Solid, but lacking
Picked this up recently and I found it pretty disappointing. Lavish looking backgrounds, but there is nothing terribly new here. Same old sprites, same old characters, same old moves, same old game ruining cheap-as-hell boss, and probably one of the worst KoF soundtracks. 2k3 probably was the best improvement music wise since '99, but the music in NeoWave is almost like bland elevator music.

Considering I'm a pretty diehard KoF, I was rather shocked to feel completely uninterested when playing through NeoWave.

Stick to either '98, '99, '02, or 2k3.

A prettier ultimate battle
I was excited to pick up neowave and found out a few things: the game looks great, the style select leads to intresting fights especially with Just Defend, the music has a few good songs, and the cool feeling seeing Geese in his AOF2 look again. Gameplay feels alright but not as tight as 2k2.
If you want it as something new, pick up NGBC instead but if you're a die hard kof fan and can spare the $$$, try it out.

KOF Neo Wave pwns the noobs!
I find myself playing this and thinking “What took SNK so long to make a modern KOF game?” The music is really good, the backgrounds look fantastic and it supports 480p for the HDTV users out there. When you see this game running in 480p it really dose look better then the arcade version. I just hope the one day they are going to upgrade the character models, they keep using the same ones from over 10 years ago. C’mon SNK! You better do it with KOFXI!

KOF2002 part Deux
A good KOF that didn't take enough advantage of its new hardware to improve on the series much. The PS2 version got some nice bonus characters and improved visuals, but Neowave, in the end, is "Side B" of KOF 2002. The biggest difference is that you can choose from three different system "modes" and online play (which I haven't used, so can't comment on).

In short, good if you don't already have '02 or want online play. Otherwise, might want to think this over before purchasing.