There's another AOF tribute when King fights Ryo. During their conversation, the pre-fight conversation music from AOF 1 will play. Once the match begins, a newly arranged version of King's music from AOF 1 will play. I thought that was really nifty.
Beyond that, some other quick impressions:
Beat story mode with the AOF team and the Women's team.
The game flows extremely well, and basic combos feel much easier to pull off, which makes me very happy. The light punch auto-combo, while doing less overall damage, is a great and easy way to finish off an opponent.
Controls are very solid, however there were some quirks. The biggest one is Robert's Gen'ei Kyaku (his multi-kick move), which despite very deliberately pressing only left-right-left (or vice versa), will come out as his Ryuuren: Gen'eikyaku (the throw version of the same move) about 90% of the time. This constantly left me whiffing the move, and was pretty frustrated. It comes out easier using the analog stick, but I prefer to use the d-pad.
Movelists for some older characters like Ryo and King feel anemic. Others like Yuri are fleshed out well. I really miss Mai's slide kick and King's Double Strike.
The graphics are better than people give it credit for. As with before, the only real sore point with me is that everyone looks like plastic dolls with kind of generic faces. Beyond that, no complaints.
Backgrounds are well done, though aren't as active as KOF 13's, which I miss.
The voice acting is disappointing. Its jarring hearing Kyo, Iori, Terry, Ryo, Robert, and others sound totally different after two decades of the same voice (or in Robert's case, voices). Of all of them, I miss Terry's original VA the most. His new VA just doesn't quite have that loud confidence and subtle optimism that was so apparent before.
The music is eh, but I'm sure it'll grow on me in time. It sounds very processed and artificial. Its also a fair bit quieter than your standard SNK fighting game, so it would be worth your while to crank the music volume up in the settings.
Story mode is basically arcade mode, which is fine. I wouldn't mind a more fleshed out story in the future though.
The artbook is really nice and definitely worth the purchase of the premium edition.
. Kukri is pretty cool, and seems like hes a simple character, that has some character specific stuff to make him stand out. 
