Mastering the mind games of The King of Fighters XV, out February 17

blog.playstation.com:

The King of Fighters XV is finally coming to PS5 and PS4 on February 17. Today we’re going to touch upon some of the mind games found in KOF XV that can help bring out the best in your fights.

Shatter Stike is a unique attack that features a guard-point. When it lands, it allows the player to follow up with another attack. However, it’s kind of difficult to use at first on account that there’s no guard-point on startup, but it’s extremely valuable as it can be used to counter enemy attacks.

The KOF series is known for fast-paced fighting action thanks to how dashes and jumps are used. In addition to the normal jump, KOF XV features short hops, hyper hops, and super jumps, which really sets it apart from other games.

Put simply, the mind games in KOF come down to how well you can attack using dashes and jumps. This is especially the case since jump attacks are extremely powerful in KOF, and so a lot of the unique mind games come in when defending against them. Even though the jump attacks are really good, some characters are armed with anti-air attacks, while others have different ways of fighting back depending on the circumstances. So, players have to really think about when and which jump attack they are going to use.

For example, Terry Bogard has a jump blow-back attack with a great hitbox. He can advance on his opponent using the short hop and hyper hop version, but if his opponent knows of his intention, then they can counter with anti-air or high reaching attacks. But if the person using Terry knows his opponent is waiting to anti-air, then he can dash forward and attack, or use a forward-dashing attack like Burn Knuckle or heavy crouching kicks to beat out their opponent’s high reaching attack. Conversely, they