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!
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!
4 Comments
Yeah, even with the launch discount I was gritting my teeth at the price for this. I am a complete sucker.
This got the Matt McMuscles seal of approval, so I was already pretty iffy about this one lol. Too much out at the moment for my focus on this though, so it's gonna be a sale pickup unfortch.
I was unaware of the rougelite stuff but I did see footage and official art and it looked super cool. I don't understand why streets of rage and the ninja turtles are getting these new high calibur games while double dragon keeps getting stuff like this.
FallenGrace
9 months ago