Test Out The King Of Fighters XV Beta Starting Tonight

It’s time to break out and dust off your arcade sticks and prepare for a weekend of 3v3 battles in The King of Fighters XV open beta.

Starting tonight at 7 p.m. Pacific and running until 7 a.m. Pacific on November 22, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 owners will have the opportunity to go hands-on with eight characters out of the final roster of 39 that will be available at launch. The primary function of this beta will be to test out the online multiplayer before the game releases in a couple of months. KOF, for the first time in its history, will include rollback netcode starting from day 1. This is to make it easier to connect to people across long distances online. 

The KOFXV beta will include both offline and online modes. There is also a training mode that allows players to practice character attacks, workshop combinations, and strategies in a controlled environment. Five modes total will be present during the beta: Casual Match and Room Match for the online portion, giving players a taste of what matchmaking and lobbies will look like, while offline warriors can look forward to the aforementioned Training as well as Versus and a tutorial.

King of Fighters XV will have you build teams of three characters to duke it out by one against someone else’s chosen trio. The game has no tag mechanic and you can only play your next team member if they lose. Therefore, it is important to order the characters. The following list shows the characters you can play during this weekend’s test.

• Kyo Kusanagi
• Iori Yagami
• Chizuru Kagura
• Shun’ei
• Delores
• Shermie
• Chris
• Yashiro

Every character is a member of a team that can be seen in King of Fighters’ story. However, you have the option to mix and match as many characters as you like. SNK released a PDF primer on the KOFXV beta. You can find it here. The primer provides a brief overview on the testing process and highlights some of the issues that developers already know about (such as the fact that throws sometimes can desynchronize matches). 

The King of Fighters XV should be available on February 17th, 2022. Although this beta will not be made available for PlayStation consoles, it will still be accessible on PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 4 Xbox One.

What team is yours for this weekend’s KOFXV Beta Test? Is it something you are looking forward to? Please comment below.