YMMV / The King of Fighters All Star

• Awesome Art: One of the game's main selling points is the gorgeous art found in Character portraits and the many, many battle cards.
• Awesome Music: Another element that is widely praised by the players are the excellent remixes and arrangements that Netmarble's sound team does to classic KOF themes, like Esaka? for Kyo and Iori's Special Signature versions or Boss Syndrome Nameless' Ж' (Zhe Prime)
  • Netmarble finally caught on to this and has started to release high-quality compilations of the game's soundtrack on the official Youtube channel.
• Character Tiers: The game has developed a pretty extensive meta with well-defined tiers. Interestingly, a character can be top tier for live PvP and low tier for PvE content and vice-versa.
  • On his release, Nameless was widely considered to be the best unit available in the game due to having a kit with answers to anything the game would throw at you, be it PvE or PvP. He remained in the top unit until the arrival of Boss Syndrome and Special Signature units. In an amusing development, exactly one year after Nameless' release, Boss Syndrome Nameless was added to the game, and just like his predecessor, he has so many tools at his disposal that he also became the best unit of the game until the arrival of EX Units. And even then, he still manages to stand his ground among them.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Epic Quests have a massive one compared to the regular story mode. Players need custom-tailored teams and hours of grinding for buffs to be able to reliably tackle them. This doubly goes for Episode 1, as the gimmicks of the later chapters involve heavy Character Select Forcing.
  • '99 Story mode is a significant step up from the previous story chapters, asking the players to have maxed characters from the start to even have a chance to advance. Fittingly, a player rank of 50 (100 in the Japanese version) is required to even unlock the chapter.
  • Revival Hell Dungeon requires the player to build specific teams, be color or attribute related with specific awakening levels to advance through and it only keeps getting harder and harder the more the player advances.
  • Challenge Team Relay was introduced in August 2020 and pits the player against giant bosses with such absurd stats and debuffs that the tactics used against the previous bosses are useless and require a very specific combination of characters and equipment to be completed. Or having full teams with maxed-out Boss Syndrome and Special Signature units to brute force your way to victory.
  • Netmarble has a tendency to introduce huge difficult spikes any time already existent content gets updated with new stages/bosses.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: A curious meta example, most of the characters receiving seasonal and special variants, are pretty well-known Ensemble Darkhorses' among the series' fandom. To put it in perspective, characters like Mai, Kula, Yuri, and Angel have multiple seasonal variants on top of their original KOF incarnations, while main protagonists like Kyo, Terry, and Ryo have none.
  • In a more straightforward example, Kaya and Noah are the best-liked original characters among global players.
• Fan Nickname:
  • With the Lady fighters becoming more prominent, players took to giving feminine takes on the transformed characters' names for their new selves:
    • Lady Zero and Lady Zero (Clone) are widely known by the players as Zeroko and Clone Zeroko, respectively.
    • Likewise, Billie and Kimmie for Lady Billy and Lady Kim, while Lady Mr. Big is sometimes called Big Ass or Big Scam.
    • Lady Brian and Lady Maxima are referred to as Brianna and Maxine, respectively.
  • Carrying from the main games, Adel is also called Rugalito.
  • White Yaksha Gintoki is called FEStoki to differentiate him from his normal version.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Grapplers are very strong in PvP because grabs skills ignore defense making it easy for them to corner the opponent and deal big amounts of damage in a short time.
  • Characters with Super Armor, Damage Immunity, and/or Hyper Armor are a must if you want to reach high ranks in live PvP.
  • Status Ailments are very valuable as well, with Freeze and Petrify being the strongest in the meta.
  • Collaboration units tend to be very strong, having a wide array of beneficial effects, easy to awaken thanks to the Dimensional Invite mechanic, and starting with the Seven Knights' having their own set of farmable imprint stones that massively boost their stats.
  • Boss Syndrome and Special Signature units break the game's difficulty in half and are a must to tackle new PvE with increasingly ludicrous stat requirements.
  • EX Units take everything that made BS and SS units good and buff them to a point they trivialize most of the PvE content. The downside is that they're a must to tackle any new content.
  • The An Unidentified Observer set card boasts the effect of having a 30% of chance to reset all the cooldowns of active skills when one of them successfully hits the opponent completely breaking the balance in Live PvP since it encourages players to merely spam skills with little possibility of retaliation from the opponent. And to top it off, it has a PvP-exclusive skill that reflects 10% of damage received for 5 seconds. At first, it doesn't sound that bad until you realize that reflected damage bypasses all and any defenses, including Damage Immunity.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The April 2020 update broke False Conspiracy Yashiro's AI, making him unable to even move, this allowed for easy farming and quest completion until it was fixed on the May update.
  • The WWE wrestlers caused serious Desync issues in Championship when they were released. Fights with them involved usually led to players losing despite having time and health advantage or vice versa. It got so bad that Championship had to be taken down for three weeks for fixing.
  • An exploit found on the PC Client after the September update (the one who added XV's Omega Rugal and Duo Lon) that "killed" the AI, turning all enemies into sitting ducks. This allowed players to cheese the Rugal Boss Challenge. Predictably, it eventually was patched.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Vulcan bots in the '99 story mode and Reviving Hell Dungeon. They can snipe the player from the other side of the screen with their bullets and lasers, stun-locking the player in place, making them an easy target for other enemies on screen, making them fail the "Get hit 10 times or less" achievements or wasting precious seconds in time-limited missions.
  • Enemies with 'Damage Reflect' buff. Even if they're easily defeated, as long as they suddenly activated that one buff when you didn't expect it or read the message that came from their model... Your extremely high combat power character will DIE, and your AI will not take account to that so you can't just Auto the stage willy-nilly if you can't skip it.
  • After the introduction of EX units, a new tier of enemies was introduced into the dungeons. These enemies have permanent Hyper Armor, can break your Hyper Armor, and have AOF attacks that induce a special, unavoidable, dizzy effect on your characters.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Angel was known to be a big Shout-Out to The Rock around the time she debuted, including having moves based on his Signature Move (Rock Bottom and The People's Elbow). And then the WWE collab happened and Angel gets to fight against the guy she based her moves on. Curiously, she was completely absent from the collaboration's plot, and the honor of interacting with The Rock was given to Terry and Rock.
  • Both Tekken and Dead or Alive are basically one of the more prominent Dueling Games in terms of 3D fighters, but they never did get into any sort of crossover (not even Guest Fighter to each other), mostly due to the animosity of the DOA series creator Tomonobu Itagaki against (Bandai-)Namco. This game actually allowed what's the closest to be a crossover between the two, so for the first time, Kasumi can fight against or team up with the Mishima family.
  • The Street Fighter V collab may mean this can be the closest rendition of a most awaited Capcom vs SNK 3 in 2022.
  • Boss Syndrome Goenitz uses his red 2nd player color as the basis for his appearance and is implied to be awakened, a nod to when the New Faces Team awakened into the Orochi Team. Come King of Fighters XV and the Awakened Orochi team now wears their Hakkeshu robes...which by default are now red, meaning they more closely resemble 2P/BS Goenitz.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Rolling being completely unrestricted considerably drags down live PvP since most matches are reduced to both players running at each other just to roll at the last moment in hopes of baiting one of the other's skills so they are left open to a painful counterattack.
  • Guard canceling for PvP. By repeating the initial attacks of the regular combo string of specific characters is possible to keep the opponent in the air, completely unable to do anything but watch their HP slowly drop to 0.
  • Awakening is one due to the excessive amount of resources it requires. First, you need level 90 characters and a duplicate to unlock the first Awakening tier. This will increase the character's stats and increase their level per 10. You can't use regular EXP potions to raise those levels. You need a specific type that can be obtained in either the Reviving Hell Dungeon or an S-rank Dispatch mission with these special chests as the reward. To unlock the second Awakening tier, you need once again a duplicate of the character you want to awaken, a variable number of other characters' duplicates of the same rarity and color as your target, and having hit the max level of the first Awakening tier. The next tier increases the level cap per ten but it also requires a different type of EXP potion to raise. You can repeat the process up to five times, and while the stat boost offered by the mechanic is significant, the resources needed means F2P players will need months of grinding and tons of luck to get past the first awakening tier.
  • The Card and Memory Carnival events are these due to the large amounts of summoning it requires to be completed. As their name implies, they require obtaining Cards or Character Memories -with FES ones netting the largest amount of points possible-, the problem comes with the extremely short time they're active. So unless the player has been hoarding summoning tickets for weeks, the only way to reach the end goal is by dropping rubies on the unified banner and hoping to be lucky to pull enough FES to complete the Carnival. Worse yet, Carnivals are the only way to obtain generic Boss Syndrome and Special Signature memories.
  • A new mode called Boss Challenge was introduced during the Tekken collaboration, in this mode, you face a special version of a character with a full time and your goal is to beat them within the time limit. The interesting part is that the player is encouraged to apply multiple handicaps to themselves since the more of them are equipped, the better rewards they get from clearing the mode. The Scrappy part comes from two available handicaps: The AI will control your characters for 10 seconds at the start of each round and there's a 30% chance of stunning your character any time an skill is used. This turned a mode that was meant to test the players' skills and team building into a game of chance, the backlash was so bad that Netmarble removed them in the third iteration of the mode.
• So Bad, It Was Better: Both SNK and NetMarble have made efforts to fix SNK's old, full of Narm janky English translation. This is how All-Stars takes on Omega Rugal's dying words of "I'll be back... YOU JERKS!". For those who considered it hilarious, they might miss that 'bad Engrish' part of old SNK.
• That One Boss:
  • Orochi in the story mode normally isn't this if you want to simply beat him. If you want to finish his quests, especially in the Expert difficulty... well, good luck with the quest that requires you to get hit less than ten times. To wit: All of his moves register multiple hits on one use, and he can use one of them to hit you from anywhere on the screen. He can simply connect several special moves, and then you will have to restart because you got hit for ten hits and failed the mission, and not even continuing can allow you to clear it! You have to do this on top of leveling one or two characters to a maximum level and raising their CP enough to ensure their attacks aren't stuck. Not an easy task.
  • Similar to Orochi, getting all the Expert mode achievements on the final battle against Goenitz in the '96 chapter is frustratingly hard, especially the "get hit less than 10 times" one. This is because all of Goenitz attacks hit multiple times, and thus, getting caught in one of his combo strings or one of his active skills means you won't be getting that achievement. It is even worse after he was buffed since it made his attacks faster and gave him Super armor on one of his skills.
  • False Conspiracy Yashiro from Epic Quest Episode 1 is a nightmare, especially if you're doing the "125 seconds" challenge to unlock him. For starters, Yashiro is Immune to Flinching during his combos, and, much like in 97, he loves to block or dodge out of the way of moves. Second, he throws up a barrier that, if it matches the color of the character you're currently using, reflects damage at you. If you use an Ultimate Move at the wrong time, you're toast. While these are manageable on their own, it's what comes when his health reaches 6 bars that push him square into this territory: Yashiro Turns Red and becomes a practical SNK Boss; He moves insanely fast and unlike Mecha Goenitz or False Trial Saisyu who could at least be stunned, pretty much nothing short of countering his countdown-based moves or having a unit that can inflict a stun-based status like 'petrify' or 'frozen' can stop him, be it striker, skill or even ultimate move, he'll simply plow ahead. At that point, the only way to beat him is to bait him into a combo, which requires you to get dangerously close and risk getting combo'ed to death. All of this is on top of the fact that the color symbol for his stages is blank, meaning that while he's not strong against any color, he's also not weak against any. And again, to get him as a playable unit, you need to beat him in roughly 2 minutes and 5 seconds. Also, take into account that this is an Epic Quest, meaning that the power threshold is much higher than Orochi above and you're going to need characters at an extremely high level with high-level Battle Cards too.
  • And then Phantom Invader Maxima from Episode 2 shows up to one-up Yashiro. All of the bosses in Episode 2 Chapter 1 have innate super armor, and Maxima goes above and beyond by never faltering, period. While Yashiro could at least be briefly halted by specific effects such as petrify or freeze, Maxima can't be stopped short of his gimmick: At specific points, generators will appear (each time adding one more for a maximum of 4), with Maxima being stunned when all of them are destroyed. However, said generators enforce Character Select Forcing by being weak in one of the 3 classes. They can't be ignored because they buff Maxima's defense to the point that, unless you're overleveled, there's no way you can beat him before the time limit. Also, he has a meter that lets him use stronger attacks when it gets filled, and while the generators accelerate it, it will fill up on its own. And for the cherry on top: While normal gameplay will proceed if you win with any character (meaning you can use Game-Breaker FES units and the like), if you want Maxima's unique special card, you must have '99 Maxima on your team; meaning, you need to sacrifice an attack-type character, for a grappler in a stage where none of the targets are grabbable. All-in-all, Phantom Invader Maxima is one heck of a Wake-Up Call Boss.
  • Immortal Rahk, besides the high stats and debuffs shared with all Immortals, he's extremely mobile and has a relatively small hitbox, making it hard to reliably hit him with skills. After a couple of minutes, his damage output shoots through the roof, becoming able to kill maxed-out characters in just a couple of hits. His weakness is Red Element and Fire, severely limiting the number of viable units to use. All of this makes him the hardest Immortal to beat.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The second level of the first part of the '99 story at Expert difficulty. Going through the level itself is fine. However, the level has the sub-quest "Clear with 10 hits or less" and is littered with Kyo clones who like to play keep-away with you. Two types of bots, one type with a Vulcan, and one type with a lightning cannon, all of them being able to stun-lock you with multiple hits, which can immediately make you fail your mission. Worse still, the lightning cannon bot tends to spawn off-screen. Its lightning cannon has a TREMENDOUS range that it can fire off without getting on-screen and a long duration for the stun-locking; getting hit with it without emergency evade means instant failure to the mission. And did we mention that they do not come one by one and are more likely to surround you (minimum two units at once)? At least Goenitz and Orochi are single entities and you can at least bait them safely while dodging...
  • Reviving Hell Dungeon is designed to be as frustrating and irritating as possible. It requires awakened characters (something that is a considerable investment of resources to get in the first place, the first ten tiers only ask for characters of one specific color per stage, similar to the restrictions found on Epic Quest Chapter 1, but from the 11th tier onward you need to have full teams of the type and color asked to you. Why full teams? Because each character can only be used for a minute, when it runs out the character is considered KO'd and the next member of the team takes their place; this effectively gives the player three minutes to finish each stage. And to make things worse, the stages are filled to the brim with Goddamned Bats, whose only purpose is to waste the players' time since they are generally too weak to kill a maxed-out character.
  • Expert-level Car-trashing bonus stage. Unlike normal ones, you are basically competing with a CPU in trashing the car, and for the final bonus, you have to make sure you deal 80% damage without any way to disrupt the CPU, which is quick enough to reach 20%. Unless you know how to set things up, getting that final bonus may become impossible, barring you from getting 100% Completion of the Chapter.
  • Fancy Victory Party (the first level of the final chapter of the 2001 story). Original Zero sics on you 10 waves of enemies most likely found in the Reviving Hell Dungeon, except they're now also highly damaging that continuous tics will destroy characters not strong enough, and they WILL gang up on you with murderous intent. Additionally, there is a time limit on the stage so you can't play keep-away for long. Going through the stage is one thing, but there is also a mission that requires you to clear the stage with all allies alive... when keeping even yourself alive solo is already hard enough.
  • Unlocking characters that can only be unlocked via crafting. The good news is, you don't need to spend any money at all. The bad news is that you NEED to be prepared to grind on Infinite Battle (for Wolfgang Krauser) or Championship (for Eiji Kisaragi) Battle Modes, as for the latter one, if you're in a place with a bad internet connection, you have to slog through super laggy matches and most of the time see yourself getting curb-stomped left and right. While Eiji's medal can be bought in a good amount for a price (you need 1000 medals while you can get 200 medals daily if you have 1000 coins), Krauser's medal exchange option is ridiculously low (You can only get 20 medals daily if you have 120 coins... but you still need 1000 medals to craft Krauser). And even worse if you still want to craft their Memories.
  • Chapter of Fighting is not especially difficult but it becomes increasingly tedious the further you advance. Thanks to the ridiculous stats required, it means the only real way to clear later stages is by cheesing the AI through Time Outs using DO Ts.
  • Unlocking Phantom Ruler Igniz requires an absurd amount of grinding on Epic Quest Chapter 2. To unlock his fight is necessary to have a combined level of 270 buffs and the amount of EXP gathered in each stage is extremely low even with the required units that increase the rate. Unless you keep the game grinding non-stop for days, getting the needed buffs will take months.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While Lady Goenitz was overall well received, some are not happy that she is not modeled after the Midnight Bliss'd version of Goenitz from SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos (a.k.a Goeniko).
• Unexpected Character:
  • Due to the circumstances behind his creation as Suspiciously Similar Substitute for K9999, no one expected Nameless to be one of the characters included in the game.
  • While Guest collabs can be this normally, many of them are from mainly Japanese media. And so it came as a super surprise when it was announced that Netmarble would collaborate with the WWE. No, not the Japanese puroresu scene (or figures that are much more known there like Kenny Omega or other Japanese wrestlers); the western/international WWE RAW brand with figures like The Rock or John Cena.
  • The first Gintama was skipped out for the Global version, and with how it was heavily based on Japanese culture and only had minimum coverage in the West, fans at first were resigned that the Global version will never have the Gintama characters. When the Japanese server received the second Gintama event, the Global server was surprised: Netmarble brought BOTH the Gintama collaborations to the Global server.