I wrote this back in 2021 but I feel most of it holds true:

RULE, BE RULED, OR DIE!

So Paprium came out in 2020, ordered a copy back in 2017 (that trailer was super sick ngl) and had a coupon to get a discount on the preorder. I gotta admit, this is the first time I bought a boutique retro game print thing, and it's been a long arduous ride throughd elays, lack of updates, and just stone cold silence wondering if it even existed.

Yet after all the troubled developments, a really garbage '''launch party,''' the lead developer constantly shoving his foot in his mouth, and now the IP potentially being sold off, the game released and only one question remains:

Is it even any good?

My personal answer is its a very kinky game. When it's working in tandem with all its parts (which is very rare), it's one of the legit best experiences I've had playing a Beat em Up. Sadly it doesn't happen nearly as often as it should and it tends to hold itself back with more issues than it really should.

I want to quickly touch on the presentation of the game which is just...stunningly neon colored, vibrant, and super pops with the colors that the Genesis uses best. The title screen has really rad parallax effect, the font is BIG and BOLD, then you get into the character selection menu and it just keeps assaulting you with bright colors, flashy effects, and then the music really kicks in and, oh man, I gotta gush about this for a moment.

The music in this game SLAPS, like I'm talking a contender for one of the best soundtracks on the system. The amount of work the composers got out of the YM2612, PSG, and DAC is bassy, boomy, funky, and it just fits every stage and moment the game rolls with. Adding onto that is the extra chip in the cart itself handling all the voice and sound samples which have this crunchy sound to it that just adds this extra layer of sound that's more novelty than it is anything technically impressing. That said hearing "IT'S SHOWTIIIIIIME" on the regular cracks me up, even hours into my gameplay sessions. Even extra details like a street performer sax player walking around adding instrumentation to the current song is a riot and really gives a fun vibe. Audio in homebrew efforts should really strive to make full use of the hardware and this game really sets the bar high for that. Absolute kudos to all the audio folks on this project, it's a stellar effort.

Another fantastic aspect is background art is very well done and solid, the sense of scale is something to really behold for a beat 'em up. Once you walk out onto the street and start seeing the backgrounds, characters watching advertisements, and even lounging around, it feels like a lived-in world. Some personal highlights I found were BION-MART, which is a massive shopping center with a fun escalator battle segment, lots of neat storefronts (including an easter egg featuring some of the music used in the trailer!), and a real fun vibe in this miserable megapolis you're fighting through.

The playable characaters, enemies, and bosses have interesting and bizarre designs, but sadly don't have a lot of personality outside of when they're in a dizzy animation or taunting you a lot of the time. A real big shame since when their animations are really good in cases like being dizzy, seeing some idle taunts, and even some of the result screen poses, there's some personality in the game. It doesn't come out too much but when it does, it just adds that little sparkle to the game's entire package.

Sadly part of these designs are also held back by very unfortunate racial depictions that honest to god have no reason to be here. It's honestly a complete bummer that the enemies were included at all compared to everything else.

It's still astonishingly well put together and bold on a first impression, even with some rough edges. However repeated plays start to really bring issues into light and unfortunately this is where things just start to drop off.

One thing I noticed was character sprites (while fairly well detailed and have some decent animation) have some pretty rough animation at points where certain attacks and followthroughs don't feel like they connect properly. Once the attacks start rolling it feels awkward with enemies often taking a moment to fly off from attacks, combo chains don't look or feel as nice as they do in Streets of Rage as well. It's a an unfortunate blemish and a key thing that a beat em up should strive to get right, I feel.

Speaking of enemies, Rondo sucks. Like big time sucks. Like I'm just gonna dedicate this section tot he pinnacle of bad beat em up boss design of the year. I hate this green goblin lookin-ass gym bro with the fucking Robbie Rotten haircut. Any boss that has a one hit kill attack in a beat em up should never exist but someone thought this was a good idea. This dude's HP pool is so large and I think beats out most other bosses in the game, hilariously enough.

Stages while good looking, often run WAY too long. Not even accounting for the fucking missions you have to do that really just take the game from adequate to downright FRUSTRATING. Having to take close to 40 minutes to get to the last stage of a route and then do a 15-20 minute long sequence with minimal time to breath is stressful enough, more on that coming up regarding the enemies. One of the many hitches that creates is fatigue and a lack of wantt o play when you spend so long on one stage only to finally get your mission and have to spend another 10-15 in another segment after the fact. And if you die there?

Back to the start of the previous stage, not the mission. And if you run out of continues?

Game over, start the route over in the Ice Factory.

Fuck.

All of this and probably the most major thing for me I realized replaying Bare Knuckle 3? The way it paces its enemies is incredibly underutilized and makes for an incredibly frustrating experience each stage.

Usually in Streets of Rage/Bare Knuckle (I'm just gonna shorten these to SOR/BK), you'll get introduced to a small pool of enemies early on, usually about 3 mook types with very specific simple AI, one to charge forward, one to flank, and one to back off and then slide in. Individually they each don't pose much of a threat but together creates a modular challenge where by eliminating one by one, you change how the rule of battle goes. Once you reach later sections of the games, you're greeted with more complex driven AIs who do multiple functions (like jump attacks, back offs, being immune to throws) which require more adaptation along with denser HP pools.

Paprium lacks this. It lacks so much of this. Paprium's enemy AI is very dense for the most part but most run very similar routines and often ape, very poorly i might add, what SOR/BK already put into the genre (especially the whip wielding officers). On top of this, from the get-go you're swarmed with groups of 4-6 enemies with these basic patterns, high damage values, and large HP pools that hon estly would fit better towards the end of the game, not the first few stages! And these groups grow to about 8 or so by the end game with cheaper AI coming out of the woodwork making it a chore to fight back swarms while getting thrown left and right in groups and losing HP to situations you can't really fight out of without either using BLU or a life. A fuck off annoying mess.

Honestly that's really what gets me about Paprium is it takes a lot of the elements that made SOR/BK and many other beat em ups great and, while improving on them aesthetically in a lot of places, it misses the mark in its gameplay and longterm appeal I can't really stand to recommend it as a whole. And that's not accounting for whatever the hell's going on with Fonzie and Watermelon Games, you can look that up on your own time.

Overall Paprium is a great first impression game that, sadly, falls under a lot of stress that does more to hurt it than help it. There's a gem of a game in here with a lot of solid content and ideas. However in the state its released in (at the time of this writing, possibly could change if this Megawire thing ever happens), it's a frustrating chore of a game that genuinely needed more love than notoriety.

Be ruled, Paprium.