by Amr (@siegarettes)

• SNK Heroines Tag Team Frezy
  
• Developer- SNK
  
• Publisher- NISA
  
• PS4, PC, Switch 
  

I was totally wrong about SNK Heroines. It’s not the followup to SNK Gals’ Fighter nor the girly themed KOF14 style game I got on first impression. In fact, it completely ditches the familiar mechanics of King of Fighters or any other SNK fighters and goes for a pared down approach to tag style battles.

It’s astounding how many genre conventions SNK Heroines has stripped away. For instance, you can’t even crouch. You won’t deal with any high low mixups, or even any jumping cross ups, since blocking has now been moved to a Smash Bros style block button. Blocking can even be used in the air to do an air dodge, or combined with a direction to perform a dodge roll. Dodge rolls can even be done during blockstun for a small amount of meter.

Meter management plays a huge part in general. Special attacks have been moved to a single button, with different directions performing different moves. In exchange each of these drains meter, becoming much less effective if performed when you’re low. Supers have a similar one button activation and become crucial to a game plan since they’re the only way to get a KO. Thankfully special meter recharges fast in SNK Heroines, even faster while you’re tagged out. Any health lost also becomes space for extended special meter, Psychic Force style, giving you a built in comeback mechanic by allowing low health players to perform more specials, supers and extended combos.

There’s a strong focus on juggles and wall bounces within the combo system. A good series of specials can easily carry an opponent to the corner then set them up for a series of extended attacks, with heavy pressure on recovery. The timing, positioning and cancel windows are oddly strict as well, given how simplified the base mechanics are. In some ways it feels more like the combo systems of 3D fighters than a traditional 2D game.

This brings a weird dichotomy to SNK Heroines. On one hand, the streamlined mechanics and systems would have you believe it’s designed to be an entry point to the genre. But the flow of the game often results in a punishing series of short pokes and risky specials in an attempt to set up long combos that drain huge amounts of health, with no recourse for the player on the receiving end, unless they happen to have one of the game’s random item drops to break the combo. This is definitely going to be a game of quick blowouts and reversals, especially given how dangerous supers are, with their capacity to be done instantly on reaction and being the only way to end a match.

Specific round ending requirements aside, this is familiar territory for fans of tag based games like Marvel Vs. or BlazBlue Tag. Unfortunately, the tag mechanics in SNK Heroines feel much less integrated than those titles. You can definitely get both characters into combos with Heroines’ almost instant tag, but there’s no assists, and characters share a health bar, leaving counterpicking and meter regeneration as the main reasons to switch out. It’s also possible to pick the same character for both members of your team, diluting the tag focus even more.

That speaks to Heroine’s overall lack of cohesion as a package. It’s a game that has vague ideas and ambitions in several directions, but none of them are pursued with any confidence. SNK Heroines isn’t sure who it’s for. 

The simplified mechanics initially appear beginner friendly, but the strict timing windows for cancels, combos and juggles end up adding much more difficult execution elsewhere. This isn’t an inherent problem, but given the flow of matches beginners will likely find themselves carried to a corner quickly where they’ll have to eat a long combo, bringing that familiar brand of frustration common to tag games, without many tools to retaliate.

The hyper feminine presentation might initially give off a cute and friendly appearance, but it’s costumes are off putting, lazy versions that feel like budget “sexy” Halloween costumes. It’s made worse but the character art and story which places emphasis on the participants discomfort with their outfits and unwillingness to fight. Honestly, it’s just creepy and permeates the game with a exploitative air.

SNK Heroines never commits to a single direction, and ends up messy and uneven. Games like Pocket Rumble and Blade Strangers end up filling the beginner friendly fighter niche better, while BBTag, for all its complications, does a better job of onboarding them to the tag fighter sub-genre. SNK Heroines simply has many caveats to be recommended. The systems never fall into place properly and there’s not enough for the casual or competitive player to dig into. It’s a shame. Somewhere in here there’s a worthy game for the gals of SNK, but what we got isn’t it.