Kim Jae Hoon overview & gameplay guide
Character specification
Season 2
Character Trivia
Taekwondo specialist and son of Kim Kaphwan who, through careful observation and diligent training, inherited his father’s flawless technique—and fiery crusade for justice. Yet the contrast between that no-nonsense offense and the whimsical stylings of his older brother, Dong Hwan, creates a shadowy specter of doubt: How should he really fight? How can he keep up with them both? Fueled by burning questions of self-worth, and a burning desire to punish all manner of evil in South Town, Jae Hoon sets his sights on one place: the infamous King of Fighters tournament.
Difficulty
MEDIUM star star
Fighting Style
Taekwondo
Kim Jae Hoon Gameplay Trailer
PDF Command List
Gameplay Overview
Kim Jae Hoon is a defensive rushdown character that takes more from his father, Kim Kaphwan, complete with his signature tools such as Hangetsuzan and a Flashkick.
Jae Hoon boasts extremely good heavy buttons to poke at the opponent and continue his pressure making him more reliant on his normals than his specials. Not to discredit Jae Hoon's specials however as he has a varied kit of useful tools such as a divekick with high/low followups and a neutral tool in Hangetsuzan. When Jae Hoon can lock his opponents down in the corner with proper spacing he becomes a wall that that can be hard to get through.
Jae Hoon's struggle comes from his speed and weak light normals which combined with his Flashkick forces players to be extra patient with how he plays. As such he will fall back to his great heavy normals and REV specials which force his great and rewarding options to be committal in nature. Jae hoon's neutral is fairly good but quite committal as his best moves have significant whiff recovery ( especially his Far D).
However once you hone in on your patience and discipline, Jae Hoon becomes a wall of hard-hitting justice and a force to be reckoned with that truly carries on his father's legacy. On top of having interesting and unique blockstring offense and scary reset potential using his Heavy and REV Shakka Shuu.
Pros & Cons
thumb_up PROS
- Good Far Heavies: Far C and D are neutral defining.far C is an amazing poke and whiff punish tool.while far D takes advantage of passive opponents by being an advancing plus on block normal that can convert into a combo.
- Flashkick: The only character besides Kain to have a Flashkick and it's quite good at that. Light Flashkick is a fast two-hitting reversal while REV Flashkick can be canceled with REV Accel into his divekick for greater damage, all empowered by their horizontally excellent hitboxes.
- Blockstrings: Jae hoon has very strong blockstrings that can force opponents to interact due to Jae hoon's many baked-in reset and break points using his feints and Shaka Shuu options. Quite similar to the blockstrings of Blue Mary and Vox Reaper. Jae hoon also has very strong options to counter both mashing between strings, and sometimes even hard invincible reversal call-outs using his heavy Shaka Shuu hold into cancel.
- Guard point: Jae Hoon is one of the few characters who has a meterless way to deal with guard cancel rev blows using his Shaka Shu. He potentially has the best and most practical Guard point attack in the game which opens alot of depth in the neutral and in various interactions.
thumb_down CONS
- Stubby: Also like his brother, Jae Hoon suffers from stubby cancellable pokes and has to rely on cancelling into super to convert far A and C into respectable damage. His farthest-reaching cancelable poke is crouch C, which is laughably short ranged and thus only used in combos and frame traps.None of his far buttons are cancelable as well, which hurts his neutral and midrange even more.
- Slow: While being slow is typically not an issue, Jae Hoon can struggle in far neutral due to his slow speed and charge reliance making his approach and pressure not very threatening which forces him to rely heavily on specialized tools like far D and Hangetsuzan which have their own flaws. Jae Hoon also has one of the slowest Forward dashes at 21 frames of animation
- Lights conversion issues: Jae hoon has extremely lackluster meterless confirms from his lights on top of having a very hard time linking a 3 hit light string into a meterless enter ( pretty much have to be completely point blank range which is a rare situation for Jae Hoon) Moreover, frame trapping with his strong specials leads to quite low damage, and even when extended with REV, the additional damage is not very strong
- Weak to zoning : Jae hoon doesn't have any anti-projectile moves (except his level 2 Houhou Kyaku which has low range anyway). Coupled with his slow and predictable neutral, he will struggle alot with getting around fireballs ( especially air fireballs like andy's and geese's)
- Extreme Meter Dependence: Jae Hoon's game plan revolves so much around having super meter to dump. Jae Hoon is forced to use Meter to get real okizeme (as he gets pretty much no oki off his soft knockdown combo enders), deal with people exploiting his airborne flashkick reversal, and most importantly: comboing off his 2B.
- Master of None: The most unfortunate part of Jae Hoon is that he doesn't really have anything "special" or something that he truly excels at. He has a low overhead mixup using his REV dive kick, but other characters have better low high mix. His far heavies are good, but both of them are not cancelable. His damage is slightly above average at best, his okizeme and set ups are nothing of note and all of his system mechanic moves are average as well.