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Pretty clear that the reviews with less than an hour played or did one run were a little early on giving a thumbs down to this game. This game is actually super dope.
- There are THIRTEEN characters in this game and they all feel different! All characters have different movesets and specials making mixing and matching really fun. Every character comes with a standard X and Y move, B for grappling and every character has 3 different specials to use. Some characters seem way better than others but it's all a matter of personal preference.
I particularly like grappler dudes and Uncle Matin and Abobo feel so good to play especially when the enemies start getting into bigger groups as the difficulty rises and you take one dude and piledrive him into a group of his friends. Uncle Matin's Right Trigger move is especially my favorite because he can catch anything in the air and just yeet it at enemies, super fun to play volleyball with those pesky ninja dudes. But being able to actually play as Abobo is truly special haha.
- The combo system is extremely fun in this game. This game isn't so much technical on the movesets like Streets of Rage 4 was but this game goes for a different approach, something more akin to Jitsu Squad (another tag team beat em up you should check out if you haven't). Everything is related to your combo bar and you can fill that bad boy way faster than you're used to in other beat em ups. The more enemies you kill on screen, the more you can just chain kill groups of enemies if you're utilizing the all the buttons on your controller or keyboard.
You can combo a special into another special, combo a special into a tag team move, etc. The combo bar controls the specials but also when you can tag in and out but you can chain everything together as long as your bar is blue. It makes for some very fun moments when you kill tons of enemies at once. Enemies dying together with a special move is a fun mini game in its own right. The larger your combos, the better the food you get for heals. Food combos start at 3 for the smallest food heal and you get a 100 heal (or money if you're full on health) for killing 5, etc. and everyone big combo kill is greeted with a stamp of approval and a dude commending you along with a pic of the food item that's about to drop. I still don't know how I feel about that part but it is a nice break on my old thumbs.
What also makes this system fun is that you can still get a "special kill" on enemies even when their HP bar is drained. As long as they don't disappear, and they will after the special kill, you can still combo the body. I think the game would feel a little too easy if you could just combo endless groups because they would just keep dropping food.
- The game is pretty much controlled by in game currency. There's also some special objectives to complete per stage to get more money. Every enemy defeat has them popping out with coins and special meter orbs. When you beat a round, you get to a selection where you draft upgrades for both of the characters you're controlling. I don't feel like I can comment too much on the roguelite part but there are really fun ways to enhance your attacks and some attacks even change animation depending on what skill you bought. With all the characters in the game, I'm sure there is at least some build variety bound to happen.
- There are 4 worlds and you choose the order to tackle them and you start by clearing out a world with a boss then the subsequent stages get longer by 1 with increased enemy stats and groups with a mini boss at the end of a stage and a boss at the end of the world.
- Music is also pretty baller as well. I think for 25 bucks it's a large ask, just like any other beat em up doing the same, but this one I feel like at least has some replayability with how it's structured. Unfortunately there's no online co-op which is a huge bummer but it's apparently planned in a future update. There's also a level with these spear traps that is just really annoying since items can drop on the spears too. Overall though, I like the package as a whole!