Crazy how this game has more playable characters than they do actual levels! So glad I picked this one up because it exceeded all expectations and excels in creating a classic arcade experience in the best way. Great combos and attacks you and friends can do and the better the combos the more crazy the game gets and throws you some burgers and weenies for your efforts!! Arc System killed it with this one and really makes you wanna play more Double Dragon games! Kudos to the team and a perfect beat em' up to play with friends. Pick it up, Pick it up, PICK....IT....UP!!

A decent beat-em-up that attempts to add rogue-like elements to mixed results.

The game definitely features a lot of Double Dragon feelings. It's definitely got similar attacks, bad guys, pick ups, and frustrations that you'd find in the original games.

Most of the negative frustrations only start to pop up as the game progresses and the difficulty scaling begins.

You have four bosses to take on in this game and as you defeat them, the other gangs/bosses will grow stronger as they hear about the demise of their counterparts.

The levels get longer, featuring more stages in order to get to the final boss. So if you play one level the first time verses the fourth time, the levels will be longer, with new sub locations and mid bosses added.

Enemies will get stronger, they will take more damage to kill, there will be more things that can hurt you scattered throughout the stages as well. Even the bosses will be joined by more and more additional enemies as you defeat others.

It's a pretty interesting concept and it does help make the game harder and make you take advantage of the skills and strategies found within the gameplay.

Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't all that interesting. It's standard beat em up mechanics and all of it never feels all that satisfying.

The game does feature multiple characters to choose from to start, all with their own pros and cons. All differences are pretty standard, you've got an all around, you've got a character that can only use a gun, you've got bigger, stronger (but slower) characters, etc. etc.

There are additional characters you can unlock as well that also feature pros and cons.

It helps a bit with strategy, especially since you can swap your characters out if both of your selected characters die.

The difficulty scaling though is a bit frustrating. Since a lot of the levels get longer with new areas needing to be cleared in order to get to the actual end boss, these newer areas are usually chock full of easy traps and ways to get knocked off the stage and die and take damage.

A lot of the issues found in the older designed beat em ups are here in this modern version in order to make the game feel retro. These mechanics though are all pretty frustrating. Floor traps can juggle you, as can enemies if they are nearby, you can fly off the ends of stages by simply using a special attack that carries you too far. These things can easily take you down a good amount of health out of nowhere.

While there are ways to earn health items (you have to combo kill multiple enemies and depending on how many you KO, the bigger the health increase will be on the item you earn). Actually trying to pick and use (they don't get automatically added to your health bar upon earning it) these up can be difficult if you're in the heat of an enemy wave.

If you do have both of your characters die, you can revive so long as you have the money to do it. You earn money by picking it up and defeating enemies throughout the levels so you'll usually have some but that money is also used at the end of stages to upgrade your characters so you have to plan accordingly.

These upgrades are your standard rogue-like affair, you'll have the ability to purchase max health upgrades, certain attacks dealing more damage, perks depending on health, etc. etc.

You have the ability to buy these separately for your character but you also have the ability to pass on one and instead earn additional money, so if you're running low and can't buy anything you will still be rewarded, or if you are worried about not having enough money for a revive, you can hold onto the money strategically.

These upgrades are noticeable to a degree, though the final stage usually features enemies strong enough where you might not notice these as the game progresses.

Overall, Double Dragon Gaiden is a decent beat em up. The gameplay frustrations and bland gameplay though will deter some, which is fine because there are better modern beat em ups out there. It's rather short on top of it unless you want to be a completionist or mess around with the characters you can unlock. If you've played those better games though, this isn't a terrible pickup on a discount.

The boys are back in town!! (sunglasses emoji)

Perhaps a touch hyperbolic, but Rise of the Dragons really embodies what I think is the future of the Arcadey Beat-Em-Up. In lieu of a proper write up I'll list out some pros and cons for a quick glance:

---------PROS---------
+ Very straightforward, pick-up-and-play combat with a surprising amount of nuance and tech (CC, cancels, tag specials, upgrades)
+ Sizable amount of varied characters to choose from
+ Modular difficulty options that allow players to tailor to their preferences
+ Cool Tunes
+ Dynamic progression (upgrades, stages)

---------TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT---------

+/- Roguelike structure (no progress saved, no permanent character growth)
+/- Chibi art style reminiscent of other beat-em-ups

---------CONS---------
- Late-game boss variants can feel pretty unfair
- Only 5 stages
- No online
- Some characters take a long time to unlock

All in all, a ton of steps in the right direction for the genre. I'm a big fan of the stage progression in particular; clearing stages raises the threat level in subsequent zones, leading to additional areas and boss variants. For a game that on the surface looks very short, it's key that there's some reason to revisit and try different sequencing, and stages are snappy enough that the "just one more" mentality has a chance to win out. Not what I'd call perfect but so easy to fire up for a couple plays at a time.

Double Dragon Gaiden is a fun beat um up that with a few minor fixes could turn it from a good beat um up to a great one. The game is focused on using special attacks to KO multiple enemies so they can drop health power ups and increase your score. While that may seem limiting it's really not in practice. I think they did a great job in balancing the mechanic vs just straight up survivability with basic tactics. You get to pick two different characters, so you can kind of mix and match playstyles and swap between the two at anytime and that really keeps the combat from getting stale. There are four main stages and a optional fifth stage. Each stage starts easy but gets progressivly longer and harder as you clear more stages and you can tackle them in any order. After each sub stage you can choose to upgrade any move or stat to improve from there on out. This and the large amount of unlockable characters does give the game some replayability. The art of the game isn't to everyone's liking but I found it alright. The music in the game is really great and the biggest highlight for sure.

The things that I don't like and could use some fixing are the character speed is really slow. It's not game breaking or anything but characters walk speed and jump feel heavy and sluggish. Too many breakable objects in the stage that take too many hits and often have nothing in them is pretty annoying as well. It would have been nice to have a little wake up invincibility or some start up frame's on specials so you can't get gangbanged by enemies and especially bosses where they can just drain your life by hitting you back and forth. It always feels the the most cheapest and frustrating thing in existence. To do so well and then have your whole health bar drained in seconds. Plus two bosses have pits in thier stage with long range attacks that sometimes feel like it's impossible to avoid. Then we have stage 5 that takes all that bullshit to the extreme and is a frustrating mess that I often opt out of even playing it and takign the bad end and cash out.

Overall Double Dragon Gaiden is a rather fun beat um up and is worth the time. It's just a shame cause because if they just back to the drawing board on some things that this could have been really special but instead kinda just feels like a missed oppurtunity. I don't wanna sound too negative though i did really enjoy my time with it.

Platinum #187

This franchise used to be so fun. I don't know what the fuck they were thinking with this one.

Probably the least fun beat em up I've played in years. Also I hate the art style, especially since this is like the 5th game in an established series and they use this really fucking lame style for the characters.

Hard pass.

Gonna be honest: I love Double Dragon. I think Double Dragon is just the coolest little thing ever. Get a big cheeser any time I hear the theme tune! This can sometimes be a bit of a struggle because quite a lot of Double Dragon games are shite (Double Dragon II's good though). Hearing a new Double Dragon game was out, I had my now-common response of "oh, cool" tinged with deep, dark, primal fear - desperately trying my best to smile politely through the cold sweats when hearing oh, it's a roguelite as well, is it? Interesting! Haha!
Thankfully, this one isn't atrocious, even if I don't think it's particularly good. There's definitely the spine of something here - the fighting and combo systems have potential! There's multiple ways to cancel, including tagging in your partner to continue the combo, and you can juggle enemies for days. The specials are cool and satisfying to bop enemies with, and the game rewards you with health pickups for special KOing 3 or more enemies at once, actively encouraging crowd control and positioning. This raises the first sticking point, though - whenever you actually do this, the whole game pauses to cover the screen with a big congratulatory graphic of your health pickup for a couple of seconds before gameplay resumes. This happens every single time, and with the amount of enemies in a given area, you're going to see this multiple times a minute. This constant stop-start is mega irritating, and it feeds in to another speed concern - the movement. Bimmy, Jimmy and friends walk slow as hell in this game! There are powerups you can buy at the end of levels to mitigate that some, but it's random whether or not you'll actually be offered those (there's that roguelite magic). There's also a dash you can use, but you have to hold a button down to do it rather than do the extremely natural doubletap, so combined with the snail strut and the sit-there-a-second recovery on a bunch of attacks (and the dash itself!!) there's a kind of sticky feel to movement that just isn't very pleasant. Starting up Stage 1 and immediately having that walkspeed hit me? I'd never refund a Double Dragon, but for the briefest of moments the thought was there! It was there!!
Re: the roguelite element, I don't think it adds much (when do they ever, haha). No matter what you pick your playstyle really isn't going to change much, and it just becomes a thing of oh, I can get some more health here, yeah, I use this move a lot so I'll pick the thing that makes it do more damage...none of it feels very significant. More than once I got offered options where I was just like well, none of these are going to matter at all, so I'll just pick whatever...who cares...not I...
It's a shame, because as I said they do have something they can build on here, and the presentation is pretty nice. The sprites are fun, the soundtrack's great, there are enough overt (and boy, I mean overt) Hokuto no Ken references to satisfy my basic human need for those. And look at that key art! The absolute best Jimmy Lee has ever looked. Someone get 90s Mark Dacascos in this getup, pronto!
So yeah, it's got some big flaws, but those end up making it kind of average rather than outright terrible. I'd much rather replay this than replay Double Dragon 3, although maybe that's the default bar all beatemups should be able to clear. In a post-Streets of Rage 4 world though, you've really got to be doing more than this, especially when that game also threw in a roguelite mode!

Şu oyun bir tatlı geldi, bir hoş geldi anlatamam. Kendimi 90'ların sonunda gibi hissettim. İlk okulda, yaz tatilinin ilk günü, karneler alınmış, anneannenin yanına şehir dışına çıkılmış. Her şey taptaze ve hiç bitmeyecekmiş gibi hissettiren uzun tatil... İşte bu oyun bana böyle hissettirdi. Duygusal kısmı bir kenara bırakırsak önüne geleni döv, kombo saydır beat em up oyunu işte. 0 IQ ya maksimum eğlence vaat ediyor. Çocukluğunuzu 90 larda yaşadıysanız, nes, sega ve arcade kültüründen geliyorsanız oynayın.

Oyun içi ipuçları ve - SPOILER UYARISI - Marian ve Billy ile dönüşümlü oynayınca oyunun keyfi ciddi oranda artıyor. Normalde beat em up oyunlarında mesafeli silahlar dengesiz ve gereksiz kaçarken Marian en sevdiğim karakterlerden biri oldu, yanına Billy'nin klasik double dragon kontrol şeması eklenince oyundan alınan keyif ciddi oranda artıyor. Jimmy ve Uncle Matin'i oynamak oldukça keyifsiz hissettirdi. Jimmy'in özel saldırısı çok çabuk bölünebiliyor. Arkadaş genelde dövüşürken kollara ağırlık veriyor, zemine iniş saldırıları fena değil de bilemedim, sonuç olarak pek rahat hissettirmedi. Klasik double dragonların Arcade ve diğer konsollara portlanan versiyonlarında Billy ile Jimmy arasındaki tek fark renk paletlerindeki değişiklik idi. tabi o zamanın şartlarında kabul edilebilir bir durum bu. Kaldı ki iki farklı karakter koymuşsun ve ikisinin birebir aynı hareket şemasına sahip olması olacak şey değil de Jimmy harbiden tuhaf hissettiriyor.
Bir de Uncle Matin neden var allahaşkına? Şu tarz oyunlarda ağır tank karakterleri oynamayı seven var mı gerçekten? tam kendini kaptırmışken yavaş olduğu için tak diye kombosu bölünüyor, özel saldırısı düz bir path izlediği için doğru düzgün special K.O yapılmıyor hadi onu geçtim asıl uzmanlık alanı birilerini kavramak iken oyun alanının içindeki o karmaşada ben niye birilerini fırlatıp atmaya çalışayım ki? O anda alan hasarı vurup 5-6 kişiyi aynı anda devirmenin keyfi daha fazlayken gidip birileriyle güreş yapmam. Token ile özel karakterler açıp aboboyla oynamak bile daha keyifli. Ha unutmadan şunu da ekleyeyim. Açtığımız karakterleri denemek için neden bir test veya ne bileyim, bir dojo odası falan yok? Neden yeni aldığım karakteri deneyebilmem için ya oyunun en başından başlamam gerekiyor yada oyun içinde ölmem gerekiyor? Bırak da oyuna girmeden önce karakterimi bir deneyeyim elim ısınsın.

Bana mı öyle geldi bilmiyorum da oyun genel olarak biraz kısa sanki. Tam alıştım derken pat diye bitti (Evet bölümler sadece haritada işaretli olan hepi topu 4 kısımdan ibaret ha bir de ekstra tercihe bağlı bir final bölümü var)
Oyunla ilgili bir problem mi yoksa bir problem mi ondan da emin değilim de finalde 4 boss ile kapıştıktan sonra en büyük bossla savaşamadan onu yendiğimle ilgili bir ara sahne çıktı ve oyun bitti. Tam çözüm videolarını falan izledim oynayan herkes final boss ile kapışmış galiba farkında olmadan oyunu exploitlemiş olabilirim. Glitch de denmez buna ama bozuldu oyun ben fark etmeden.

Final haritanın müziklerine ve bölüm tasarımına dikkatli bakınca double dragon 2 ye bir gönderme olduğu anlaşılıyor. Orda bir tüylerim ufak da olsa diken diken oldu.

Oyun içinde Ufak roguelike elementleri var da gerek de yokmuş. Oldu olacak Xp sistemi koyun da skill puanı basalım karakterimize. çok gereksiz vakit kaybı.

SPOİLER SONU

A game that begins with aggressive electric guitare cannot be lame, can it?

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, that I will call DDGROTD for the rest of this critic just because how absurd it sounds, asks you to choose two characters and a level. Then you hit thugs.

It is one of the simplest beat'em all I ever played. You hit with a button. If your special gauge is full, you can use a special attack among 4. Killing enemies rewards you with mana that refill your special gauge and money, that is used to both upgrade your character throughout your run AND buy new content in the outgame (including playable characters).

The original feature of DDGROTD is what I call the trukey feature. Each mission has secondary objectives. Some of theme imply turkeys and/or crowd controls. Crowd controls is the name given to simultaneous last hit done with special moves, ranking from 3 to 5 enemies eliminated simultaneously, respectively rewarded with an hot dog, an hamburger and a Turkey. The subtelty that gives its flavor to this system is that an enemy is considered eliminated once is health bar reaches 0, but it can be crowd controlled until its body disapears. That means mutilating corpses is a great way to achieve crowd controls, which is a way to heal your character and increase your overall money.

All in all, DDGROTD is as simple as fun. To play with your lover after a long day at work. Plus, it's cheap: I bought a physical copy 30€ day one.

's fine I guess. It doesn't feel too bad to play plus all the characters you have (and unlock) are wildy different. But I ain't a fan of this Token junk at all. Gotta stretch that 100% length somehow. Enemy variety is eh... and bosses can get their asses torn apart by Marian so that's funny. Comboing can be fun but it's also one of those "one combo fits all" (as I like to call it) where you do the same one for everything.

Also not a fan of the way the in-game style looks. It's a step above reusing DD2 nes' sprites again but... I wish it were something more akin to river city girls. I think it fits the game's promo-art more than this weird bobble-headed, not-chibi style.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind this being DD4 as okay as I found this. Just a tad disappointing as far as beat em up revivals go.

Elevates its simple beat-em-up design with some fun strategy like tag-team characters and using special attacks to get health pickups, and unlockable characters and varied paths to liven it up for some replay value. Simple enough design that still at best with co-op (local only admittedly a drawback). Also worth giving at least a passing grade to because it's a modern day beat em up where you can suplex a dog. UPDATE: I've replayed a few times and the new character choices really boost up the game's longevity, bumping up a half-star.

Double Dragon series has had quite the ride huh? It seems like it doesn't know what it wants to do anymore as far as design and story telling, it just wants to stay a Beat Em Up and try to find it's niche

Well it kinda found it for the most part. While not the first time a Beat Em Up took a rogue lite approach, the way this game was done was rather fitting.

I'm not gonna lie, when I first saw this game design, I felt kinda crestfallen that it didn't look great, and was going for a kinda out there style like Double Dragon Neon tried to do, but unlike that game...I think they nailed it. This style kinda reminds me of River City Ransom, but also kept a modern design of the characters that have been in the series. It's honestly a bit charming once you start playing it and see the animations and expressions. I think they did very well with the characters and the stages are actually really good, with bits of a throw back to the series, but not in a cheap way. They actually design stages that modernized the old games that showed what the original design was more going for.

The music is absolutely amazing! Something Double Dragon has never been shy of is great remixes to it's old games and plenty of new synth tracks that stand waaay above what some other games in the genre throw out as music. Also, for as little as there is, the characters voices are actually REALLY good as well, pretty much the best they've done with them.

The story is pretty much non existent, much like most Beat Em Ups. Gangs have taken over the city and the Lee Brothers plus friends have to do something about it. Doesn't really get any deeper than that, but at the very least you get to see redesigns of old characters that again, are set to look like, what the past games were going for and couldn't or were limited in scope.

The gameplay is pretty solid for the most part. It actually brings in the rogue lite gameplay smoothly into it's core style. When fighting enemies they drop money which is used to either buy buffs at the end of the level or save the money to revive your partner should they die. Your partner isn't AI controlled and they only come in when "tagged" much like the Marvel vs Capcom series if you're familiar with that. every character has special attacks that when executed in a group of 3 or more, the player is rewarded with food to heal, so the game has enough depth to force you to use tactics and plan out the best way to fight and survive. The game is definitely no push over, due to being able to customize the settings and enemy lay outs are randomized and made harder as you progress as does the stages are made longer. It's quite a fun game.

Now where the game does faulter in spots.

- As of right now, the game only has couch co-op and with this fun style it REALLY needs online co-op, it could provide even more hours of fun, practically doubling it.

- There's some hitbox jank and lack of i-frames in spots that can easily lead to unfair deaths, this isn't new to Beat Em Ups let alone Double Dragon, but be aware going in, it's not awful, but it IS there.

- While the gameplay is really good, the characters could use a bit more playstyle depth, there's only JUST enough difference between characters to not call them clones, but it's skirting the line in spots.

Overall this game is much better than I thought, I've played about every Double Dragon game and always found the series to be a bit of a rollercoaster as a while, and this game is definitely one of it's highest peaks. would love other Beat Em Ups to try this gameplay style out, could lead to a lot of old games come back with new live in them.

needs polish (enemies sometimes throw projectiles before they even show up on screen once, food doesn't always render on top of everything else, doing a running jump fails and comes out as a roll as if I'd instantly landed half the time for me, other minor gripes) but the design choices are at odds with what I want out of the game in the first place so even if they were fixed I don't think I'd add much more than .5 to my rating. I really do not like that special moves can't be used unless full, meaning you have to commit to using them only when you're planning to go in and kill something and limiting the game's sauce potential, and I really do not like that TAGGING doesn't have a separate cooldown timer either. I could go on about other small issues but when it comes down to it the meter only being usable when full is the main thing that makes me not want to play anymore because I'm hindered from trying to figure out what impractical combos I can do during a run

edit: docked another .5 because the game literally refused to let me revive despite having 4x the needed money