Game's REALLY fuckin' good but REALLY fuckin' hard.... just like Ninja Gaiden ;D

Movement is god damn everything. Even takes more priority than stuff like combos and Ryu is more than agile enough to slip past every enemy and boss moves if timed well enough. Movement in combat feels smoother than something like Trickster from DMC3 (as a direct comparison.) With this game, they made god damn sure you use that movement at all times.

My only real problems are with a couple of enemies. The black ninjas, while I got used to them for my first playthrough, can be infuriating whenever they whip out their sticky bombs. And the fish... the fish at the last couple of levels can kiss my ass.
And sometimes I feel the camera has a hard time keeping up with the fast-paced action going on. And it's one of those camera that can screw up the view when in an unlucky spot. Also, I don't like when the R-stick defaults to the first person camera every time you boot up the game so you have to click the R-stick to the more normal camera control.

Badass game despite how soul crushingly hard it gets.

Good. Very good but not amazing.

I think having punches feel like SOR2 was a good call. Characters like Axel or Blaze without a dash (coming right out of SoR3) felt a little weird. I think you can manage VERY well without it and calls for evasion aren't THAT demanding at least to me. But still, slightly handicapping Axel and Blaze from what the 3rd game did, I just can't wrap my head around. I don't mind them having something like Adam's short dash minus being able to turn around the opponent would've suffice. People say there isn't much depth to combat, but I think whatever tricks unique to each character can do make it worth at least experimenting with.

Enemies felt varied enough at least until the last few stretches of the game. Though, enemies like the taser cops felt a bit on the cheap side. Fat enemies felt a bit more annoying than previous games.

Bosses definitely posed a challenge without being TOO hard if you know what you're doing. The most I would have are at least one retry normally. This is speaking of experience of a normal mode run-through. These bosses definitely felt different from one another which is good.

One thing I straight up didn't like was locking some features by beating the story mode first. Arcade mode and Boss Rush: fine, I guess. Stage Select and Battle: no.

Presentation is pretty great technically. There's of course the actual art style for the character art which I don't mind personally. Its probably to make animation less taxing so I think they did good with what they have. Damn good. Backgrounds I'd say are an evolution for the series.

Overall a good game and a fine revival.

Will there ever be a good Crows game? No.

This is the first Crows game a year before the manga series was wrapping up. All while the Sega Dreamcast on the rise.
(btw Backloggd, it was released in '97)

So, Crows is about high schoolers and young gangsters beating each other to death, so why not a beat em up?

The game is your usual 2D-side scrolling brawler. That isn't a bad thing by itself but the problem lies in a lot of little annoyances especially when compared to other brawlers before it:

1 (MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL). The game's speed is slow as balls.
2. You can't move when picking up large objects.
3. You don't have pre-canned combos when pressing punch and kick per say. You get to customize special combos with a certain number of slots depending on the character. They require special inputs and act like your "get-off-me" special move in your usual beat em ups (health is lost after each successful hit) which leads me to...
4. No special move to hit surrounding enemies. The special combos are liable to miss and enemies can easily break you out of it. Not even a back-kick like the Kunio-Kun games.
5. You can't select Ryuushin and Tatsuya after finishing the game. You gotta play the sections where you unlocked them but they never stay unlocked before starting another new game.

While the game looks nice overall, I don't really get the decision to put it in the super deformed chibi style à la Kunio-Kun/River City. And not even Takahashi Hiroshi's chibi style. Sad! Especially when everything else other than the gameplay has the manga's original style.

Overall, below average. Meh even by generic brawler standards. It's not long at all but it sure feels like it when the game runs underwater.

First ninja game where you do ninja stealthing.

Game aged great when it comes to the stealth, pretty awful when it comes to combat.
I think it's a good thing that being sneaky gets you better ranks and more items. I'd say its one of those games that wants you to avoid the slow as molasses and stiff as a stick in the ass combat as much as possible..... or so I thought as most stages end with boss fights. But thanks to my good stealth abilities, I'd have more than enough bombs and landmines.

But I like how many things you can do when you stealth. Crawling, grapple shots, wall shimmying, gripping on to ledges, damn near anything a ninja should do.
Tank controls I didn't mind too much when it comes to running around. Combat combined with a camera that gets in the way of the action.... yeah, I mind a lot.

Great music and I like the overall vibe of the presentation. Awful english acting and all.

Overall, good stealth game.

Kino's final showdown.

It's weird. It looks the same, sounds the same (aside from the music) but lots of mechanical changes as well as ones relating to character inputs make it feel like a different game. Like it's VF6 without actually being VF6. Not saying it's a bad thing but it's something I just realized recently.

MTE (Multiple Throw Escapes) are removed as well as VF5 vanilla's Throw Clash. Throw Escapes in general has been made easier as well as combos. Evading has had tweaks and jumping is finally not so awkward to do (Guard+Up for a regular jump).

I'd say some of those are legitimate improvements. But outside of the core gameplay, the game kind of reeks of cheap downloadable title. Less single player content meaning no quest mode replaced with simple trials which is something I guess. Cool thing is you can change sound tracks to previous games and revisions.

Costume customization is pretty cool as well. Not the deepest but you can still make the character unrecognizable.

All in all, great base game, meh single player stuff. I really hope they improve those things around next time! :)

Shame that the western version got gimped a bit but honestly, it's not that bad. Good, even. The new moves and a sprint for all characters is nice all things considered.
Music is terrible which might be a breaking point for a whole lot cuz y'know, Streets of Rage 1-2 music are classics.
I don't know. From pure gameplay, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Probably one thing I don't like compared to 2 is that punching feels a bit... off. Like something's a bit loose. Other than that and the music, not many complaints at all here.
I'd definitely recommend playing the japanese version instead.

So uhhhhhh
Game looks as pretty as MM8.
A "bit" more challenging than 8.
Good weapons as well as some neat new robot master designs barring Tengu and Astro man.
Bolt upgrades are pretty cool.
Bass is pretty fun to play as.

And ummmm.....
Some bad level design choices. Especially as Mega Man and a little as Bass.
Generous checkpoints? Hahaha.... Surely you jest!
The King Plane from King Stage 2 is the worst thing ever. Punching the platforms out of existence is one thing, but don't try to blind me while already punishing me.

So..... I guess if you were disappointed at MM8's difficulty, this game will scratch your itch I guess. I found it okay at best, horrid at momentary worst.

I thought this fighter was overly animated trash til I started getting into it. Its from an already strange FG series mechanically and then it gets stranger even from its predecessors.
Can't say I blame people for thinking this. Still feels a bit slow but not as sluggish other than how quick getups work.

Shit has wake-up sweeps, juggles & juggle moves, characters have different weights, wall carry, pre-canned strings a Crush system in 96!
Not the most graceful execution (or good on paper) in my opinion but not outright kusoge for what it tries to do.

A bit of a sleeper "hit" in my eyes.

Better game feel, just as fast as the first game, some new mechanics that Virtua Fighter would pluck from 4 onward and one really dumb mechanic that you can turn off.

Game has more defensive options. I think this is where tech rolls and safe falls became fully fleshed out.

No default ways to side step but you gotta do Tech Guards (sort of this game's Parry) where you can do side steps among a bunch of other stuff like quick grabs, and actual counter attack etc.

Two new characters added to the base roster. Charlie and Emi. Two corny character that fit right in with a wack ass fighting game. Both having "stances". Charlie can hop on his BMX and Emi.... sits on the ground? Its generally fun stuff and I prefer this over the first game to be quite honest.

Too bad cuz this game's obscurity rivals that of Last Bronx and a pretty terribly bare Dreamcast port (TWO YEARS after it hit the arcades.)
Thankfully, you can play it on Fightcade 2 but yeah.

Shit's fun.

Who knew a simple concept of an X-Men fighting game would have its whack-ass, coke afflicted DNA splerged on many fighting games to come?

Chain combo & EZ cancels
Hyper Jumps & Air Combos
Multiple levels of super meter

This unbalanced magnum dick of a button basher did it all.

Piss easy and some pretty bland levels til the end, but it's competent and still enjoyable.
I don't know if it's just me but I wish some attention was paid with the gameplay elements and scenery cuz they all sort of blend in (by that, I mean the spikes can be hard to see in some stages.)
The weapon system is cool and I wish the Flame-only sections were more like the final stages.

's okay.