Team Reptile do a great job with this love letter to Jet Set Radio Future, reviving the rail-grinding platformer in an HD reimagining that doesn't stray far from the original recipe.
The story follows a group of 'writers' (dabbling in x-sports, graffiti, dancing etc.) taking on the other gangs of the city to become the best. It's cartoony at points but it fits fine in the futuristic setting and serves more as justification for the game than anything.
For visuals BRCF perfectly revitalises the cel shaded Y2K Harujuku Technopunk fusion aesthetic of JSRF while modernising it so feels like a true sequel. On top of that you have the killer glitch-hop soundtrack with some incredible talent and 3 tracks from the legendary Hideki Naganuma who was the lead artist on the JSRF OST. The only downside was that each area prioritises a small mixtape of tracks and they tend to feel overplayed by the time you leave.
Gameplay is focused on spraying graffiti then out performing the other team in challenges. Like JSRF score is based on button tapping to build points while racking up multipliers without breaking your combo. Each each rail corner, halfpipe, and wall grind is worth +1 multiplier so high scores require you to explore the whole map, following the rail spaghetti then 'manualing' (grinding along the ground) between interactables before you run out of speed.
The manuals are very generous (for bmx and boards) so gameplay isn't too challenging, rather most combo breaks will come from miss-inputs, falling off the map, or clipping geometry by accident. Manuals also feels like a bit of a crutch for the level design as areas don't always naturally 'flow' into one another or feel linked in a meaningful way. This leaves the gameplay feeling simplistic and a key area that could have used more innovation, especially since it gets repetitive fast and there isn't a lot of motivation to keep at it once you beat the story missions in each map.
This gets at a central problem in BRCF which is that it's very surface deep. You can use BMX's, Skateboards, and Inlines but the mechanical differences are minimal, you can unlock 20-odd characters but they don't have any impact on gameplay or story, there's 71 graffiti designs to unlock and spray them using the same minigame, there's 5 huge maps but they all play the same from start to finish. Unlocking every cosmetic was tedious and by the time I did it there was no reason left to play - I'd already exhausted the gameplay just getting to that point.
Overall it's a rare and beautiful thing to see a spiritual sequel meet the measure of it's influence, and Reptile have done an impressive job - it took 10 years of dev work to make this happen which is no small feat and it's praise is hard earned. What I'd love to see now is a sequel that capitalises on that work, expands on it, and builds in more substantial variety instead of just the cosmetic stuff, but for now I'm appreciative that we have a little more JSR in the world. Buy the OST, buy the DLC and support that team for a sequel!
The story follows a group of 'writers' (dabbling in x-sports, graffiti, dancing etc.) taking on the other gangs of the city to become the best. It's cartoony at points but it fits fine in the futuristic setting and serves more as justification for the game than anything.
For visuals BRCF perfectly revitalises the cel shaded Y2K Harujuku Technopunk fusion aesthetic of JSRF while modernising it so feels like a true sequel. On top of that you have the killer glitch-hop soundtrack with some incredible talent and 3 tracks from the legendary Hideki Naganuma who was the lead artist on the JSRF OST. The only downside was that each area prioritises a small mixtape of tracks and they tend to feel overplayed by the time you leave.
Gameplay is focused on spraying graffiti then out performing the other team in challenges. Like JSRF score is based on button tapping to build points while racking up multipliers without breaking your combo. Each each rail corner, halfpipe, and wall grind is worth +1 multiplier so high scores require you to explore the whole map, following the rail spaghetti then 'manualing' (grinding along the ground) between interactables before you run out of speed.
The manuals are very generous (for bmx and boards) so gameplay isn't too challenging, rather most combo breaks will come from miss-inputs, falling off the map, or clipping geometry by accident. Manuals also feels like a bit of a crutch for the level design as areas don't always naturally 'flow' into one another or feel linked in a meaningful way. This leaves the gameplay feeling simplistic and a key area that could have used more innovation, especially since it gets repetitive fast and there isn't a lot of motivation to keep at it once you beat the story missions in each map.
This gets at a central problem in BRCF which is that it's very surface deep. You can use BMX's, Skateboards, and Inlines but the mechanical differences are minimal, you can unlock 20-odd characters but they don't have any impact on gameplay or story, there's 71 graffiti designs to unlock and spray them using the same minigame, there's 5 huge maps but they all play the same from start to finish. Unlocking every cosmetic was tedious and by the time I did it there was no reason left to play - I'd already exhausted the gameplay just getting to that point.
Overall it's a rare and beautiful thing to see a spiritual sequel meet the measure of it's influence, and Reptile have done an impressive job - it took 10 years of dev work to make this happen which is no small feat and it's praise is hard earned. What I'd love to see now is a sequel that capitalises on that work, expands on it, and builds in more substantial variety instead of just the cosmetic stuff, but for now I'm appreciative that we have a little more JSR in the world. Buy the OST, buy the DLC and support that team for a sequel!