Heroes K.O

***Heroes K.O*** is a fighting game developed by Bandai Namco and Round 1 Industries and published by Imaginate.

*Heroes K.O* is a spin-off of the *Heroes* series and the first fighting game in the *Heroes* series. The game also has a association with Newgrounds with various music by users from the website.

The game is a celebration and a collaboration of the *Heroes* series' 7th anniversary for having many characters, stages and soundtracks. With that, they have characters, stages and music from various *Heroes* games from the past and the present such as *Heroes Battlefortress*, *Heroes RPG*, *Heroes Kingdoms* and *Heroes Unmasked*.

The game was released on March 6th, 2020 as a full complete release after the developmental early release from November 8th, 2019. While it was still in development, it was going to be called *Heroes Crusade* but the team wanted to give the title a better name. *Heroes K.O* was later released on the Imaginate Neo Reo on March 12th, 2021 in commemorate the game's first anniversary. The Neo Reo version has an alternative title known as ***Heroes K.O+*** by including all the DLC Fighters from Waves 1 and 2. Those who got the game physically gets a free code of Wave 3's DLC Fighters. However, in the Dreamlock version, players have to buy it with in-game money.

*Heroes K.O* competes with the likes of other fighting games such as *Dragon Ball FighterZ*, *Killer Instinct (2013)* and *Street Fighter V*.

## Gameplay

### **Combat**

*Heroes K.O* features 1 versus 1 combat during the beta and the final release of the game until in May, it has a new mode featuring 3 versus 3 combat. Once and awhile, you can fight with another player or CPU if you like to challenge another foe.

The gameplay borrows elements from *Street Fighter*, *Marvel VS. Capcom* and *BlazBlue*.

### **K.O Variants**

Depending on how much chaos is going on, there are chances that a player will activate various K.Os. If a player completely defeats their opponent without losing health for the first, second or third round (and sometimes not using their Super), They'll get a Destructive K.O. If the player defeats their opponent by ending the fight with their Super being activated, it is considered as a ANNIHILATIVE K.O.

## Characters

These are the characters that appeared throughout the *Heroes* series. In this table, it listed the characters who have appeared in one of the games that they debuted and what type of character they are such as a weak, medium and strong character. They also have a ability type as well such as imaginative, sorcerer, blade, fire, firearm or ice. There is another section of how to get them, defaulted in the roster or DLC.

### Other

 Determined
 Custom Character

### Wave 4

A 4th wave was announced by Imaginate on February 25th, 2022. It will feature 4 characters from new and old installments of the Heroes series. Those including:

 Jaibrain
 Allison
 Sakura

#### Stages

These are the stages that appeared throughout the *Heroes* series and this one. In this table, it listed the stages that appeared in one of the games.

## Music

The music was composed by various music artists and composers. Most of the soundtrack was composed by notable users from Newgrounds, a website where users can make and publish flash games, music, artworks and flash animations. The most notable one was Waterflame, best known for his soundtrack on Newgrounds and YouTube, in which some of his music were added into popular games such as *Castle Crashers* and *Geometry Dash*.

## Story

The story begins with Liberty training with Roy. After training, Jason came up and said that they are invited to Royalopolis' Knockdown Championship Tournament, where people who are brawlers, sworders or firearms can face one on one each other in the no matter what if they are willing to do it for glory or for the better. So they went. While they are in the tournament, Liberty was marked for a super match later on during the tournament, couple of minutes later and she is now facing against Beegirl, a girl with bee powers and a fencer. Before Liberty and Beegirl blow their final hit against each other, they were interrupted by Negaman his sidekick Ultra who are invading the world with his minions. Beegirl vanished while Liberty, Jason and Roy faces off against his minions. After the battle, Negaman informs them that all of their friends have been corrupted and thus making the corruptions, a glowing being whose target is to brainwash any hero. With no time to waste, the 5 quickly goes on a fighting adventure to find those heroes who are corrupted.

After they managed to get everyone back from being corrupted and defeating various villains from the past, Liberty and the heroes along with the help of Bubblegum are ready to fight against Negaman and Ultra and their mega army once and for all. After defeating the two and their army, they use merge rings to merge into one being, known as Nega Ultra. With the power of the Eternal Sapphires, Jason, Liberty and Roy becomes Unlimit Jason, Liberty and Roy, as they face off against the super evil Nega Ultra. After defeating him, the two villains merged out from Nega Ultra with Ultra fading away to death. With Negaman flying away and wanting to have revenge against the heroes, the heroes celebrates to victory until massive beings emerges from the clouds. It is Admin and Vengeance, the gods of order and disorder. Admin's concern is that the main character's actions don't matter, to where what they're doing is considered wrong because she wanted to rearrange the universe in her own image. Vengeance disagrees and find this delightful of how the main characters should keep doing what they're doing and eventually lead to Admin's downfall. The main characters finds this unagreeable and engages in a epic war between the 2 gods. The main characters eventually won and the 2 gods were defeated.

Afterwards, the Heroes celebrates once again. Months later, it was Liberty's birthday, and she decided to make one wish. The wish was never answered.

In a post-credit scene after the credits, Dylan and Cole were having a conversation until a silhouette of a girl in blue is walking to Royalopolis' Knockdown Championship Tournament. The two wants to know her name and she says her name was Sydney.

## Reception

The game received mixed to positive reviews. IGN gave the game a 8.6/10 saying that "it's a good fighting game and the gameplay are outright k.outstanding!". Metacritic scores the game a 89/100 on the Dreamlock. Destructoid gave it a 8.0/10. GalacticGamer gave it 7/10 stars saying its "alright but a few problems with the gameplay (sort of)". Huneykune gave it a good score, which is a 36/50.

 *Nintendo Life* | 8/10

## OST

A OST of the game was released in the launch day of this game. A link can be found right here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmHydBtpmDxXuu1-b70GsFvEIIQMTqqgM

## Trivia

* This is the first *Heroes* game to be a fighting game.
* This is the third fighting game by Imaginate. the first being *Knockout* while the second is *Neo Scuffle: The Neon Brawlers*.
* *Heroes K.O* is a special celebration game for the series' 7th anniversary, alongside *Heroes Kingdoms*.
* Metal Jason and Ironus were almost scrapped during development. Eventually, they made it in.
* Characters such as Metal Sonic, Mecha Knight, Dr. Eggman, All-Star and many more characters were scrapped when the game was released. For more info about characters (and stages), *check here*.
	+ There are some ideas of making the character Samantha, from *Heroes Fables* to *Heroes United*,a DLC fighter.
		- It has been confirmed that Samantha will appear in *Heroes K.O* and will be released in November 20th, 2020 as a secret unlockable character under one condition: Complete *Heroes United* with Emerson and 2 other random characters.
			* To add note to that, those who did complete *Heroes United* before Samantha's initial appearance in *K.O* will already have her unlocked within the game via her upcoming update. Another note to add is that Samantha Nemer (the voice of Samantha) will be reprising her role as her.
	+ All-Star finally made an appearance in *Heroes K.O* as the first DLC Fighter in Wave 3.
* Locations such as Snowground, Mechanical Airship and many more was mentioned but was scrapped when the game was released.
	+ Snowground will make a return alongside Samantha.
* Within the 3 weeks after the complete launch, it became the best-selling video game of the *Heroes* [spin-off] series of the Dreamlock library of games, surpassing units of *Jack & Bella IV*, *Peppermint* and *NaTasha's Playhouse 2*.
* A Neo Reo port was released on March 12th, 2021, a year after the Dreamlock version was released. The name has changed to ***Heroes K.O+*** with all the DLC Fighters from Waves 1 and 2, as well as a free code for Wave 3's DLC Fighters.
* Production will end after DLC Fighter No. 21 is released.