Aesthetically, this game is right up my ally. It has beautiful sprite art compounded by really lovely visual effects. I love the character designs, the artstyle, especially in the cutscenes both animated and comic panels, the locations are really fun to explore generally despite me not really noticing much of a river in river city (i might be stupid), and the music was surprisingly really gorgeous feeling, like I was working in the cabaret mini-games in 0 or K2 with how they sound.

My issues with the game come more from nitpicks about the flow of the game and mechanical depth, as well as a nitpick about the ending. Starting with the less spoilery one, while I do like that you can string combos together, especially with a friend, it feels like launchers aren't really built to take advantage of it. Even moves that make the only point to launch an opponent up have no way to quickly pop up to catch them and flow into a more notable combo. Even a basic light to heavy to special would've been nice. I'm not a big fan of it hiding what items and accessories do before you buy them since I think that just makes the buying process more annoying, especially when it's items that heal the same amount but cost more.

I'm also mixed on how friendly fire is handled. I played with my friend Ami through this, and while it was really funny a lot of the times that we could throw items to cause chaos in fights and sometimes kill ourselves off of it, it was a bit annoying at times when it you can't just use it to deal with a horde without risking the friendly fire. Realistically I understand this is more down to an aspect of how items work in the game as the item you threw can be turned on you, which is part of the deal with the boomerang and it's fucked achievement, but it can be annoying at times.

Oh and that's another thing, it feels like blocking is useless in this game. Ok well not useless, there were a couple times it helped and the parry by extension was needed for the boomerang achievement, but they just pop-up too slowly to be usable, especially when enemies can just attack through your combos at times.

Now that's a lot of gameplay nitpicks, but keep in mind that while I think it does knock it down from being great, it's still good, and I think it was definitely made better by doing it with a friend, thanks again Ami!. But also there's the one story spoiler, and it's related to the final boss, so this is where the spoiler warning matters a lot. So uhhh

-Spoiler Starts!-





So generally speaking, the majority of the game is well-written, funny enough to get some chuckles, and quite charming all-around, and I think that carries up to the ending. I think the bosses are also generally really well done, and I like what you think is the final boss in Sabuko, the yakuza leader of the tower you just raided. It's a great fight, and a great way to end out the game. Only problem is that it's not the true ending.

The true ending is a fight instead against the two mean girls that have been heckling Kyoko and Misako over the entire game. And don't get me wrong, the fight is actually pretty cool since they turn the tag team theme onto you and it's pretty sick actually. The problem is how it affects the ending.

The ending is generally the duo kicking whoever they fight out of the tower and landing in a sauna that the boyfriends were just in, specifically when they are changing. The thing that changes is if the two guys recognize the two. The original has them not, and the true ending is them recognizing them and offering to go get food with them.

Honestly the ending itself isn't really bad, it's pretty in-line for this game actually, and it's kind of funny, it's just the reason for the change is a meta-textual reason. Kyoko and Misako were the girlfriends for one game that never left japan, and so the original idea for the plot, and what made it into the game was that they were just really crazy fans of the boyfriends they convinced themselves into thinking they were in a relationship even though they weren't. Doing the stuff to unlock the final boss and then beating them I think is implied to break a spell over them or rewrite reality in a way to set things as they should, and that's kind of fine.

I'll admit, I do think making the deal with the true final boss be a more meta-textual fight that addresses the character's history and has them overcome that for the game to resolve as promised is cool both because I think it's a ballsy play, and because knowing the context, it's kind of neat, but I think in execution, it could be better. I don't know how to explain it write, but it feels like the endings just sort of sprawl out over one another. Like we fight who we think should've been the final boss, but they weren't, and we get the bad ending. The good ending has us fight characters who realistically sort of shadow-stepped into being final bosses near the end of the game, and fighting them doesn't even give a rematch against Sabuko, which would've been nice. It kind of just feels like that neither ending is that satisfactory even though both end with good fights. One has I think the best fight in the game, and the other has the actual good ending and neat story context, but there's no way to get both out of the deal.

As much as I like the writing, the ending sort of fumbles on the joke, and it kind of makes the ending feel weak imo. Not bad, just maybe could be executed a bit better I guess. Either way.





-Spoilers End!-

So uh yeah, the game is pretty alright. I had a lot of nitpicks, but I did have a lot of fun learning new moves, finding a lot of the referenced people and characters across the game (from characters to movesets to voice actors like jacksepticeye), and aside from like, the second major boss, I loved a lot of the bosses in the game. Genuinely really fun game. Glad I got a buddy to play it, next time we're getting a party for 3 player. (Also I chose Kyoko and I'm choosing her again, she is kind of my vibe).