EDIT: Recent updates have fixed all of my problems and I now have over 80 hours in this game. I've bumped the score up too. Great for modding. Keeping the review for posterity.
I can’t help but feel disappointed. Not that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a bad game, but that it carries over many of the same baffling design decisions that Jet Set Radio could only get away with by virtue of being on the fucking Dreamcast. While featuring excellent gameplay and an impeccable aesthetic, BRC is brought down from the heights it could have reached by what I found to be an unusable map. It’s amazing how many games I’ve played in the last few months with bad maps. Exits to different maps aren’t labeled, costume changes, characters, and gear changes are all locked behind different and bizarre diegetic locations that not only can you not find on the map, but none of them intersect.
Say, if I want to change my character, my gear, and my costume, I might have to jump to several different maps just to locate things that should just be in a simple menu. The original JSR has a character select so I have no idea what happened here. Aside from that I can’t find much else to say just by virtue of this being a by-the-numbers JSR clone in almost every aspect. The combos are fantastic and moving around feels great, but things get repetitive quickly in my estimation. It’s not a game for everyone, and definitely not for me, which is a shame because I was so excited for it.
I can’t help but feel disappointed. Not that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a bad game, but that it carries over many of the same baffling design decisions that Jet Set Radio could only get away with by virtue of being on the fucking Dreamcast. While featuring excellent gameplay and an impeccable aesthetic, BRC is brought down from the heights it could have reached by what I found to be an unusable map. It’s amazing how many games I’ve played in the last few months with bad maps. Exits to different maps aren’t labeled, costume changes, characters, and gear changes are all locked behind different and bizarre diegetic locations that not only can you not find on the map, but none of them intersect.
Say, if I want to change my character, my gear, and my costume, I might have to jump to several different maps just to locate things that should just be in a simple menu. The original JSR has a character select so I have no idea what happened here. Aside from that I can’t find much else to say just by virtue of this being a by-the-numbers JSR clone in almost every aspect. The combos are fantastic and moving around feels great, but things get repetitive quickly in my estimation. It’s not a game for everyone, and definitely not for me, which is a shame because I was so excited for it.