While I love the Scott Pilgrim franchise through its comics and movies, I had a hard time finding the love for it in this arcade beat-em-up game. While your experiences may vary, these were mine, starting with the good stuff.
Positives first! I adore the soundtrack by Anamanaguchi, which is legendarily good. Every track bursts with character and life and by all means, it could be some people's very reason to even play. It's that good. Iconic. You have to listen to it.
The sprite work is also phenomenal. In a world filled with janky, poorly realized 3D anime games, seeing the comic art POP just as good (if not better) than it did on the pages of the actual series, I mean, WOW. They nailed it. Seeing all the characters, in all of these iconic locations, fully realized from the comics is like a transcendental experience.
For what it's worth too, the fighting mostly feels good. You have light and heavy attacks, some basic combos in between, and can pick up objects in the world to fight with or throw. At its peak, the most fun you can have is doing local co-op, fighting everyone, assisting your friend, and having a (mostly) chill time. But this game has some serious drawbacks that make it an overall difficult game to recommend to anyone who isn't a serious Scott Pilgrim fan.
There are several selectable characters, all of which have a block and counter move. As helpful as this should be in this type of game, I often found that enemy attacks weren't telegraphed very well, and often were executed too quickly for me to react. This made the block mechanic more or less worthless, and I found myself trying to be as offensive as possible more often than not. I also found that even in situations when you're pushed into a corner and want to block any attack, some of those are unblockable for whatever reason. It feels like it's not balanced into the game properly, and leads the way for many boss battles to feel completely unfair to me as the player.
I also don't enjoy how the game doesn't explain stat boosts from items. I was having a rough time so I went online and learned that I was having a difficult time because I didn't realize I could buy multiple sets of the same items to boost character stats. This is an extremely important mechanic and very much determines your success in this game. I think it's bad design to not have such important information easily accessible in-game.
Unfortunately, it's also from these "stats" that the majority of the length of the game came from for me. Is one area too difficult? Replay older levels, get cash, and buy stat boosts. Which is a valid game design choice! But there are only 8 stages. And these stages, all 8 of them back to back can be beaten, in probably just over an hour and a half. This lends itself to being tedious and "samey" feeling the whole time because you're constantly grinding earlier levels or just deciding to replay the whole game from the start until you have enough stats to win.
There's an audience for this game, and just as the beginning of this review started, I did enjoy it at times. The Anamanaguchi soundtrack is divine, some of the combos are fun, and you have the opportunity to become overpowered through stat boosts. Some of the alternate game modes are alright. But even with all the good it's got, it's a shame that I don't think I'll be coming back to revisit this one anytime soon because of everything that drags it down.
Positives first! I adore the soundtrack by Anamanaguchi, which is legendarily good. Every track bursts with character and life and by all means, it could be some people's very reason to even play. It's that good. Iconic. You have to listen to it.
The sprite work is also phenomenal. In a world filled with janky, poorly realized 3D anime games, seeing the comic art POP just as good (if not better) than it did on the pages of the actual series, I mean, WOW. They nailed it. Seeing all the characters, in all of these iconic locations, fully realized from the comics is like a transcendental experience.
For what it's worth too, the fighting mostly feels good. You have light and heavy attacks, some basic combos in between, and can pick up objects in the world to fight with or throw. At its peak, the most fun you can have is doing local co-op, fighting everyone, assisting your friend, and having a (mostly) chill time. But this game has some serious drawbacks that make it an overall difficult game to recommend to anyone who isn't a serious Scott Pilgrim fan.
There are several selectable characters, all of which have a block and counter move. As helpful as this should be in this type of game, I often found that enemy attacks weren't telegraphed very well, and often were executed too quickly for me to react. This made the block mechanic more or less worthless, and I found myself trying to be as offensive as possible more often than not. I also found that even in situations when you're pushed into a corner and want to block any attack, some of those are unblockable for whatever reason. It feels like it's not balanced into the game properly, and leads the way for many boss battles to feel completely unfair to me as the player.
I also don't enjoy how the game doesn't explain stat boosts from items. I was having a rough time so I went online and learned that I was having a difficult time because I didn't realize I could buy multiple sets of the same items to boost character stats. This is an extremely important mechanic and very much determines your success in this game. I think it's bad design to not have such important information easily accessible in-game.
Unfortunately, it's also from these "stats" that the majority of the length of the game came from for me. Is one area too difficult? Replay older levels, get cash, and buy stat boosts. Which is a valid game design choice! But there are only 8 stages. And these stages, all 8 of them back to back can be beaten, in probably just over an hour and a half. This lends itself to being tedious and "samey" feeling the whole time because you're constantly grinding earlier levels or just deciding to replay the whole game from the start until you have enough stats to win.
There's an audience for this game, and just as the beginning of this review started, I did enjoy it at times. The Anamanaguchi soundtrack is divine, some of the combos are fun, and you have the opportunity to become overpowered through stat boosts. Some of the alternate game modes are alright. But even with all the good it's got, it's a shame that I don't think I'll be coming back to revisit this one anytime soon because of everything that drags it down.