This is the first time a new KOF has come out with me actually having tourney level experience to build on from the previous entry, and I've loved just about every second of it so far, the rare exceptions being my discovery of certain normals no longer being cancel-able... but I've quickly overcome that, and settled quite comfortably into my new iteration of the team that I've wanted to bring to a major ever since I grew into my understanding of who they were as characters...
King has lost air Venom strike, but that's more than a fair trade for the midscreen confirms she gains in XIV's max mode. Her damage isn't top tier but her maxmode confirms are generous, she no longer needs the corner or more than 1 bar + a drive just to stay on par. I can play the neutral game with her normals the way she always has, and Silent Flash replaces EX trapshot quite comfortably. Also her Climax is ridiculously strong, she can even do it in mid-air and after seeing so many games where Illusion Dance was just bad compared to other ranbus... yeah, it's incredibly satisfying to see that dazed look on the opponent's face when they're reeling from the last kick. Her "edgelord" palette even looks better than that monochromatic one in XIII, color 3 is much more tasteful for her character and even matches up way better with my choice of teammates...
Mature has EX Heaven's Gate. This is exactly the tool she needed badly in XIII, and it just feels so damn good to call out sloppy jumps and bad specials with this move. Her neutral is just as graceful and slippery as ever, and her raw maxmode activations are incredible. The result of the latter in particular seems to be that she's seeing a lot of top 8 action on the WNF circuit, and just tonight I saw two different maxmode combos I didn't know were possible yet. Both of them were from Isauro (who was my favorite Mature to watch in XIII, he's the only one I ever saw landing EX qcb+BD xx cl.C link combos and I respect that a lot) so needless to say, things are going really well for her so far in XIV.
Vice... unfortunately has yet to see much success in tournaments, technically I don't yet have a great idea of what optimized XIV Vice looks like so my observations could be off. But from my experience, she seems considerably better at playing offense/neutral, in spite of not having the ability to EX sleeve off of air-to-airs. Her jump arc is less floaty (I.E better) and her old cr.C is a considerably better anti-air than the one she had in XIII. A 1-frame command grab is still a really useful tool to have, and despite not knowing the new safejump setup off of that (until realizing as I wrote this that there's a thread right here on the forum, just checked it out and I'm good to go lol) all in all things are shaping up. She has potential, and above all else I feel like the time is going to come where I can choose to put her on point for a specific matchup and have it pay off, something that was considered unorthodox to the point of being basically unheard of in XIII. Much in the same vein I feel like King can legitimately pull anchor duty, so team order is now something I can mess with based on what I'm up against instead of a strict hierarchy determined solely by the constraints XIII's systems placed on these characters.
So yeah, that's me in XIV. Anyone want to help me officially name this team? I'm thinking either "Classy Ladies' Team" or "Women's Suits Team" ...or something. There's probably a variation of either concept that flows better, but idk right now.