The King of Fighters 2002 UM: Yuri, Single Mode, Difficulty 7
This was done on the Steam version of the game with a PS4 controller.
Check out the full run here.
Now this is a game that came out of left field for me. I’ve always been a casual fan of fighting games, but never taken the time to practice one with the goal of clearing it. I saw this game on sale and said “f*** it, let’s do it”.
Essentially what I did was practice enough to clear the Single Play mode on difficulty 7 (the highest in settings). I spent some time in practice mode learning Yuri’s basic combos and moves, but most time was spent grinding runs. Planned for lowest tier final boss and ended up free-styling the middle tier instead. Caught me off guard but still clutched it out at the end. Got washed by Omega Rugal but we’ll get to that later.
Not much to talk about for this one, but I’ll dump what I learned below along with links to resources.
I messed around with a handful of characters in practice mode before settling on Yuri. No real reason other than she is fun to play. Interestingly, it seemed like the AI had a hard time handling some of her moves, which helped a ton during the final fight against Cloned Zero. In particular her Rai Oh Ken air projectile damn near connects every time. Her Super Slash had a great connect rate as well during normal matches.
Clearing the normal fights on difficulty 7 can be done by just playing the game. It sounds obvious but that’s all I did was play continuously. That is until the boss fights. SNK makes KoF boss fights intentionally unfair and you can feel it. Attacks are feel instantaneous and do a ton of damage. The only effective way to fight I found was to cheese them. Lame but it works. When I fought Krizalid a few times I spammed Rai Oh Ken and Slash kicks between his tornado kick attacks. For Cloned Zero I spammed Rai Oh Ken basically the whole time. It’s a slog but it can be done and is fairly consistent.
After defeating the main boss, you could get a bonus fight with Omega Rugal depending on a few factors (I’m honestly not sure what they are). I think there is some kind of Rank system that determines the boss you fight at the end? There is a scoring system in place that rewards you for things like winning back to back and perfects. A boss guide I read said finishing match 5 with certain special moves can trigger specific boss fights, but through my own playing I’m not sure that’s the case. Either way, Omega Rugal will wash you. The unfair factor is cranked even further up with him.
Overall a fun time. Might even try KoF 98’ next.
Here are some resources I used:
Boss Guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=709870627
Yuri Movelist and Guide: https://www.dreamcancel.com/wiki/The_King_of_Fighters_2002_UM/Yuri_Sakazaki
