Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves review: It’s back, with something to prove

Note: This review was first published on 4 August 2025.

It’s not every day you get to play a sequel to something that’s been dormant since the early 2000s.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is SNK dusting off one of their oldest fighting franchises, giving it a new coat of paint and a combat system that tries to toe the line between old-school depth and modern flash.

Having tried it, I’m not sure where this game actually stands. It’s a fighter that feels torn between multiple identities: nostalgic throwback, competitive experiment, and something vaguely resembling a cultural vehicle. Not all of it comes together cleanly.

The first few matches gave me a bit of whiplash. Going in, my expectations were shaped by SNK’s other popular fighting title, The King of Fighters XV. In comparison, City of the Wolves isn’t just more of the same. The moment I started messing around with the new REV system, it was clear that SNK was trying to do something different.

The idea behind the REV meter is clever: you’re free to execute high-level moves like Rev Arts and Rev Blows as long as you manage the gauge responsibly. Overuse it, and you overheat and lock yourself out of these powerful tools. Worse, you’ll also open yourself up to punishment.

It forces you to think about flow in a different way, and I respect that. It’s an actual mechanic with risk and consequence baked into its DNA.

While it’s a great infusion of strategy, it makes the game less welcoming for newer players. Even with the help of its built-in Smart Style control scheme (which automates combos and specials for beginners), the barrier to entry is still pretty steep. There’s a certain density to how things are taught, or rather, not taught.

If you’re new, you’ll be learning not just the mechanics, but also the game’s pacing, character-specific gimmicks, and the interface that feels oddly sparse for something trying to appeal to a new generation of players.

I got the hang of it after a few hours, but I could see casual players bouncing out quickly. City of the Wolves assumes you’ve been playing fighting games for a while, or that you’re stubborn enough to want to be good at it.

Matches become this layered dance of meter management, feints, and small mind games. It feels more like a deliberate chess match than a brawler – button mashing won’t work here.

What’s less satisfying is the game’s presentation.

There’s a real sense of inconsistency throughout. Some of the menus are styled nicely, while others look like they were picked up from a designer’s computer from 2014.

Design-wise, SNK has given the game a heavy cel-shading treatment. While it looks decent in motion, especially during Supers, the quality of character models is inconsistent. Some fighters have clearly received more attention, while others appear a bit stiff or out of place.

And then there are bewildering guest characters – the game offers Cristiano Ronaldo and Salvatore Ganacci, of all people. I’m not against guest characters in fighting games, but I expected logic to be applied with such arrangements. It’s less jarring to see a fan favourite, cult icon, maybe characters from related IPs. Here, playing Ronaldo against Terry Bogard just felt bizarre. While it’s a big name, I fail to see how football fans (even Red Devils fans like me) who follow him in the Saudi Pro League will be the same folks rushing out to buy City of Wolves.

Salvatore is a bigger head-scratcher, even if he has done an EDM music video clip for the game. It doesn’t help that their move sets aren’t particularly inspiring.

The rest of the roster feels like a mixed bag. You’ve got returning SNK favourites like Rock Howard and Mai Shiranui, both of whom are fun to play with. There’s also a handful of new fighters that range from genuinely cool to oddball ones. Put together, I sense an identity crisis happening.

Aesthetically, the characters are inconsistent, as some appear grounded, while others are cartoony. Some even have flashy EDM-style intros, while others look like they stepped out of a different fighting game. It’s as if each character was designed by different artists who each received different creative briefs.

That disjointedness carries over to the soundtrack as well. Stage music is apparently contributed by various European DJs (including Salvatore), but instead of offering a dynamic spread of tunes, most of the tracks blend into a single, generic, festival-lite soundscape, mostly featuring bass loops and filtered kicks, with very little that gets the blood pumping during the fight. It’s almost tragic.

Overall, I’m torn on City of the Wolves. It’s got a fighting system that clearly wants to innovate, with promising mechanics like REV. But it’s wrapped in a package that seems to be having fun contradicting itself, visually and thematically.

The legacy of Fatal Fury deserved a return. While this isn’t the worst way to do it, I can’t shake the feeling that too many decisions were made with non-gaming motives in mind – guest characters, inconsistent character designs, and a soundtrack that’s weirdly disconnected from the action.

If you’re a diehard SNK fan, there’s plenty to dig into here. But if you’re someone looking for a strong and tight experience in the mold of competitive fighting games like Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8, you’re going to be very disappointed.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is available now on PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.