SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy (Switch)

Fighting games have played host to many female characters even from their earliest days, some of the earliest video game heroines of note being characters like Chun Li from the Street Fighter series, and even SNK’s Mai Shiranui came from a devoted effort to include a lady fighter in Fatal Fury 2. A great way to add variety to a roster of interesting fighters, SNK would go on to create many more women across other fighting franchises like The King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown, so a game bringing them together to celebrate such a wide range of heroines is a fun idea for a spin-off and SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy is actually the second effort to do so. SNK Gals’ Fighters was on the less than successful Neo Geo Pocket Color though, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy a chance to retry the concept on stronger and more popular hardware, although the crossover has definitely leaned more into aesthetics this time around.

 

There are 14 playable heroines before you factor in a set of four purchasable DLC characters, but one thing that holds true for almost the entire base roster is all of them have been dressed up in quite a departure from their usual outfits. Mai Shiranui, usually seen in a ninja outfit that isn’t afraid to show off her figure, has her curves embraced even more by a cow-themed bikini. Nakoruru’s traditional Japanese clothing contrasts quite heavily with her new vampiress look with its thin stringy composition. Mian, usually a masked dancer with almost no skin showing, instead contends with a very high cut dress that shows off her long legs. Consideration isn’t often given for an outfit that suits the character’s history or behavior, the pirate Love Heart for example dressed like a cop while Mui Mui’s traditional Chinese touches are swapped out entirely for a Little Bo Peep inspired get up that is actually a bit more modest than most of the girls’ default outfits in the roster. More familiar clothing reminiscent of their source material is always available as a second costume while a third outfit takes things in even stranger outfits like Love Heart getting a Mexican bandito look, giant mustache and all. You can earn coins to lightly customize each look, mostly with accessories or headwear, but while many looks are over the top or indulgent, it’s hard to act like all of them were designed simply for eye candy. Athena’s magical girl outfit and Kula Diamond’s leather look can feel a bit fashionable, and Sylvie Paula Paula’s strangeness is suited well by the unusual eyeballs adorning her otherwise minimalist hospital gown look. Even Terry Bogard, fresh off being transformed into a lady, transitions his usual look into something that is definitely a bit skimpy but not a bad look if you are trying to design a desirable female character. It almost makes the more mundane ideas like a bikini cat outfit for Leona disappointing even if you do find her attractive, the artistic direction trying more with some ladies than others.

These unusual outfits all have a canonical explanation here though, so it’s not just the ladies of SNK deciding to show off some skin. Instead, the various women find themselves awakening in an alternate world ruled over by a mysterious hooded figure… or at least, sometimes he’s a mystery depending on the two heroines you pick for a quick run through of the story. The main villain is a recognizable figure from The King of Fighters, but depending on your characters, they might not cotton on right away who he is or the first words out of their mouth might be them blurting out his name as they immediately figure it out. Whether your character is quick to keen to his identity or entirely in the dark, she and a tag team partner are being thrown into violent competition with other pairs of fighters, the losers being transformed into permanent pieces of the hooded figure’s collection. The same figure is the one who designed and applied the new outfits to the participating women, but the game doesn’t make any effort to hide that he is very much perverted and doing this for skeevy reasons. You’ll face him at the end of the game’s short Story mode which is mostly just a set of back to back battles with other ladies from the roster, although even if you don’t own the DLC the four add-on characters can appear in it so it isn’t necessarily a full roster tour. There are unique but short ending scenes for each lady and their tag partner actually influences a few bits of dialogue, but how meaningful they are is inconsistent. Mui Mui and Zarina come up with an imaginary identity for the villain they use in their intro and scene prior to the final boss, but between battles you often see a character on their own and Zarina will outright say the villain’s name before forgetting it during the finale. It’s clear things are being stitched together, but it is nifty to see there are small touches for your specific pair and the Story mode is short enough that running through it 7 times to see the character specific endings is a touch more interesting as a result.

 

As for how SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy plays, it tries to find a middle ground between simplicity and depth and doesn’t feel like it quite lands at a comfortable spot. There are three main attack buttons (as well as throw that requires you to be pretty close for it to work), weak attack, strong attack, and special all able to be pressed on their own or with a direction to produce different attacks. This does mean it’s fairly easy to perform a desired attack when you want to and learning specific special moves for each character helps set them apart. Some characters have proper projectiles, others might unleash some element like ice or lightning with their specials, but a few do seem to lean mostly on enhanced attacks like a more powerful leg strike, but even if a special is underwhelming, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy won’t let it look like so. Every attack in the game will unleash a spray of effects when it lands, these often being things like cute animal emojis or strange shapes and objects like cooking ingredients. In fact, it can get a bit hard to see what’s going on during some moves that rapidly send out blasts of these odd effects, but often if you’re caught in a combo, your options for escape aren’t too great. While the attack inputs are pretty simple and easy to learn, most characters do have some pretty optimal combo sequences to learn, and gradually feeling them out is a nice process for a starting player but also unfortunately important once you start playing stronger human players or set the game’s difficulty higher. It becomes fairly common for a match of SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy to boil down to who can get their long string of moves going with some combos being long enough to tear through the game’s unusually small life bars. There’s also little room to stray from an optimal combo, and the tag team mechanics won’t save you if you just got torn apart by one either.

The life bar is shared between both fighters on your side in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, but swapping out does have a vital purpose. The reason the life meter is so small in this fighting game is because it is actually sharing space with your Spirit Gauge, this energy pulled from for special moves and should you run out, your moves will be much weaker. However, the less life you have, the more special energy you can have since its bar expands to fill the empty space. When someone is waiting to be tagged in their Spirit Gauge increases much more quickly, meaning you can potentially exhaust one character and then swap in the reserve to try and clinch it, but you can’t defeat the opponent with just regular moves. Once they hit a low enough health, you must then land a Dream Finish. Dream Finishes can be blocked like regular attacks and often require you to combo into them differently due to the specific ranges of effects they’ll have, and while some are meant to be flashy, if they work the battle will end and the screen fading out covers what is meant to be the cool looking finisher. On the other hand, Kula’s grab turning someone briefly into an icy snowman is cooler looking than her just hitting them with a big block of ice, so Dream Finishes aren’t always inspired but still an important part of actually finishing a match. Matches can be surprisingly quick even with this requirement to land a specific type of attack to wrap it up, this again tying back to that puny health bar that doesn’t allow matches to truly get going before they’re over.

 

While it can feel like you’re funneled into certain combo routes and more casual players can’t hold a candle to people who can juggle them once they know them, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy does throw in items to add another layer to how you can handle a fight. Floating yellow pick-ups can be hit with attacks to give you a mostly random item you can then unleash in some interesting ways. You can have it appear right over the enemy or choose to have the item land in front of them or behind them, meaning you can try to account for the opponent’s movements or use it as a bit of a desperate way to break out of a combo. Some are pretty simple like a bomb flying in or a washtub coming down from above, but others like a giant rolling ball slowly cross the stage and perform better area denial. You can place a mine on the ground, douse the foe in poison, or even cause a rather buff fellow to smash down and briefly stun both players if you aren’t careful. Some are even as simple as healing you up a bit or giving you more Spirit, and there are even character specific items where your tag team partner will influence what effect occurs. When a supporter can unleash a burst to end a combo you’re trapped in or lay down a healing field you can stand in, it feels like your tag team set up feels more important, but the somewhat random nature of the items does mean this interesting element is more based on luck rather than a factor you can really make a game plan around.

 

Outside of Story and typical multiplayer competitive options, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy only really has the Survival mode to tackle where you fight battles back to back until you lose, the mode concept fine but it does feel like there could have been more trials to attempt to make the game more interesting to return to. The tutorial is at least very good at explaining how the game works, but it feels like even the customization was half-hearted since you can’t even construct full on outfits. With most of the roster also coming from the then fairly recent The King of Fighters XIV, it feels like not too much thought was put into the experience that shows in its overall shallowness.

THE VERDICT: SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy wants to be fun and simple and yet characters have combos that can almost wipe out the opposition entirely once you learn them. Making certain special moves easy to execute is a fine idea but things crumble against a good inescapable string of attacks, but there are some interesting systems at play like the items that do help to introduce unexpected complications to the 2 on 2 battles. The life bars feel paltry and Dream Finishes being necessary to wrap up battles thins how players engage with each other near a battle’s close. While it could have been a chance to embrace the lovely ladies of SNK’s history and it has a surprising amount of callbacks and references at parts, mostly SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy feels like it’s trying to hide some of its sloppiness behind style and simplicity.

 

And so, I give SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy for Nintendo Switch…

A BAD rating. Revealing outfits feels like a convenient scapegoat for SNK should they find people weren’t too keen on this tag team fighter, but ultimately SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy doesn’t seem to understand how to delineate the audiences its courting. The heroines here are dressed up to be eye candy, but if the aim is to have an easy low pressure fighter, it gets in the way of that with the need for precise combos if you want to hold your own against tougher opponents. The simple inputs don’t often transfer to satisfying fighting styles, especially since special moves pull from a meter despite often just being more interesting attacks to throw into your sequence rather than something game changing. They seem more like they do so to drain the Spirit Gauge to make using the Dream Finishes harder but Dream Finishes are a bit underwhelming in general both visually and in how pulling them off feels for both players. Fishing for the set-up or playing overly defensive to try and avoid letting it occur make the battle’s all too quick ending not as interesting as the mindgames of trying to deplete the last bit of someone’s health more traditionally. Dream Finishes can at least be used as just a hard-hitting regular move for an interesting shake-up, and the items do feel like they’re almost on the right track for making the tag team element feel a bit more meaningful. Having the person in the back more than just a reserve could have made battles more exciting, but mostly it feels like SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy needs to pick its lane more clearly. Deliberate simple attacks that can link together a touch are commonly effective in more casual fighters and they can often be more visually impressive to sell their increased power, but SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy just sends out a burst of distracting visual noise with each attack that can even mask what the character is actually doing. There are definitely members of the roster with some fluid and fun combos to execute, but there are not enough single player options to warrant frequent revisits nor is the multiplayer likely to become a favorite as doesn’t feel as rewarding or smooth as games that lie in either direction of the weak complexity middle ground it settled on.

 

SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy doesn’t really feel like a celebration of SNK’s best ladies, not enough love put into the game’s fighting systems or modes of play to make it all that entertaining. While the story attempts to be self-aware about putting its women in skimpy outfits, it ends up feeling a little less silly when it does start seeming like the game is mostly an excuse to do so. The areas with depth feel at odds with those without them, players pulling off incredible attack strings and then just fishing for their basic Dream Finish combo after since regular attacks lose their purpose. When skill levels align there can be some interesting fights as you try to utilize items strategically or have the same range on how much damage you can deal after an opener, but otherwise SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy lets a lot of mess get in the way of its fighting action.