{"id":448,"date":"2022-04-19T14:55:18","date_gmt":"2022-04-19T14:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=448"},"modified":"2022-04-19T14:55:18","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T14:55:18","slug":"kill-la-kill-if-pc-technical-review-if-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=448","title":{"rendered":"Kill La Kill IF PC technical review: If only"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

I present to you a list of all the good bits of the PC port of KILL la KILL \u2013 IF<\/i>, the new anime fighting thingy from Arc System Works: It runs at 60 FPS. You can redefine the keyboard controls. It\u2019s not even remotely system-intensive.<\/p>\n

For all the things it does poorly, read on.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t Kill la Kill your system<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

Welcome to Muddy Brown Environments: The Game.<\/p>\n

As is tradition, we\u2019ll start off by looking at how it runs. Considering the absurdly low system requirements, it\u2019s not a surprise that it runs just fine.<\/p>\n

Minimum specs:<\/b><\/p>\n

Processor: Intel Core i5-7500
\nMemory: 4 GB RAM
\nGraphics card: GeForce GTX760 2GB<\/p>\n

Writer\u2019s specs:<\/b><\/p>\n

Processor: Intel Core i7-3820
\nMemory: 16 GB RAM
\nGraphics card: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti<\/p>\n

So hey, the specs are incredibly low, and Kill la Kill If<\/i> (as I\u2019ll refer to it from now on) will probably run on a potato. Or, if not, then a toaster.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, those incredibly low minimum specs are indicative of a few other things.<\/p>\n

The options have been Kill la Killed<\/b><\/h2>\n

With specs like that, you\u2019re probably not expecting a huge amount of graphical options. Then again, those are<\/i> the minimum specs, so Kill La Kill If<\/i> may just be incredibly scalable. Right? Please?<\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not. Here are your graphical options.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

Yes, the max resolution is 1920\u00d71080, so that\u2019s a bit of a problem if you have a larger monitor and want to play fullscreen. The option covered by the dropdown box is \u201cShadows,\u201d which means that your options are Shadows On\/Off, Anti-Aliasing On\/Off, HDR Rendering On\/Off, and Particle Effects High\/Medium\/Low.<\/p>\n

Again, the plus side of this is that the game runs at 60 FPS regardless of what I do. The downside is that it\u2026 really doesn\u2019t look good no matter what. The characters generally look alright, but that\u2019s about the highest praise I can offer.<\/p>\n

Being an arena fighting game it\u2019s hard to get direct comparison screenshots, but you can see a few high\/low ones below.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

Title screen on high.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

Title screen on low.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

Some combat action on high.<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/p>\n

Some\u2026 different combat action on low.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

A flashy stance on high.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

A flashy stance on low.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

A victory stance on high.<\/p>\n

\"Kill<\/p>\n

A victory stance on low.<\/p>\n

What you can\u2019t see is the animation. I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s an artifact of the game running at 60 FPS (probably not, as I believe the PS4 version is the same), but Kill La Kill<\/i>\u2018s animation is\u2026 odd. Character movements, in particular, just don\u2019t look right: There\u2019s a weird pacing issue between the running animations and the actual distance they travel, so characters almost seem to be gliding weirdly along the floor while their legs move at an unrelated rate. Lip-syncing barely matches the things characters say. Not only that, but the actual arenas are dull and uninteresting at best. Considering the bright and flashy weirdness of the source material, the poor aesthetics are quite a disappointment.<\/p>\n

Clothing control<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"If<\/p>\n

Even when Kill La Kill If<\/em> manages a splash of color, things manage to look somewhat off.<\/p>\n

Control-wise, you want a gamepad \u2013 but that shouldn\u2019t come as any surprise for a fighting game. You can<\/i> theoretically play this on a keyboard, though. Analog controls are fairly pointless here: There\u2019s no camera control, and there\u2019s only one movement speed. And hey, you can redefine keys.<\/p>\n

The controls are simple enough, at least. If you\u2019ve played a simple arena fighter before, (Think the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm<\/i> series.) then this is along the same lines, albeit even simpler. You\u2019ve got a melee button, a ranged button, a guard break button, and a modifier that lets you do super attacks. No convoluted inputs required, though \u2013 surprisingly for an Arc System Works game \u2013 there doesn\u2019t seem to be a great deal of depth here.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a hard judgment call to make right now, mind you. I\u2019ve only played this to test out the PC version rather than to review the game itself, so it\u2019s possible there\u2019s a lot more to it than I\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n

The Grand Couturier would be disappointed<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You can tell this is a different environment because it\u2019s sort of grey, blurry, and murky rather than brown, blurry, and murky.<\/p>\n

Moving past the controls, though, the visuals aren\u2019t the only area that\u2019s left feeling unpolished. Indeed, the entire game<\/i> feels that way. The subtitle text flickers regularly. Voice clips in battle stop and start unnaturally, most noticeably when hitting an enemy with a combo. One opponent shouts \u201ckuso\u201d on taking a hit, which is fine in principle. In practice, the opponent says it every time you hit them. Including every hit of a combo. Which means that you get a \u201cKu-kus-kus-ku-kuso\u201d shout with a five-hit combo.<\/p>\n

There are loads of little things like this that just drag Kill La Kill If<\/i> down a huge amount. It simply doesn\u2019t feel like a polished, finished product; it\u2019s one in need of a huge amount of further refinement and care. Considering the potential here \u2013 an official what-if scenario exploring how things could<\/i> have gone \u2013 that\u2019s a little bit crushing if you have any love for the source material.<\/p>\n

A decapitated port<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It just\u2026 doesn\u2019t look right.<\/p>\n

Kill La Kill If<\/i> isn\u2019t the worst port I\u2019ve ever seen. Some games have managed to bring shovels to already low bars of port expectations, and this isn\u2019t nearly that bad. But just because it\u2019s not one of the worst doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s good.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sloppy, frankly. There\u2019s little scalability on offer, no support for resolutions above 1080p, and it\u2019s full of little niggling issues that just drag it down a little bit more every couple of minutes. I can\u2019t say I\u2019m thrilled with the gameplay I\u2019ve seen \u2013 my initial impressions are that Kill La Kill If<\/i> is a shallow and aesthetically drab arena fighting game with eight characters and two character variants \u2013 but even were I gobsmacked by the way it played, I\u2019d have a hard time recommending this particular version to even the most fervent of Kill La Kill<\/i> fans.<\/p>\n

Alas, on PC at least, you\u2019re probably going to want to pass on this one. Satsuki Kiryuin\u2019s tale might be a fascinating one, but this really isn\u2019t a good way to unravel those threads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I present to you a list of all the good bits of the PC port of KILL la KILL \u2013 IF, the new anime fighting thingy from Arc System Works: It runs at 60 FPS. You can redefine the keyboard controls. It\u2019s not even remotely system-intensive. For all the things it does poorly, read on. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[631,632],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}