Everything To Know About Fatal Fury: City of Wolves
Last year at EVO following the King of Fighters grand finals, the FGC was treated to the reveal of the newest entry into the Fatal Fury series. Now eight months later, SNK has given us all an even deeper look into the new game now known as "Fatal Fury: City of Wolves" with two new trailers. The videos give additional insight into the mechanics of the game and what some of the characters that we can expect. Currently, the game is slated for an early 2025 release date, which means a whole year before we get our hands on the game.
(this article will be updated as more information is revealed)
What is Garou/Fatal Fury?
If you haven't been playing fighting games for a while you might not be as familiar with Fatal Fury or Garou as say Street Fighter. But SNK's 2D series was a strong competitor to Street Fighter in the early 90's. The game revolved around the story of Terry and Andy Bogard and their quest for revenge against their father's killer Geese Howard. If you've played Smash Ultimate or Tekken 7 recently, these names should look familiar. Alongside Fatal Fury's sister series, "Art of Fighting", the game would go on to evolve into the King of Fighters games that persist to this day.
In 1999, Fatal Fury finally received a direct sequel known as Garou: Mark of the Wolves. This game saw Terry mentor Geese's son, Rock Howard, as the new protagonist of the series. Garou is beloved by many fighting game fans as one of SNK's best and a sequel is sure to excite fans around the world.
What's New In Fatal Fury: City of Wolves?
In the first video shared from SNK, we get a brief look at the gameplay for CoW and a number of mechanics coming to the game. The first is "Rev Guard" which looks like your primary defensive option. Most many modern fighting games now have a resource eating pushblock that helps alleviate pressure and Rev Guard looks to be that option here.
Next up is "Rev Blow" which resembles "T.O.P Attacks" from the original Garou. In that game, your character would gain access an attack that did extra damage to block meter when in T.O.P. What's new is that these new Rev Blow attacks seem to be cancelable from special moves which would open up offense by a great deal.The last two are more standard for SNK. The "Rev Arts" seem to be your standard "EX" or meter-enhanced special moves. While the "Rev Accel" looks like the ability to cancel special moves into other special moves at the cost of some meter, which also helps you keep up offensive pressure.
Needless to say with such a small sample size and scant information, some of these mechanics could change or get fleshed out in the coming months. But getting a look at a much faster, offensive take on Garou is a change from the more methodical first game.
What Characters Are In Fatal Fury: City of Wolves?
In the much longer second video, we got a glimpse of three newly announced characters in addition to Terry and Rock. Two of them, Hotaru and Tizoc, are returning fighters from the original Garou. While the final one, Preecha, is brand new to the series.
Hotaru was a fan-favorite from Garou and functions as the female deuteragonist to Rock Howard. Even though her character is clam and reserved, she's a seriously aggressive rushdown character. She can attack from any angle with diagonal dragon punches, a divekick, a slow projectile that allows her to get in and the ability to cancel out other's fireballs. Almost all of her kit from Garou seems to be returning for CoW, so expect her to be very popular.
Tizoc is Garou's resident grappler character (he also may or may not be KoF's King of Dinosaurs). Because of this, he's big and slow but CoW seems to address this by giving him some mobility options. In one move, he seems to have a dash grapple which could help with his slow movement speed. But other than that, he looks very similar to his Garou iteration.
Preecha is the character we know the least about but there's some speculation about who she is. Fatal Fury often revolved around Terry and Andy, but they were often accompanied by their best friend Joe Higashi, the games resident Muay Thai practitioner. In Garou, both Terry and Andy have spiritual successors Rock and Hokutomaru respectively. Preecha seems to be Joe's. She's a Muay Thai fighter and uses the power of wind/hurricanes to enhance her attacks just like Joe.
When Does Fatal Fury: City of Wolves Release?
We don't have a solid release date for the game just yet, but SNK did give a release window of Early 2025. While that could mean January it could also mean late March. At this time, there doesn't seem to be any further indication as to when exactly CoW will come out. However, much of the game looks polished already, so hopefully the game won't suffer any delays.
