Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves review — Ronaldo highlights the game’s main issues

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves is a bittersweet game to write about. On the one hand, this feels like the most polished SNK game of the modern era, in terms of both graphics and gameplay. This is the new era of SNK in full-swing, and the team has worked to deliver the most satisfying possible return to the long-awaited return to the world of Fatal Fury. On the other hand, Fatal Fury almost feels as if it’s been turned into a marketing vehicle by SNK’s majority owners.

Let’s get the good news out of the way first. This is a genuinely fantastic sequel to a classic fighting game, and it feels like a bold step into the modern generation for SNK. Street Fighter and Tekken have continually raised the bar in the years since SNK’s golden era, and City of the Wolves manages to stand next to those games side-by-side. No, it’s not quite as high-budget as SF6 and Tekken 8, but the 3D, partially cel-shaded character models are animated beautifully with excellent keyframes and smears, and while some of the effects are a bit much, it never looks bad.

The fundamental mechanics are solid too. SNK experts will instantly know to hold button inputs for frame-one attacks, while the “Rev System” introduces some fresh – and familiar – flair to the proceedings. Enhanced versions of special moves are called Rev Arts, and these can be cancelled and linked into one another as long as you’re willing to spend your resources. Each Rev Art used fills your Rev Gauge, and once full, you Overheat and lose access to Rev techniques while being put at risk of a guard crush. It’s not just for offense though, as long as you have SPG active you can use Rev Blow to get enemies off you, and Rev Guard acts as the familiar push block mechanic.

SPG stands for “Selective Potential Gear” which is a silly name for an interesting mechanic. SPG activates at a certain point in your health bar, and you can set that to be the first, middle, and or last third of your health. SPG gives you access to the Rev Blow mechanic and your Hidden Gear ultimate attack, but also boosts your attack strength. These are powerful tools to have at your disposal, so the question of when in the fight you want access to them is a particularly potent one. Likewise, you should monitor where your opponent’s SPG is in their health bar, and try to work around it. It’s possible for a big combo to remove the SPG gauge before your foe even has a chance to use it, so you should attempt to take that chunk of health away quickly while also being wary of their boosted potential.

Combine these genuinely interesting mechanics with some reasonably varied and beautifully animated characters, and you have a recipe for success, at least in terms of the core fighting game crowd. The single-player content for the more casual crowd is a little bit light, but serviceable. An Arcade mode is present, and a single-player story is here in the form of Episodes of South Town. Here you will click on icons around a map of South Town, each one leading to a fight. Each battle rewards you with experience, allowing you to take on tougher battles. There’s a unique – but again, fairly light – story to see with each character you play the mode with as they explore South Town and meet familiar faces. It’s nowhere near as robust as SF6’s World Tour mode, and it doesn’t have the flair of a Tekken story, but jumping into rapid-paced battles is interesting enough to have you complete the story for at least one character.

Which brings us onto the roster, and the main source of contention. Despite earlier assurances that Saudi Arabia’s 96% ownership of SNK “doesn’t affect us in any way”, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves tells a different story. Controversial soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo joined Saudi club Al Nassr in 2023, and France24 sources report that the contract is being extended into mid 2026. Swedish Bosnian DJ Salvatore Ganacci is also popular in the region, earning criticism along with other stars for playing at the MDL Beast Soundstorm Festival in Riyadh. Both of these celebrities have links to Saudi Arabia, which has been criticised for a variety of human rights abuses, and now they’re guest characters in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.

These facts are going to massively affect how some people feel about the game, both depending on your moral compass, and how you feel about character slots being taken up by marketing gimmicks. We don’t have the full roster of the original Garou: Mark of the Wolves in the sequel, and while it’s nice to see new characters in the form of Preecha and Vox, it doesn’t feel so nice to be saddled with Ronaldo and Ganacci.

Let’s put aside the controversy for a second and nail down what’s wrong here. Both of these inclusions feel as if they’re taking dev time up instead of making characters the fans desperately want — all in the name of a massive cross-promotional marketing event, if Ganacci’s appearance at Wrestlemania is anything to go by (and yes, Wrestlemania being held in Saudi Arabia has come with its own list of controversies). These characters might be good for a few headlines, but they feel as if they cheapen the game by their inclusion, and that feels acute with Ronaldo.

Salvatore Ganacci confesses to being a lifelong fan of SNK games and the King of Fighters series, produced an original song that the game uses as a theme, and in-game is surprisingly cool. He’s a fighting game “joke character” in the same vein as Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter’s Norimaru — a character based on real-life comedian Noritake Kinashi. Only, that game was released in 1997, when it took considerably less dev time to include a “high effort” joke. The fans know this, it stings, but when seeing Ganacci fight in-game, his nonchalant mannerisms, smooth animations, and goofy moves make him hard to hate. He’s a real-life celebrity, yes, but the character of Salvatore Ganacci that has been built up in his music videos and performances makes for a surprisingly good fit for Fatal Fury. Better than The Walking Dead’s Negan appearing in Tekken 7, anyway.

Ronaldo, meanwhile, feels cheap. His in-game model barely resembles the man himself – it almost feels legally distinct – and playing as him is frankly uninteresting. You’ll probably want to play Ronaldo as soon as you jump into Fatal Fury, just for the bit if nothing else, but it’s a bad first impression. Ronaldo is awkward, stilted, and not terribly interesting to play. Jumping onto one of the other characters instead – even Ganacci – is a much more entertaining and enjoyable version of Fatal Fury. Not only that, but Ronaldo is not playable in the game’s Arcade mode, nor the Episodes of South Town story. If you look closer still, the game’s animated music video intro has fully animated sections showing off each character — except Ronaldo. He’s a still-frame piece of key art that floats into the screen for a few seconds before the real character showcase gets underway. Even Ganacci gets a moment. 

Ronaldo just doesn’t feel like he’s actually a part of the world of Fatal Fury, and it’s because of the design, the moveset, the presentation, the fact that he’s not available in select modes, and because he’s based on the man himself — all of it. It cheapens an otherwise fantastic fighting game package, and I wish it could be ignorable, but it’s not. It’s controversy on top of controversy, and it’s a massive stain on the genuinely brilliant work from the SNK team.

Ignorance is truly bliss, and while it was possible to ignore SNK’s owners before, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves makes it impossible. This should’ve been an unquestionable, rock-solid return to form for SNK fighters, but it’s bittersweet instead. The team at SNK has still got what it takes to make a visually appealing and mechanically satisfying fighting game – the kind that should be played on a main stage at massive tournaments – but it will split the audience more than ever before. 

That’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, a rock-solid fighting game where the less you know, the better.