If I was summing up a guess to why the KOF XIII hate it would be the push of combos in a fighting game system that never pushed it as much before. If you look at '98, KOF is mostly footsies based.
This would be like taking the Marvel vs series and making Marvel vs. Capcom 4 with ridiculously toned down combos, and high footsies priorties. The OG Mahrvel community would go nuts.
I think combos are just the easy scapegoat. Sure, some people really dislike the combos.
But compare:
It's not really the combos that are on display in the second video. They're just playing the neutral game and trading short sequences for the most part. What's interesting is that the neutral game looks a lot different. '98 is a lot more static, measure-distance-of-pokes-to-the-pixel style, very Street Fighter -esque if you will, while 13's high horizontal movement rate compared to limb lengths lends the game a very different feel, one that's a lot more about hyperactive movement and constant vying for position. Situations don't last anywhere near as long as in '98, let alone SF. So I think combos are largely blameless - it's the movement, folks.
...and some grognards complaining that you should AA with specials instead of buttons now and how that's totally not KOF, but I guess it is inevitable :D
02 (vanilla) is imo one of the worst KOF's.
Agreed.
If I was summing up a guess to why the KOF XIII hate it would be the push of combos in a fighting game system that never pushed it as much before. If you look at '98, KOF is mostly footsies based.
I never got why people like '98 so much. It's fun to play, but as you said, it's mostly footsie-based, and that IMO makes it a boring game to watch oftentimes. People should be welcoming a KOF that's more exciting to watch, which in return makes it fun to play... unless you suck at it. :P
This is why I can only sum up the reason for KOF XIII hate as nostalgia.
A game can be an absolute riot to play and still be complete ass to watch. As a fresh example, Killer Instinct. It's just about the most unwatchable fighting game ever made, yet apparently really fun to play. SFxT suffers a bit of the same fate. So people liking KOF because playing it makes them happy is a very understandable reason to like it a ton.
Or, say, my main game MTG. Utterly, utterly unwatchable for most people, yet the game is an absolute blast to play and interesting to read about. Meanwhile I find SF4 increasingly insufferable to actually play, but it's still very fun to watch and analyze. As long as I don't have to actually play Forklift Fighter 4.
Fun factor != watchability.
That said, I still don't understand the KOF13 hate :P