I don’t think there’s ever been a fighting game that I have played more of so long before release than 2XKO. Between three Evo demos and two “alpha lab” tests, Riot’s exciting League of Legends-themed 2v2 tag fighter has repeatedly popped into my life for a couple days, then faded from existence until the next time I get to throw down with my buddies Ekko and Ahri. But finally, with the recent closed beta, 2XKO is here to stay (if not fully available to everybody yet), which means it's time for some extended thoughts on why I’ve been looking forward to this exciting tag fighter.There’s a whole lot to unpack, so let’s start with the focus on simple controls. Unlike most fighting games that offer at least the option of using traditional command inputs for special moves (like those dating back to the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat’s arcade cabinet days), 2XKO simplifies all of its special and super moves to single or simultaneous two-button presses. So instead of doing a quarter circle forward motion for a fireball, all you have to do is press the S1 button; If you wanna do a super, you press an attack button and one of the special buttons at the same time; and if you want to do your ultimate attack, you press both special buttons at the same time. This is a double-edged sword, because while it does make it a little easier for a complete newcomer who has trouble with quarter-circle or Dragon-Punch inputs, it also turns what should be a four-button game – with light, medium, and heavy attack buttons, plus a tag button – into a six-button game, at minimum. Most people will be using a dash and parry macro as well, putting every single button on a standard controller to work. As a result, I’ve felt my hands getting lost on my controller in 2XKO moreso than any other fighting game I’ve played because my brain has to parse which special move is tied to which special button, and which direction I had to hold for it. Ultimately, it’s just easier for me – someone who has committed thousands of hours to train my muscle memory on how fighting games have always worked – to compartmentalize a punch or kick related special move input to the punch or kick button than it is to try and remember whether they’re arbitrarily placed on S1 or S2. It’s a learning curve that I was eventually able to overcome, but one that nonetheless made me yearn for a classic/modern control scheme split like what Street Fighter 6 uses. The second big thing is that 2XKO uses an active tag system much like what’s been used in games like BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. The idea is that every character has two assist moves that they can be called in to execute, and once they finish the attack they’ll remain in a pose for a few seconds before retreating back off screen. At any point while the assist character is on screen, you can press the tag button to swap control to them. This opens the door for potential tricky mix-up opportunities, especially when you’re able to sandwich your target between your assist and point characters. That system works incredibly well here in 2XKO, especially since so many of the characters have special moves that seemed designed specifically around it. Vi and Ekko for instance, both have specials that allow them to cross to the other side of their opponent, with the downside being that they are typically punishable. But if you cover them with an assist, not only do you make the crossover safe, but you get a free left/right mix-up opportunity by swapping to the other character. This is just a basic example and, once you start digging deep into the tech of some of these characters, you can find some absolutely dirty stuff that you can do to your opponent. Experimenting with each fuse to find which fits my playstyle has been a lot of fun.And all of that is before even bringing fuses into the mix. Much like Grooves in the Capcom vs SNK series, Fuses are an extra little bonus that you take with you into a match that allow you to break one of the established rules. For example, typically, once you use your super, your combo is over. But with Double Down you can do a super, then tag in your partner character for them to do their super to add on extra damage, and switch characters in the deal. You normally are only allowed one active tag per assist call, but with the Freestyle fuse you can call in your assist, active tag to them, do a couple of hits, and then active tag again back to the point character. These Fuses can totally change your approach to how you use your team and spend your meter, and experimenting with each to try and find which one fits my playstyle and my team best has been a lot of fun.If you don’t want to learn two characters and instead just want to focus on one, there are also two Fuses that allow you to do just that. Juggernaut and Sidekick both have you playing as only one character with just one life bar, but to make up for that they have increased health, higher defense, start with two bars of super instead of one, and can have a maximum of five bars of super instead of three.Juggernaut also has the added advantage of being able to forcibly swap an opponent’s character to focus on the one with less health and prevent them from regaining gray life, while Sidekick gives you the ability to reduce the amount of damage you take by timing button presses with enemy attacks. You can also charge up your assist moves by holdingthe tag button, letting them travel a distance before actually committing to their attack. You do lose the ability to do active tags, which is one of the most fun aspects of 2XKO, but nonetheless, I love it when tag fighters find ways to let us just focus on mastering a single character instead of having to be equally good with two or three. Perhaps the best unique feature of 2XKO, though, is the fact that it’s a fighting game that can be played cooperatively with a friend. In Duos mode, each person controls their own character, with the off-screen player being the one that can call the assist, and the other being the one that has to do the active tag to give up control to their partner. It works both as a fun way to experience a fighting game with a similarly skilled friend that doesn’t involve having to beat each other up, and also as a way to introduce someone new to the genre and be able to give them real time feedback. If there's one glaring weakness of 2XKO's beta right now, it's the slim roster size.If there’s one glaring weakness of 2XKO right now, it is its slim roster size. There are currently only nine characters, and Riot has promised just one more to be added for launch. Ten isn’t even a lot even for a 1v1 fighter, but even worse for a tag fighter where you need to find two characters that fit your playstyle (unless, again, you decide to go with Juggernaut or Sidekick as your Fuses). And while that does suck, and leads to a lot of repetition where you’re fighting against the same characters and the same teams over and over again, it is a blow that is at least softened by the excellent design of that handful of characters. Whether it’s Ekko and his tricky clone mind games, Yasuo’s wild combo routes that have him stance-cancelling his way into bouncing his opponent all over the screen, Vi’s insane movement and whiff-punishing ability, or Illaoi’s tentacle set ups, these are some of the most fun fighting game characters I’ve ever played around with. And the beauty of it is that due to the flexibility of 2XKO’s combo and Fuse systems, rarely do I ever see any of these characters being played exactly the same way by two different people. All that said, It’s still too early to call this a proper review of 2XKO because of all that we haven’t seen yet. There’s ranked mode, for instance, and that final tenth character on the launch roster – and I’ll definitely want to see how the free-to-play progression feels once the shops are more fully populated with cosmetics to purchase with in-game currency. But for now, 2XKO is shaping up to be one of the most exciting fighters on the horizon, during a time when there are a lot of exciting fighters on the horizon. Mitchell Saltzman is a senior guides producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit