League of Legends Spin-Off 2XKO Is Already A Rewarding Tag Fighter

League of Legends Spin-Off 2XKO Is Already A Rewarding Tag Fighter

2XKO has been a long time coming. Originally announced as Project L back in November of 2021, fighting game heads have been speculating about this League of Legends spin-off for years. But despite the slow drip feed of information, it has remained a hot topic in the fighting game community for quite a few reasons: it’s one of the highest-profile new entries in the space in some time, it will have free-to-play monetization (something that is relatively unexplored in the space), and it’s a League of Legends crossover backed by Riot that has many hopeful it could get a new wave of players into the genre. On top of this, many on the development team are fighting game royalty—Tom and Tony Cannon are involved and previously co-founded the biggest fighting game tournament, EVO, and created GGPO, a software that’s the bedrock for modern fighting game’s smooth online play with rollback netcode.

While 2XKO has been playable at in-person events, this week was its online alpha, the moment when tons of people finally got a chance to see if it lived up to the sizeable expectations. Thankfully, at least for me, the game largely met these years of anticipation, delivering a free-form experience that offered ample room for creativity as it delivered chaotic brawls that are at least somewhat reminiscent of  Marvel vs. Capcom. It’s far from perfect, but considering its current 2025 release window, there’s still plenty of time to correct some of its issues.

As for how it plays, this is a two vs. two tag fighter, meaning you play as a pair of fighters who you freely swap between mid-match. At any given time, one is the “point” character, meaning you’re actively controlling them, and one is the “assist,” meaning you can call them to perform backup attacks. You can switch them out mid-fight while they are performing their assist attack, during a combo, or raw, although this is slightly less safe. On top of these techniques, there is also a long list of defensive mechanics; you can parry to punish foes for being overly predictable, use retreating guard while blocking to escape pressure, perform pushblock to force the attacker back, or utilize Dynamic Save to burst out of opponent combos.

As for maneuvering, you can use super jumps, cancel the momentum on forward and back dashes, and some characters can airdash (currently just Ahri and Ekko). As for other complexities, beyond assembling a team, you also have to choose a Fuse, which modifies your abilities somewhat. For instance, with the Double Down Fuse, you can chain super attacks together, while with 2X Assist, you can trigger your assist up to twice after calling it in.

If this all sounds complicated, well, that’s because it is. On the one hand, 2XKO has several features for onboarding new players. It uses simplified special attack inputs, so instead of doing a half-circle or quarter-circle motion to do fireballs and command grabs, you just hit a single direction in combination with a special attack button. Additionally, the Pulse Fuse lets you use auto combos, where repeatedly hitting a single button triggers long attack sequences. Some characters, like Darius, have relatively straightforward game plans (hit them with a big axe), making them easier for beginners.

However, despite these affordances, the game also has many moving parts and systems that could potentially scare off the new players. Perhaps the biggest issues for beginners trying the alpha were the lack of skilled based matchmaking and the absence of a helpful tutorial, and while I’m sure both of these will be addressed at release, there’s still a lot to internalize here.

However, at least personally, much of this complexity feels like a gift. While there’s plenty going on, these mechanics largely come together in satisfying ways that allow for player expression. First off, each of the six characters in the alpha have unique playstyles, which, when combined with their partner’s assist, can lead to lots of interesting interactions. There’s Ekko, a speedy all-rounder who can teleport back in time to set up mix-ups, Ahri, a fox spirit who sports best-in-class air mobility, Yasuo, a wind samurai who can switch stances to access powerful moves, Darius, an axe-wielding bully with oppressive attack sequences, Illaoi, who can set up tentacle traps, and Braum, another bruiser who excels at defense.

The cast is cool on their own, but when combined with the assists, you can set up devious scenarios that maximize their strengths; one of Ahri’s assist attacks keeps opponents blocking, which pairs perfectly with Ekko’s strong mix-ups, while Braum can use his shield to protect characters performing long-ranged attacks. When paired with the characters’ relatively involved and novel movesets, this created a huge range of ways to pressure opponents and perform combos, helping encourage unique play and variety.

And if this wasn’t enough, the game’s movement options feel similarly complex, as you can chain dashes into each other to speed up grounded movement (this is a technique from Marvel vs. Capcom/Tekken/SSBM called wavedashing), letting you smoothly move around the map, or give jumps different trajectories. Additionally, the numerous defensive mechanics encourage varied play, as if you are too predictable, you may get parried or let your foe get away with a retreating guard. All in all, these complexities help the game find its own lane compared to some modern fighting games whose mechanical simplifications have led to homogenization in playstyles. And perhaps the game’s most novel twist is that you can play cooperatively with a friend, with each of you controlling one character on a team. While this takes a lot of coordination, it sets up something very different for this sometimes lonely genre; instead of getting your ass kicked alone, you can get your ass kicked alongside a buddy. Neat!

Still, while 2XKO is already looking like a formidable contender, some things clearly need to be reworked. Thus far, two main criticisms have seized online discourse, and they’re ones I largely agree with. The first is that it’s too easy to perform “touch of death” (TOD) combos, where after landing a single hit, you can perform a combo that deals so much damage it kills your opponent outright. The second is that combos can last too long, even when they aren’t a TOD, with some pushing close to 20 seconds. That’s nearly half a minute of twiddling your thumbs and not playing the videogame as your character is knocked around like a rag doll. While on the one hand, I like that the game’s combos are complex enough to invite varied routes, at the same time, the length of these sequences makes it particularly brutal to be on the receiving end and minimizes the amount of interaction happening between players.

On top of this, being in the corner without the resources to break free often feels like a death sentence, as certain characters can keep you locked down with massive attacks that deal large amounts of chip damage, which feels a bit out of whack at the moment. Pushblock or parry is the best way to escape, but they both cost a bar of meter, which feels too steep a price considering you often won’t have this resource at the beginning of matches. When combined with the long combos, this can result in sequences where it feels like only one person gets to play the game, even if it’s two relatively evenly matched opponents playing.

There are some other smaller issues, too; the button layout feels a little cramped playing on a fight stick, and I couldn’t find a comfortable configuration. Cross-up attacks feel a tad ineffectual because they can only hit behind an opponent and not the front, which is usually the purpose of these kinds of ambiguous strikes. And lastly, the round timer is way too short and makes it so that comebacks are sometimes impossible—if you have more life when the timer is up, you win the round, but it doesn’t feel particularly satisfying to win or lose this way.

The good news is that at the end of the day, this is an alpha designed to gather feedback for the game’s relatively far-off 2025 release. The developers have already acknowledged they’re looking into the touch of death situations and combo length, so some reworking will likely happen here. On top of this, skill based matchmaking will obviously be in the full game, and they similarly said there will be better tutorialization so newer players aren’t stomped into dust by seasoned pros.

This beginner onboarding situation ties in with something I’m curious about, which is how the game will land for those who aren’t existing fighting game devotees. Its mechanics are deep and involved, as you have to pilot and swap between two characters while also using their assists, and if you make a small mistake, you may be eating a massive combo that deletes your health bar. While its overlap with the uber-popular League of Legends will get at least a few people in the door, is it realistic to expect this somewhat complicated implementation of an already difficult genre to bring in a plethora of newcomers?

Live-service games exist on a short leash these days, and while I wish we lived in a world where I didn’t have to think much about a big company’s financial circumstances, especially not one that previously had to settle a multi-million dollar workplace discrimination lawsuit (2XKO’s team was an outside acquisition and was seemingly not caught up in these circumstances, but still), the fact is that there is some universe in which 2XKO isn’t around for as long as we’d like. I hope that reasonable expectations have been set and that the game bringing in a few newcomers combined with the usual FGC player counts will be enough, but I can’t help but be a tad worried there.

This leads me to the biggest unanswered question from the alpha: the specifics of how the game will handle its monetization. We know that it’s free-to-play, and while the studio has said that it will be possible to unlock every character without spending money, we don’t have details on the in-game currency yet or how much of a grind this will actually be. The alpha had a free battlepass that unlocked at a reasonable pace, and the purchases available (palette swaps for the characters) were relatively cheap, but we don’t know how accurate any of this will be to the full game.

Still, despite these uncertainties around its monetization and some rough edges, this alpha left me even more excited for the long-anticipated 2XKO than I already was. Its bounty of mechanics provides room for free-form play, and these first few characters are quite promising (Ekko is so fun to play). While I hope combos are shortened somewhat, and damage is tuned down, the dev team’s responsiveness to these concerns makes me quite optimistic. At this point, even if the game doesn’t live up to becoming the fabled “savior” of the fighting game scene which will make the genre as popular as other e-sports (something I don’t think needs to happen), this alpha made one thing fairly clear: this game will let you break opponents’ ankles with some ontologically evil mix-ups. What more could you want?


Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.

 
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