2XKO Looks To Bring Tag-Based Fighting Games Into A New Era

As more information about 2XKO comes to light, most of the attention is focused on how established characters from League Of Legends are being adapted into a fighting game. And that makes sense–seeing characters from a well-known franchise enter a new realm is always interesting. That “fish out of water” feeling brings a huge appeal to crossover characters like Negan in Tekken 7 and Banjo-Kazooie in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, to name a few.

However, after playing a few rounds of 2XKO at Evo 2024, I realized that solely focusing on how the game reimagines classic LoL characters is a disservice to the rest of the game, which makes major shifts to the 2v2 fighting format, from modified mechanics to a philosophical shift in how we’re expected to play a fighting game. 2XKO has already gained a reputation for reinventing one wheel, but in truth, it might be revamping the whole dang vehicle right under our noses.

As mentioned before, 2XKO is a two-on-two tag-based fighting game–think X-Men Vs. Street Fighter and its ilk–with a cast of characters populated by champions from Riot’s ultra-popular MOBA, League Of Legends. Our demo featured six playable champions: Ahri, Braum, Darius, Ekko, Illaoi, and Yasuo.

Right from the character select screen, a huge change is thrown at us: When Riot says “2v2” in regards to 2XKO, they don’t just mean “two characters vs. two characters.” Each match supports up to four players at a time, with each player controlling a single champion. This means any given match can feature any of the following scenarios:

• Team A and Team B have a single human player controlling both champions in a team.
• Team A and Team B have two human players, each one assigning themselves a specific champion.
• Team A has a single human player controlling both champions while Team B has two human players each assigned to one champion, or vice versa.

From a competitive standpoint, this creates an interesting new level of strategy. One brain controlling two different characters presents its own set of challenges, but being pitted against a team of two human players, each with likely their own specific style and strategies, is a different beast altogether. It already asks intriguing questions about the future, like whether 2XKO events will allow players to sign up either as a single rep or as a two-person team in the same tournament, and how that will play out in real-time.

The character select screen also offers Fuses, which are perks that can be selected to add an extra benefit to your team. Pulse–2XKO’s version of Modern controls–was recommended to us during the demo, but we also saw Double Down, which allows us to combine each character’s Ultimate attack into one massive move, and 2X Assist, which gives an assisting character more options when called. We focused on the Pulse option for most of our matches, but the ones where we tried 2X Assist added a few extra and helpful tools to our toolbox.

Once your teams are decided, the core gameplay of 2XKO will feel very familiar to the fighting game faithful. One character for each team is on-screen at a time–you can call out your partner character for a brief assist move at any point in the match, and both characters on one side must lose their entire health bar for the round to be decided. Each match feels slower and more methodical compared to what we’ve come to expect from games like Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, but for the purposes of this preview at least, we’d consider that a positive–we’re trying to learn the ins and outs of the game, and a breakneck pace would only get in the way.

There is one notable and interesting change to the core format worth mentioning, however. In previous tag-based fighters, when a character lost all of their health, they were disabled for the rest of the round/match–and that included assists. 2XKO takes that limitation away, by allowing players to continue to call for assists from fallen characters after they’ve gone down.

This changes the fundamental strategy in later portions of a match. In MvC2 and MvC3, for instance, losing those assists left players at a distinct disadvantage, as the timing of certain assists is paramount to their ability to win the match, and the player who’s ahead could capitalize. With 2XKO assists always active, that safety net no longer applies, which encourages the player on the back foot to stay aggressive.

Each character offers a full kit of attacks and abilities, with some easier to pick up and play than others. We found the most success with the two biggest brutes, Braum and Darius, mostly because their play style is so straightforward: smash the opponent’s face in by any means necessary. Yasuo was also an early favorite, but his style relies less on the brute strength of powerful attacks and more on mixing speed with attack power for max potency.

Ekko, on the other hand, has major potential, as his best combos come from his ability to manipulate his position on-stage thanks to his time powers, but we didn’t have enough time to figure him out. Illaoi and Ahri fall into a similar space of being good at spatial control, especially Illaoi with her ability to summon tentacles. There’s a lot to learn with each of these characters already, and we haven’t even seen the full roster yet.

It’s clear that 2XKO is vying to be a revolutionary fighting game. While it’s paving new ground for the franchise it represents, the changes being made to the core concept, if done correctly, could have more far-reaching effects on fighting games as a whole. We still don’t know when 2XKO will launch, but it will be one to watch for fighting game fans, LoL fans, and everyone in between.