Warning: This game is strictly for the NoeGeo faithful.
For those of you who are having a fangasm at the very thought of this game (I was one of those people), prepare to be pleased yet slightly disappointed in more aspects than you'd like.
Gameplay is excellent! Once again, no surprise here, BUT!!!...Here is why this game goes above and beyond what could have easily been a simple cash in.
Character roster - They take 45 characters, as usual, from The King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, Samurai Showdown, The Last Blade, Metal Slug (I SWEAR TO GOD!!!), Athena, King of the Monsters, Buriki One, Savage Reign, World Heroes and Aggressors of Dark Kombat and pits them against each other in a better SNK version of Capcom's miserably failed Capcom Fighting Evolution, and it's done way, way, way better for so, so, so many reasons. 1st reason, the characters whom come from non-fighting games like Metal Slug are redone to make them fit in visually and playably with the rest of the characters. Other characters who came from the game SVC chaos, like Mars People and Ginjyuro, are kept the same as they were in that game because SNK has a knack of not changing too much from game to game, even different series', so they work perfectly in the gameplay aspect. This, however causes a visual problem. Characters taken from SVC chaos look way cleaner and fresher than the rest of the characters because that's the first 2D SNK fighting game to really change the character design a little and use higher resolution graphics in years! I know these types of graphics have become expected of SNK since they're really more about the gameplay than visuals, but it was released in 2007 near the end of the PS2's life-cycle...C'mon! Well, at least the stages are fully 3D rendered and look great!
Well, back to the gameplay. As of KoF 2003 SNK has evolved the team based combat a little adding a tag-feature. Although this feature was 3 on 3, NGBC works with 2 on 2 based system. This not only makes the gameplay more streamlined and less complicated, it also makes for slightly more exciting matches. How's that 2 on 2 makes for better matches than 3 on 3, you ask? The answer is simply...simplicity. There's less confusion, the tag system is definitely a hell of a whole lot more responsive than in 2003 and the inclusion of special-team-based attacks called D-assault attacks. These attacks are only performable when you chose a certain team, like Iori and Kyo or Yuki and Ai (two brand new characters made just for this game) and play out much like Street Fighter EX 3's Meteo Tag Super Combos. Iori and Kyo's team super is especially twisted! Sadly, about half the character roster lacks a special partner to perform these moves with. That's a bummer because it doesn't give much of an incentive to play with as many characters you normally wouldn't otherwise if everyone had someone special to pair up with.
Now on for the worst part of this game...replay value. Sure NGBC has 45 awesome playable characters and when you have a friend the fun seems endless, but that's just the problem. If you don't have a friend to play with, you're only options are Arcade, Tag, Survival and Practice. In Arcade you only have to beat one of the opposing characters to win, like Tekken Tag, but in Tag you have to beat both like the Marvel Va. series, other than that they are both exactly the same. Survival and Practice are self explanatory. Also, online play was in the Japanese version but is taken out of this version (why does SNK keep doing that!?) so you can imagine how quickly this game fizzles when played solo.
This game plays pretty much like any other SNK fighting game. All things considered, though, this is definitely something fans will want to pick up! For everyone else, you should probably go with King of Fighters XI.