2XKO’s controls leave even veteran fighting game players feeling confused despite the “simple inputs.”

While PC input issues are still frustrating,

After 5 years since it was first announced at Evo 2019, 2XKO is finally in the hands of players at home through a closed Alpha Lab test that has now begun.

Before this test, many in the fighting game community were concerned that Riot might be targeting too much “casual players” with its League of Legends spinoff with simple controls and 2v2 systems, but now that it’s here… the impressions seem quite the opposite.

We’ve seen a lot of discussion going on in the FGC over the past few days regarding the controls in 2XKO, and now that we’ve been able to put a few hours into the alpha testing as well, trying to get a sense of complete control over the game has proven to be more challenging than expected.

So let’s talk about why we feel this way.

Riot may have lowered the overall input barrier by using directional inputs instead of movements as well as dedicated buttons for special moves, but what they’ve come up with so far is still very complex and a bit weird.

This also didn’t help with the persistent joystick/arcade stick issues in the PC version of the beta, though we’ll talk about that in more detail later.

I personally wouldn’t call 2XKO’s controls unintuitive (or really bad either), but something just didn’t work for me even after sitting in the lab and working on some longer combos.

I had a really weird experience where 2XKO’s speech during the demo quickly changed from “the controls are simple, the game will be boring” to “the game is too hard”. Oh, so the difficulty doesn’t just come from the complicated inputs? Oh really? Say it louder!!!

— SGF | Fem!Shep (@FemShepFGC) August 9, 2024

You have a light, medium, and heavy attack button for each of them as well as two special buttons and a dedicated button for tag systems, essentially giving you a six-button fighter, even though it doesn’t feel like it.

There’s something that feels off-balance with the amount of regular and special buttons, which is hard to get rid of even after several hours.

And you know something’s up when a former Marvel vs. Capcom Evo champion gets confused by the controls at first, too.

First thoughts on 2xko. This game wasn’t for everyone. 6 buttons confuse even me. The gameplay feels more complicated than mvci/powerrangers/bbtag. Over-the-top and oppressive gameplay, but also kind of boring which makes it easy to put someone on pause. This is a great game of all time!!!

— Chris G (@NYChrisG) August 9, 2024

It’s weird because these controls are very close to the controls in DNF Duel, especially when using the Pad A configuration, and I’ve never had any issues with that game.

DNF also used two special buttons with directions instead of movements, but also two regular buttons.

The difference is those extra heavy buttons and tag buttons plus a lot to memorize in terms of global and system mechanics.

It seems as though part of the problem lies with the button layouts themselves, especially when playing on a keyboard.

No matter what master or custom control schemes I used, I always felt like something was off.

I was thinking about the controls in 2XKO (note: I haven’t played the game) and: is there any sort of similarity between all the special moves set in S1 or all the special moves set in S2? If not, I feel like it’s arbitrary distinctions that might contribute to the awkwardness.

— Cage (@armormodechang) August 11, 2024

What also doesn’t help is that there seems to be no clear distinction as to what makes the move put on the Special 1 button versus Special 2, and there’s nothing like a Shoryuken or semicircular move to help determine which attack is useful/beneficial from the jump.

This might also be something when learning a similar game like Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, but it uses one special button instead of two.

The game is clearly full of intricacies, and players are really starting to get the hang of things with the death touch combos that are now being discovered, though the initial learning curve isn’t what most of us expected – especially from a controller sense.

Now, let’s talk a little more about the experience of trying to play the 2XKO demo on PC so far.

My journey with 2XKO started like many others using the PC version and a DualShock 4 controller where I quickly hit a similar wall.

The game detected that my controller and left joystick were working, but none of the buttons did anything.

Resetting the client several times didn’t help, so I had to navigate through the menus using my mouse and keyboard as I ran into some other weird bugs like the avatar creator stopping working when clicking on hairstyles.

I tried using a supposed fix by adding 2XKO to my Steam library and using Steam inputs after launching from there, but that didn’t help me in any way.

While the DS4 wouldn’t work on menus, it would be surprisingly good at actual gameplay, so I just had to deal with switching back and forth to my keyboard.

On my last attempt to play tonight, 2XKO wouldn’t register my DS4 anymore, so I finally connected my DualSense.

This seemed to work as I was finally able to navigate through the menus, but after entering training mode, none of the buttons worked – and trying to change them made them all register as the right stick being moved up.

Then the game crashed, so I’ll probably move to PlayStation 5 for now.

As for the actual gameplay, I ended up using the A Pad controls because they were the closest to other titles I have experience with like DNF and Persona 4 Arena.

I always forgot all the time that there was a powerful attack button as well as spoiling special attacks all the time.

This is especially exacerbated by moves like Yasuo’s Stance, which has a huge list of follow-ups you can do that you just have to drill into your head.

After practicing for over an hour, things finally started to work out, although heavy and special hits still tripped me up at times, along with the various uses of the tag button.

This got worse when I started playing actual matches, but I was still having a lot of fun and learning more while playing.

I don’t think playing 2XKO on a pad is the hardest thing in the world or anything, but it was a lot harder to get used to than expected.

It will take more time to know my final feelings on how Riot handles its control scheme.

So far, trying to get the Razer arcade joystick to work on 2XKO on the Riot Client has proven to be a huge pain.

At first, the joystick and none of the buttons seemed to do anything. Eventually, I was able to access the control settings and switch between “Joystick 1” and “Joystick 2”, but my joystick remained unresponsive.

Frustrated with the lack of progress, I decided to jump into the training room with my keyboard. Once again, the game would not accept any input from my joystick.

After some time, it seemed that randomly pressing the buttons on my joystick worked just fine. Let me emphasize the word “randomly.” For no apparent reason, the game started accepting button inputs in the middle of my practice sessions without me doing anything special.

I was finally able to perform attacks with my character, but I still couldn’t move with my joystick. However, at least this part of the problem had a reproducible solution.

I eventually figured out that I had to switch the Razer joystick from the left stick to the D-pad setup via a switch on the device. Needless to say, I can safely say that I’ve never had to do this for any other game before.

Of course, I should mention that I still couldn’t press the pause button with the joystick to access the action menu. After feeling like I was pressing every key on the keyboard, I eventually discovered that “F” pauses the game.

The “Arcade Stick 1” setup had the top three buttons inserting my Special 1, Special 2, and Assist buttons while the bottom three buttons inserting my Light, Medium, and Heavy buttons. Since this seemed odd, I switched to the “Arcade Stick 2” to swap the positions of these buttons.

In terms of controls, 2XKO is much simpler than I expected, although that makes sense since it was also done by the developers of Rising Thunder. However, the presence of two dedicated special buttons was confusing to me.

Despite the intended simplicity of 2XKO, there is a significant learning curve when it comes to inputs, which left me feeling confused after I left training mode. More specifically, I was still confused about which actions to perform by pressing each special button.

Overall, 2XKO seems like the kind of game you’ll have to spend some time with to get comfortable with, but that should come after any weird technical issues you may encounter when trying to get your input device working.

2XKO has certainly succeeded in disproving the claims that it is a tag-based fighting game but is aimed at a general audience, which makes us even more curious to see how people outside of the FGC feel about this beta test.

The game’s control scheme feels oddly unbalanced when you try to pick it up and start learning, and it feels like something you have to get used to and master by now.

However, we’re not really sure what we can do to alleviate the situation completely short of removing the functions, perhaps besides getting a clearer view of why special moves are where they are.

The constant controller issues on PC don’t really help either, but that should at least be addressed at some point.

Players will have to carefully choose the button layout that feels most natural to them, but even at this stage there will be some growing pains to dig into.

It’s nice to play a new game that has so much to collect and grow with, though there’s more room for improvement to make the experience feel more consistent.

We’ll be putting together a full breakdown of the 2XKO alpha test impressions in the near future and more coverage of the game, so stay tuned.

This story was contributed by Justin “AdaptiveTrigger” Gordon.