izigame.me

Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades
Fighting game developers tend to go off the beaten path at times, especially when they are going to switch to the next generation of technologies, using what they already have to make one final game before moving on with future projects. Capcom did taht once with Capcom Fighting Evolution, and it felt like a cashgrab because of how it was. SNK Heroines on the other hand, doesn't really feel like a cashgrab made with leftovers from KOF 14 and has an identity for itself, but it's also not something that justifies its asking price either.
This is what no maidens does to a MF
SNK Heroines takes the one character with badass design from The King of Fighters XIV, and turns him into a guy who has a cursed thirst for maidens (to the point one of the playable characters tells him to go touch grass) and when he doesn't get any, he tries to forcefully build a harem with every single woman in the world. But not before kidnapping the ones he previously met in a fighting tournament, putting them in a pocket dimension and dressing them up according to whatever weird fetish he has. Not to mention the guy is so down bad that he goes to the length of genderbending Terry Bogard and resurrecting Shermie from the land of the dead as well.
I am not kidding. That's the whole plot of the game. The game doesn't take its story very seriously, and the rest of the game follows suit. And this results in a fighting game that is pretty hard to recommend to the fans of the genre.
Fight Angel... but actually competent...
Okay, allow me to be completely direct with you: This is not KOF. Don't expect KOF. Hell, don't even expect a traditional fighting game. SNK Heroines acts more as an enjoyable game (especially for local gatherings) rather than a competitive fighting game. And also a way for people to see their favorite SNK heroines in interesting outfits and poses, and playing dress up with them. Think of Fight Angel, but if it was actually a competently made fighting game.
The gameplay of SNK Heroines is oversimplified. If I try to explain the combat system here in detail, I will make it look more difficult that what it really is, so I'll just leave the details to the game itself and explain the basics: Each match only has one round. You only have a weak and strong attack, with the weak attack actually being an auto combo of 3 consecutive hits. All special moves are performed by holding the analog stick in a direction and pressing a button. The special meter fills up much faster than other games. You cannot sit down and use low attacks anymore. And finally, the win condition is changed so you can only win by finishing the opponent with a super attack when their health is in a critical state.
There are a bunch of other stuff you'll find out about when you play the game, such as the titular tag team combat, but what I mentioned above suffices to show you how simplified this game's battle system is. And the result of such battle system is a fighting game that is incredibly easy to learn. You just need to finish the tutorial mode and get into some story matches, and you'll immediately be able to perform lengthy combos with ease, without the gameplay feeling like a braindead button masher. However, the game doesn't really feel fun to play because it doesn't give you enough content to mess around with.
HOW MANY HOURS?!
SNK Heroines is incredibly barebones when it comes to the amount of available content, as you can unlock everything this game has to offer in FOUR HOURS!
I am NOT joking here. It took me precisely 3 hours and 18 minutes to finish 19 battles in survival mode TWICE, unlock every single costume and accessory, buy every gallery and photo mode item, buy all of the profile titles and finish the story mode with all 7 special team combinations, all while also goofing around in the menus, leading to a %100 game completion and unlocking %72 of the game's achievements along the way. And I still have 257K gold left to spend on nothing after doing all that!
The battle system is very simplified and additional rounds are removed. This means matches can be completed extremely fast, to the point a normal story playthrough (6 normal matches + boss) on default difficulty settings can be finished as fast as 10 minutes! Believe me, I timed it with Steam Overlay. And there's not much in the game to be entertained with. You only get access to story/arcade, survival, versus and online modes, with all of them not having much replayability value. Online mode is dead and requires you to find players to fight against, and the game itself kills the replayability factor of all of the other modes.
And why do I say that? Because the game's economy and unlock system is broken. The game gives you way too much gold after completing story and survival modes, and puts incredibly low prices on the stuff you can buy. The economy system is so broken that after completing the game with all 7 special team combinations, you will most likely have the money to buy everything aside from an unlockable credits music. You can unlock every cutscene, movie, music and artwork by playing through the story, but you can also buy all of them with the exception of special team illustrations. Sure, this makes it easier to unlock stuff by eliminating the tedious grind of finishing the game with all possible team combinations, but on the other hand, what's the point of playing more of the game if everything ends too fast and I get nothing of value in return? A sense of pride and accomplishment? How do you go from content-rich games like KOF XIII and KOF XIV to this?
Oh yeah... that...
THE FANSERVICE
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the sole reason the game exists and why many would be drawn to it in the first place.
Have you ever wanted to see Mai Shiranui with even less clothing? Or anyone else from KOF XIV for that matter? Well, boy howdy I have news for you! You can actually have that in SNK Heroines as you can already see from the game's screenshots. And truth be told, they really worked on this part of the game.
Nearly every single character in the game is dressed in revealing outfits by default, with extra and classic costumes available in other slots for whoever wants to use them. And the thing is, some of the costumes actually look pretty damn good and I really don't mind bringing some of them back in future games. One look into the deluxe edition artbook reveals even more amazing costume ideas that never made it to the game, with some being genuinely good-looking and some others that will certainly make the more enthusiastic fans curse SNK for not quenching their thirst.
The game also allows you to edit the looks of each character and even offers you a photo mode with a really high number of accessories, stickers, backgrounds and filters to customize your characters and scenes with. For example, you can choose from stylized designs, ending artworks, game's stages and pictures of real locations (like the actual SNK headquarters!) as the backgrounds. And then you can put a filter like the camera lens, tablet screen, magazine cover or wanted poster on it to finish it up.

TL;DR
SNK Heroines certainly feels fun to play and even more so with some friends, but its unique gameplay and the miserable amount of content make it incredibly hard to recommend to fighting game fanatics.