In The King of Fighters ALLSTAR, kicking butts is a fine art that you’ll need to quickly master if you want to stay alive. As is the case with other similar mobile games, you might feel compelled to simply mash buttons willy-nilly to beat the stages, and it might even work—at the beginning, at least. However, as you unlock tougher stages, you will need to become familiar with the intricacies of the combat in this game to stay safe while punching enemies left and right.

Sadly, other than a basic tutorial at the beginning, you’re left on your own to figure out how best to fight, as well as the strategies to use for your specific characters. Nevertheless, while explaining the latter would take a whole article in itself, we’re going to devote this guide to going over the combat basics of The King of Fighters ALLSTAR, as well as share a few general tips and tricks to survive against the toughest enemies.

The Basics of Combat

Like in many mobile games, fighting in The King of Fighters ALLSTAR is very straightforward. All it takes to perform a powerful punch is pressing the attack button. However, beyond that, you can also string potent combos together to launch your enemies in the air and juggle them for a bit before sending them crashing down. For those not familiar with fighting game slang, the term “juggle” refers to the act of attacking enemies while they’re in the air, helpless, and keeping them there with continued attacks so they can’t fight back.

While KoF ALLSTAR is not a proper fighting game, it still has some of the same principles such as the aforementioned juggling. Luckily, all it takes for stringing a powerful combo is to hold down the attack button and watching as your character unleashes on the enemy. This will be your bread and butter for most of the easier stages as most opponents will easily fall to several well-placed combos. However, when it comes to boss battles, you’ll never want to over-extend your combos since this is a surefire way to get slapped.

Some bosses in this game have some sort of “armor” that prevents them from getting stunlocked by your normal punches. This means that, even when you’re wailing on them, they can still counter-attack, usually with a powerful skill that can send you careening towards the sidelines. A basic principle of fighting bosses in King of Fighters is to always keep your distance and to only attack when an opening appears, such as after the boss performs a skill or finishes a string of combos.

Know Your Character

It goes without saying that every character in The King of Fighters is unique in many ways . Aside from offering a variety of skills, they also have different combos and attack animations, which vary in damage. For example, we chose Terry Bogard as our starting character, who has a standard 5-hit combo that launches enemies into the air. Meanwhile, Mai Shiranui, one of our other characters, has a powerful 8-hit combo that hits somewhat harder.

While Mai is a tad stronger than Terry at the start, you need to take care how you use her standard combo as the longer animations leave her exposed for a longer period. This means that you’re more likely to over-extend your offensive when playing as Mai, and will get punished because of it. In this sense, you need to get a feel for every character you unlock if you plan on using them. This will not only allow you to devastate any enemy with your combos, but also to avoid the counter-offensive and stay safe.

Keep Your Distance and Counterattack During an Opening

There will be times during certain story missions when you’ll run into an interference by enemy characters who will challenge you to a 1v1 fight. These fights take place in a more traditional fighting game format, with the characters locked in 2D arenas where they can only move forward or back, and without the ability to switch out their characters.

However, in all other aspects, these fights play pretty much like all the others in the game. You can still hold down the attack button to unleash on the enemy, and press the other buttons to use your skills. The catch here is that, while you can still launch and juggle your opponents, they get buffed with armor when they get up, meaning that you can’t stunlock them to death like with other enemies. Furthermore, since you’re locked in two dimensions, you really can’t dodge as well as you can during the regular game mode.

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This problem is further compounded when you’re up against hyper-aggressive enemies that never back down. When this happens, the best recourse is to keep your distance and wait until either they miss a combo attack or a skill, and then wail on them a few times. Once you’ve launched, juggled them, and let them fall to the ground, back out and wait for them to get up before baiting another attack.

With this simple strategy, you can defeat most tough enemies in this game; just remember to play it safe and to emphasize defense over offense at all times.

Learn the Different Element Types

Despite being mostly a beat ‘em up game, The King of Fighters ALLSTAR also has many RPG elements such as character progression, and upgrades, among others. Similarly, every character also has a unique element type that will affect their performance against certain enemies. There are 5 elemental colors, in total, each of which has a strength and a weakness.

Luckily, there’s always a handy indicator on the top of your battle screen that you can quickly glance to see whether or not your character has a positive type matchup against the enemy. Usually, whenever you have a character that is strong against the current enemies, you’ll also see a text bubble appear their portraits, suggesting that it’s their turn to fight. Your best bet is always to switch to these characters as the attack boost from targeting an enemy’s weakness is considerable.

To maximize your advantage against a number of different enemy compositions, make sure to keep a varied roster in your party. If all your characters belong to the same element, it’s easier to lose the advantage against enemies that they are weak to. It also helps if you’re playing on BlueStacks since you’ll have much better controls  that will allow you to bob and weave through enemy attacks while delivering crushing blows.

Nevertheless, even if the odds are against you, if you follow the tips we’ve recommended in this King of Fighters guide, you’ll have all you need to go up against the toughest foes in the game. Remember to keep at it; do all your daily challenges, collect your free stuff and, before you know it, you’ll be at the top of your game.

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