2XKO PS5 review – League Of Legends takes on Tekken Tag Tournament

Riot Games’ new League Of Legends spin-off comes out of early access and arrives on PS5, with a free-to-play fighter that’s perfect for newbies.

Back in the day, the easy way to make money, if you had a roster of recognisable characters, was a Mario Kart clone. Even though none of them were any good, and they’ve never seemed to sell that well, it was almost demanded of any franchise with multimedia machinations. But times have changed and the days of Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing and South Park Rally are now, thankfully, over.

Nevertheless, we’d be surprised if the thought of a Mario Kart clone hadn’t already occurred to Riot Games, as they seek to expand the world of League Of Legends, whose audience has been declining in recent years. They’ve done this with a variety of other spin-offs, but their greatest success has been with the Arcane animated show on Netflix.

As far as the general public is concerned, the characters from that show are now far more famous for that than they are for the game they originally came from, but now Riot is trying to reach out to other types of gamers with another genre of game that is great for showcasing pre-existing characters: an old-fashioned 2D fighting game.

In recent years, fighting games have definitely taken on a Mario Kart clone style roll, with franchises from Dragon Ball to Marvel seeking out a Japanese developer (usually Arc System Works) to make one for them, to promote their characters. With 2XKO, though, Riot Games has done the development work themselves, employing, amongst others, the two co-founders of EVO. But if that puts you off, consider the fact that the game is completely free-to-play.

We’re not going to pretend that we’re experts on League Of Legends and admit that we barely recognised half the line-up, which includes the likes of Vi and Jinx from Arcane, quasi-mascot Teemo, old school robot Blitzcrank, top hat fan Caitlyn, and Ahri – who’s the member of a pretend K-pop girl band. There are only 12 characters in total, which isn’t a lot for a fighting game, but more are promised each season.

The graphics are very good, in a sub-Guilty Gear kind of a way, although some of the designs come across as a bit generic – even if that’s not the game’s fault, given they’re all pre-existing characters. However, there is a lot of screen-tearing on the PlayStation 5 version, which is not a problem we expected to see in a modern console game. There’re also serious lag issues in some matches and we’ve even had it crash a couple of times.

We might not have known half the characters before we started but through their animations, abilities, and dialogue snippets it becomes very clear what kind of people they are. Although it’s unfortunate that there is no story mode of any kind – there’s not even an arcade mode – so this is aimed almost solely at being a multiplayer game, even though you can practice offline.

2XKO is a tag team fighter, in the style of Tekken Tag Tournament or Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. That means you get to pick two characters before you start a match, switching between them when one is injured. There are also plenty of opportunities for team-up moves, from relatively minor interventions to extra powerful super moves. Plus, you can switch control to your other character whenever they’re on-screen, allowing you to try and box in foes for extra pummelling.

All of that has been done before but while the fighting game genre is not one known for innovation, 2XKO does have a few relatively unique features. Perhaps the most notable is that, thanks to the online focus, another player can take the role of your second character, turning the game into a true 2v2 match. The game takes further advantage of this feature by allowing a novice player to tag along and watch a more experienced one, which is a great way to learn the ropes.

2XKO makes a big effort to ensure it’s accessible to non-fans, with simplified inputs that mean you don’t need to learn complex combos. Fighting games have been doing that sort of thing for years but if you use the simpler controls nothing takes more than two buttons to activate. Although once you add in the tag button, and dash and parry, there’s still quite a lot to get your head round – not to mention a lot of controller real estate to twist your fingers around.

As you would expect of any modern fighting game, there’s an advanced system to learn, once you’ve got the hang of the basics. In this case it’s called fuse and works very similarly to grooves in Capcom vs. SNK, by offering a variety of modifiers that change how your partner acts, whether it’s emphasising attack or defence, expanding the role of super moves, or letting you play as just one beefed up character instead of two.

Trying to give a score to a free-to-play multiplayer title is usually a fairly pointless task, given how much it’s bound to evolve in the coming years, but 2XKO has been in early access for months on PC, so it’s not exactly an unknown quantity.

The poor performance issues on the PlayStation 5 are a concern but hopefully that will be addressed quickly. The price of unlocks and cosmetics is less likely to change though and while it’s all optional – you can unlock all the characters just by playing – it’s all disgustingly expensive right from the start. Outside of the offline training mode you only have access to half the characters at the start, so it’s a long slog to get them all.

Paid-for fighting games aren’t exactly reticent to fleece their fans for DLC, so it seems unfair to criticise 2XKO too much for its microtransactions when the base game is completely free. Given that, we’d strongly advise giving the game a go. We’re not sure it’s going to turn you into either a fighting game fan or a League Of Legends fan, especially If you’ve already got strong opinions about either, but at least it won’t cost you anything to find out.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: Free-to-play
Publisher: Riot Games
Developer: Riot Games
Release Date: 20th January 2026
Age Rating: 12

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