 14 character roster, not even enough accommodating accessories, an unimpressive story mode, and the fact there is little art in the game to show for it, I can't recommend this. In my mind, I wanted this to be at least a decent, if not good, game. My favorite fighting game franchise to date, always having those few characters I gravitate towards more than most other games. It just cannot compare to most all other fighting games made this console cycle, especially at the price.

-JT

For More Info on SNK HEROINES: Tag Team Frenzy:
https://nisamerica.com/games/snk-heroines/

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Gameplay/Story: D+
Art/Graphics: B
Sound: B+
Value: D-

Overall: D

Pros:
+ Good Artwork.
+ Feels balanced.
+ Nice music/sound.
+ Avatar customization is fun.
+ Switch version has the added bonus of portability.

Cons: 
- A bit too basic.
- Lacks content.
- Story Mode is almost non-existent.
- Game currency too easily obtainable.

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Disclaimer: This game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.