I'm sorry but this is not a good game which is a shame cause it has a lot going for it. The ost and sprite work is pretty good. The game offers a lot more story than you expect outta a 90s beat-em-up game which is rather neat. Meanwhile the added animated opening and manga segments are a nice highlight of the game.

What ruins the game is well the actual game play. The combat is just god awful it's feels stiff, slow, and just overall clunky and not very fun to play. It also doesn't help that the game makes enemies hit like a truck and also have more a lot more health you'd expect. This game also doesn't have any rpg elements so it's harder to cheese tougher segments. So this is a game beat-em-up in which the act of beat them up feels horrid to play, making the game surprisingly kinda a slog to get through. I think having some sort of rewind feature would have helped this game be more fun but it does not. There is a save state but that's it.

I got this game on sale for 10 dollars and now I will dearly miss those dollars. Just because a game is old doesn't make it bad. It's bad because it's bad. Even at the time of the original Japanese release the game had generally mixed reviews. As a fan of River City Girls and Kyoko and Misako I really wanted to enjoy this game but sadly it's a bit to dated for my tastes. Streets of Rage this anit.