I'm farting around with it this morning between work meetings. It definitely has a cleaner look than XIV. No one's going to confuse it with Guilty Gear or other graphics showcase games but it's totally serviceable. The interface is nice too. Changing characters and missions in the tutorial modes happens very fast (no obnoxious transitions), the UI is clean and unobtrusive and the PC version has really nice scalability (you can run it in as low as 480x360 and people have mentioned being able to get it up and going on 5-year-old potato laptops with APUs).
Damage output is definitely higher than XIV and being able to do EX moves outside of Max mode is gonna make for some filthy combos. I've already seen 1-meter combos with Vanessa and others that do >50%. Don't particularly care for the new characters (Ilsa looks fucking stupid and her moves have goofy hitboxes, Dolores looks awesome but her moveset does nothing for me) but at least they ditched most of the characters I hated from XIV (Paula Paula can eat a fat dick).
I've seen people complaining about the "story" mode just being a handful of fights with an opening and closing CG scene and a bunch of special endings for certain themed teams but KoF always had minimal storytelling and the lore was always shoved between the cracks. Haven't fought the boss yet but I heard she's cheap as shit (as an SNK boss should be). I do like that they did more character pre-fight intros even if a lot of them are nonsensical. KoF was one of the first games to really lean in to the special character interactions and it's good to see that coming back.
I'll have more to say after a few days worth of play (you can't really judge a fighting game until people start breaking it open) but this is definitely a much better product than 14 and, so far, a better game.
Edit:
Hey whats up xb74, honest question…
Why wait for a review/someone else’s opinion when the modes list, details, and online playable beta was available for free for so long? The gameplay has been free to try for a long while and many of us have been demoing the game since the free open demos from last year.
This. I can understand wanting to gauge the general reactions from fans but in addition to all of this, the full game's been out in the wild for a week. There's a metric ton of gameplay and reactions from everyone from online websites (which who gives a shit what some dummy from IGN thinks?), serious fighting game players and SNK fans.