Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves (PlayStation 5)

26 years after the last entry, Fatal Fury makes its grand return with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. While SNK haven’t been totally out of the fighting game scene, with entries in their other series like King of Fighters taking centre stage, Fatal Fury has been dormant since Garou: Mark of the Wolves in 1999. City of the Wolves was announced back in 2022, and after one of the biggest scale marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen for a fighting game, released April 24^th, 2025 on PlayStation, Xbox and PC.

The story of the game takes place after the events of Mark of the Wolves, with protagonist Rock Howard who alongside his uncle Kain has been searching for his missing mother when an invitation to another King of Fighters tournament with the promise of Geese Howards legacy as the prize. This brings all of the games cast together to compete in the tournament to unravel the mysteries of Geese’s legacy.

The story plays out between two of the games modes: Arcade mode and Episodes of South Town. Arcade mode is where you’ll see the “main” storyline play out as you play through a number of battles with your chosen character, with some brief story sections in between matches before you reach a character’s ending. This is your standard arcade mode experience but is a fun time with a great boss fight at the end of each characters path. Episodes of South Town on the other hand, is more of a mini RPG mode in which you level up your characters by taking on different battles, unlocking ways to customise your characters abilities and stats. This mode has smaller scale, more character focused stories that let you learn more about the roster, with some entertaining stories that aren’t taking themselves too seriously. Tizoc, for example, spends his story searching for the best places to train and best places in South Town to eat. This makes for a fun side mode to play and adds some good single-player content to the game.

While the story modes aren’t to the same scale as other offerings in the genre like Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6 or Mortal Kombat 1, the story here is still fun, and the Episodes of South Town mode has some entertaining self-contained stories.    

As expected, the game plays as a traditional 2D fighter, similar to the rest of the franchise so returning fans will be right at home, as well as people coming in from games like Street Fighter. If I had to compare it to any fighting game outside of other SNK games, I’d say it feels most similar to Street Fighter 6 in terms of how the game feels. That’s not to say there’s nothing to set it apart from the rest of the genre as there is plenty of mechanics to unpack here. At a basic level, you’ve got your standard 4 buttons, two lights and two heavies, but alongside this is the REV button. The REV button and its corresponding meter are where all of the games unique mechanics come in, allowing you to chain special moves together to extend combos, stop you from taking damage while blocking or even “brake” moves after they’ve hit to allow for more creative combo opportunities. This all makes for a very fast paced game, with combo damage being high across the roster and fast rounds being commonplace. To balance out the strong offence of the game, there are also defensive mechanics that can be just as rewarding, such as “Just Defend” which happens when you block immediately as the attack connects and can be cancelled into a move of your own, rewarding you for nailing the timing. Hyper Defence functions in essentially the same way, however requiring you to press forward instead of back, almost like a parry that fans of games like Street Fighter 3 will be familiar with.

These mechanics make training your defence just as important as training your offence, with both being strong in this game making for a rewarding experience after labbing the new mechanics. REV blows also make their debut here, a move similar to Street Fighter 6’s drive impact, which allows you to hit your opponent with an armoured move that can go through most attacks and counter them. This move can only be used while in the S.P.G section of your health bar. This is set before a match begins, allowing you to pick which third of your health bar you want to be in a stronger state in. This makes your attacks do additional damage and gain more super meter, while your REV gauge increases less. If your REV gauge hits 100%, you go into an overheat state, taking away your access to the REV mechanics, so a lower increase rate is definitely a bonus. If you are in the S.P.G state and have a full super meter, you can unleash your characters strongest attack for huge damage, enough to swing a round in your favour.

Much like other modern fighting games, the game has two control schemes: Arcade style and Smart style. Arcade style is your traditional control scheme while Smart style is your “simplified” controls. Having these as an option is a good way to not overwhelm players who may not have much experience with the genre, removing the need for motion inputs in favour of being able to use special moves at the touch of a button.

The games launch roster consists of 17 characters, with 15 of these being either returning or new original characters and the remaining two slots being dedicated to the guest characters you’ve no doubt heard about the mixed reception to their inclusion. The main cast of the game consists mostly of returning characters from the rest of the series, with most of the cast of Garou being back alongside a few characters that weren’t present there like Mai and Billy Kane, who are both sporting new looks. Alongside these are new characters Preecha and Vox Reaper. These two have connections to characters existing fans will be glad to see. Theres something for everyone in this roster, from your simple all-rounder characters like Terry Bogard to your more technical and mix-up heavy characters like Hokutomaru. Theres even Tizoc for those of you like me who enjoys playing a grappler type character. The cast feels very well rounded and balanced for the most part, with only a few characters feeling over or underpowered.

Then comes the final two members of the roster: Cristiano Ronaldo and Salvatore Ganacci. These two guest characters came out of nowhere, with mixed reactions to adding real life people into the game. Initially I wasn’t a fan of either character being added to the game, with them sticking out in a cast of fighting game characters. After a while though, Salvatore in particular grew on me a lot, with the DJ fitting into the spot of a “silly” character perfectly, with a fun moveset that feels fluid and stands out amongst the cast. However, I can’t say the same about Cristiano Ronaldo. While gameplay wise, he has a good moveset and some interesting moves like being able to manipulate the trajectory of a football to lead to some good mix-up opportunities, he visually sticks out like a sore thumb. The rest of the roster has smooth and expressive animations while Ronaldo seems to almost be unfinished, with his animations feeling clunky at times and doesn’t fit in with the rest of the game very well. It also came as a letdown for him to not be available in all modes, with him not having an arcade mode route nor an Episodes of South Town story. While SNK have announced that more will be coming in the future for him, it just adds to the feeling that the character was unfinished at launch.      

It’s worth noting that SNK are offering the first year of DLC for no additional cost when purchasing the game, adding an extra 5 characters to the game, including Chun Li and Ken of Street Fighter fame. Having a whole season pass as a purchase bonus is a great gesture in a market where nearly every other competitor charges extra for additions to the roster.

Outside of the two story modes, the game has a few other single player offerings. The tutorial mode hides a survival and time attack mode to tackle alongside combo trials to get to grips with each character. Then there’s the online portion of the game, which has your typical options like Ranked Match, Casual Match and Room Match. These modes are fairly self-explanatory, with Ranked match being your more high stakes matches with points on the line whereas casual match is more laid back. Room match lets you create lobbies to play with your friends to determine who really is the King of Fighters. The menus and lobby system itself can feel clunky and outdated, with a huge amount of menus to sift through to get to what you want, alongside the friend system opting to use long unique codes rather than just searching for a username, making inviting people for matches more difficult than it needs to be. Having said that, once you actually get into a match online, the game is very smooth, with strong netcode alongside crossplay between all of the games platforms.

In my 100 or so ranked matches so far, I rarely experienced any lag or stuttering. The online experience feels great as I climbed the ranks, with an option to select your skill level upon starting to make sure you’re matched vs players of your own skill level rather than being thrown in the deep end vs experienced players.

With a new generation of Fatal Fury comes a new artstyle. The visuals are vibrant with a cel shaded style that suits the vibe of the game well. For the most part, the characters look great in this style, with Ronaldo being the only real exception to this rule. Animations feel fluid and expressive here, with combos being great to watch and satisfying to get right as you watch your opponents health bar go down. Even amongst all the chaos of the fast pace of the game, the game is still visually clear with what’s going on, with visual cues for moves being noticeable. The stages also look fantastic, with a number of returning stages from Garou getting a fresh coat of pain in the new style, blending well with the characters to make for a great game to watch as well as play.

Colour Edit mode makes its return here, allowing you to customise your characters colour palette to whatever your heart desires. This is a nice touch considering other games in the genre often only have preset colours to choose from, so being able to create your own is fun, letting you design characters (Ronaldo is absent from this mode) to look however you wish, from being inspired by other characters or simply your favourite colours.

The game actually has two soundtracks which surprised me. The game has its original soundtrack filled with original tracks for characters and stages but also contains a second soundtrack of licenced tracks, including some from guest fighter Salvatore Ganacci. Having both soundtracks in the game is nice, with most tracks fitting the vibe of the game well. Theres also a jukebox mode to be found here which contains tracks from across the series, allowing you to make your own playlist of your favourite tracks. The game also features a Japanese and English dub for characters, with both being good making it a matter of personal preference for what you choose to go with.

Overall, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a fantastic fighting game with a lot to offer, from a solid single player offering, to gameplay that doesn’t get repetitive no matter how long you play online sessions for, with enough mechanics to get to grips with that improving bit by bit feels great. I think this game is an improvement over King of Fighters XV and stands on the same level as the heavy hitters of the genre and I definitely see it staying in my rotation of fighters for a long time. With an esports scene with an eye watering prize pool recently announced, its clear SNK have plans to support the game for a while. Aside from occasionally frustrating menus and the admittedly strange inclusion of real life guest characters, the game is a great all around package, with good presentation to back up its stellar gameplay.