Glad you finally played it, what are your impressions Shiranui_ninja? Btw, do live in Europe?
Yes, i do. I'm catalan (spain). And I travelled to France to play the game. Arcade Street's owner was shocked when we told him we came from spain to play KOF XIII :D
You can read my impressions about Mai in her own thread. About the game, the impressions are terribly POSITIVE. I think it's a great game. When you just enter into an arcade local the game really takes your attention, with all its colorness, their smooth sprites... I think if I didn't know this game probably it catched my attention anyway since minute 1. We were playing all the day, just against CPU to see the game, and get some practice (too many years without playing KOF...). Then a group of 10-15 people come to play the game (I think one of them was France champion, but not sure) and they played very well. Very different gameplay of yours. Not so much HD combos, more DMs and NeoMax. Very nice to watch. Kim, Clark, Joe, Terry, Leona, Kula, Iori and Shen the most played characters.
About the gameplay, I think the game is PERFECT. I love its speed, fast but not too much, with fast jumps and runs. Drive Cancels are more strict than what I thought, what is good I think. I feared the game was too broken, because all this HD combos and K', and Raiden, etc. But I didn't get this impression, and I think it's quite balanced. All characters have their good combos and tools and if you play in a good way I think all characters are competitive. But is true that some character are really dangerous, like Shen and Iori (man, Iori is a beast!) I fought one K' and it wasn't a problem and I saw one Raiden and it was meh. The game feels A LOT like an old KOF for me, but with some 2002 touch. I just LOVE IT. What I loved too is that you have the feeling that there a lot of things to do, you can play in different ways, more SF (I mean, zoning, cross up, DM, etc) or more in damaging HD combing, which needs training and some talent :D
Other things I liked besides gameplay: intro dialogues and winquotes (great scripting work and great sense of humor from SNKP), color palettes (BEATIFUL!), NeoMAX, Saiki's background (well, all backgrounds are stunning), story mini movies, character portraits and artworks.
Probably I'm forgetting things, but these are more or less my first impressions in my first experience with the game. Now the only thing I want is have this game at home...It was frustating to leave Paris without knowing when I will play again the game....
(Sorry my english, it's early morning :P)