The reason you should know the fighters’ animation time

Do you know about the time over wins? The fights in KOF ARENA have a 60-second time limit. When the time runs out and the fight finishes, the game ends up in a ‘time over’, and the fighter with the higher HP wins. The easiest way to draw a time over win is to use your ultimate. If you use the animation time of your finisher and ultimate skills, in which you are invincible, you can seal the opponent’s counter-attacks and induce a time over victory.

About the animation time of ‘ultimates’

Characteristics of ultimate skills that have long animations

- ‘Escape’ cooldown resets before and after activation
- Time over induced using the animation time
- Cooldown of MAX MODE resets
- Skill cooldowns reset

The problem is that each fighter has a different animation time. If you use ‘Kyo’s’ ultimate skill with an 8.4-second animation with 10 seconds left in the game, there will be a bit less than 2 seconds left after the animation, which could allow a counterattack from the opponent. Rugal’s ultimate uses up all 10 seconds, so you can gain a time over win. On the other hand, if you don’t have enough time, Kyo can use his ultimate skill after attacking, but Rugal has to use it right away to deal full damage. You can manage your time by just knowing the animation time of the fighter you’re using.

Since ultimate skills can’t be escaped by using escape or emergency dodge, it’s proper to aim for the time to run out this way. The longer the ultimate skill animation, the better. Obviously, there’s a downside as well. If you use an ultimate with an animation of 12+ seconds, the opponent fighters’ escape (10-second cooldown), MAX MODE (12-second cooldown), and most of their skills will be available again, and you could allow a counterattack.

About the animation time of ‘finisher’ skills

For some fighters who have a short finisher animation time, you can make more diverse attacks — because a double finisher, which you can use your finisher twice in MAX MODE, is possible. The finishers have 250% damage of the fighter’s basic damage, so if you land it two straight times, you can deal more damage than the ultimate, which has 400% damage. However, there’s the variable of the opponent’s ‘escape’ when you use the finisher twice, so you have to use it when the opponent’s defense skill is on cooldown to deal massive damage.

The reason finishers’ animation time is important is that the required power gauges are different. Ryo can use a double finisher with 3 power gauges plus two basic attacks, but Kyo can use it with 3 power gauges and 4 extra basic attacks. There are also fighters who can’t use a double finisher like Goenitz even if they have a full power gauge because the animation time of the finisher is too long.