Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons Review (ElCid)
TL;DR: this game is a unique and fun spin on the beat 'em up genre, combining elements of roguelikes with a charming pixel art and amazing soundtrack.
Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons captures all that old-school vibe of the arcade beat 'em ups. The game is pretty challenging and has a fun unlock system where each run is rewarding, giving you some sense of progress.
A nice twist is that you play as two characters in a tag-system, which adds an extra layer of complexion to the combat; you can have a combo-heavy single-target specialist and a area-of-effect powerhouse to balance out encounters.
The game has a huge emphasis on special attacks and encourages players to use them frequently. Unlike other titles like Streets of Rage and Final Fight, special attacks don't consume health, and instead have a dedicated gauge that fills up slowly over-time; defeating enemies drops blue crystals that also recover the gauge. Scoring +3 enemy takedowns with special attacks will award a large sum of money on top of food items dropping. This simple gameplay loop is incredibly addicting and rewarding, compared to other games where you need to hunt down recovery items.
The roguelike portion of the game is that you earn money by defeating enemies, and at the end of each stage you can buy perks that provide boons for the run. Whether you beat the game or not, all your excess money is converted into tokens, a special currency used to unlock new characters, concept art and music.
Prior to starting a Story Mode run, there are difficulty modifiers for character health, perk cost and enemy aggression that affect the conversion ratio of your money into tokens; higher modifiers makes the game harder but reduces the ratio, meaning more tokens.
Strengths
✅ Characters feel very distinct from each other, with different special moves and playstyles.
✅ Satisfying gameplay loop and character unlocking. Yes, UNLOCKING, like in the old days where you'd get stuff by just playing the game. You can even unlock all the bosses as playable characters. And all future DLC characters are 100% FREE.
✅ Easy to grasp but hard to master; while simple, there are frame cancels to make combat more fluid. When a character's gameplay clicks it's super satisfying, especially when you get certain perks in the shop.
✅ Hitboxes are very generous and will hit easily in the Z-axis compared to other beat 'em ups where you need more precision. However this also counts for enemies.
✅ The game has a two-player co-op, but local and online. I've been interested in this game for a long time but at launch it didn't have online co-op, and now it does.
✅ The game features a Story Mode (campaign), an (endless) Survival Mode and a Versus Mode, all that can be played alone or with a second player.
✅ The art direction, animations and soundtrack are all great. This game even has voice acting, which caught me offguard. Really good stuff!
Weaknesses & Feedback
❌ Gameplay feels a bit sluggish compared to other beat 'em ups. Input buffer is a bit janky and there are many moves with high endlag that you have to commit to and cannot be frame cancelled.
❌ Movesets are a bit too simple, with no universal grab or charging normal attacks. There are some attacks that hit off-the-ground and some decent potential juggling, though. Streets of Rage 4 really spoiled me in this department; I also wish enemies bounced off the edges of the screen instead of vanishing like in the old beat 'em ups.
❌ After you unlock anything tokens become useless. There is literally nothing else to use them on. Would be nice to see some use for tokens after you've unlocked everything.
📝 Alternate palette swaps for the playable characters would be great. It can be very confusing in co-op or Survival when using a boss character since they'll have the same appearance.
📝 The devs really need to make the Special Action button and the item pickup button separate, or at least add a keybind option for that.
📝 A training mode so we can practice combos on dummies would be really useful, even though this game is not incredibly deep like Streets of Rage 4.
📝 A personal high-score screen for Survival would be really nice.
Overall, this game is incredibly fun, especially with co-op, which elevates the experience exponentially. If you're itching for a new beat 'em up since Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, then this is your cup of tea. The roguelike aspect adds a lot of replay value.
Also...
PLEASE, DEVS, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, ADD THE BATTLETOADS AS PLAYABLE CHARACTERS AND A STORY DLC. I'LL PAY HARD CASH FOR A BATTLETOADS AND DOUBLE DRAGON LIKE THIS.