Character designs are good as well as the whole presentation of the game. But game play still needs work, it's still clunky. I don't like the whole slow over animation thing. That's why your getting these matches with a lot of flailing normals and it's not just that the players are bad. That and it looks like they added some dial in combo strings or something. I still need to read up on that but my caring level is way too low. Kyo gets no height on his kicks for some odd reason but that's just minor if his super still connects some how.

I have to agree. Even though the game is in it's loke test stage, it still irks me how some of the flow for the combos work. Mind you, I am not a huge KOF buff, and I don't know everything there is to know, but my initial opinion is that the system doesn't look amazing. The graphics and the characters are amazing, but the system still seems kind of off. Not liking that clash shit either, but we will see when the game comes out. Could be a surprise....

I'll admit that there are a lot of things that I'm not liking.  Hence why I'm not looking forward to the game as much as I was when they first announced it.  Still though, I'll definitely play it.  If anything, I'll just accept it as a new game.

Err, "the system still seems kind of off" in what way exactly?

It seems like the system  looks like a mixture of Art of Fighting and King of Fighter elements. Speed wise, it seems slower than the usual KOF, but not as god awful slow as Art of Fighting. In some of the loke test vids, some combos did not seem to flow well at all (and they were being B and B combos from previous games). But then again, some of those old combos may have been taken out of the game. I just hope that they don't heavily centralize things around chains ala Maximum Impact.