I got to lpay a couple hours of this at a friend's place this week, and was pretty pleasantly surprised. It plays like a middle-of-the-road King of Fighters. Not mind-blowing, but nothing was botched, and I usually take a while to warm up to new fighting games. The transition to 3D went as well as I could've reasonably expected. Again, doesn't look beautiful, but not bad by any means. A lot of special moves feel like they are closer-range than I would've expected, but I think I feel that way about most KOF games after playing more Capcom-y fighters. This is a solid B- in my book, and that rating will probably go up once I've had more time with it.
Oh, and it has an actual character roster, unlike Street Fighter 5. I'd WAY sooner buy KOF 14 than SFV; KOF is a complete game right out of the box, whereas SFV has that nickle-and-dime shit. $30 just to unlock the first 5 additional characters comes out to $6, or one burrito, per character. No thank you.