Awesome game!

Double Dragon Gaiden sits right atop the Steam beat em' up heap along with Fight N' Rage.

The mechanical depth here is impressive. You've got a jump (and you can also double-jump), an attack into a combo, a "special" button that varies per character, and a special move button (which uses your special meter).

You can tech-roll to recover from air juggles and also tag out to interrupt your character getting combo'd.

When you start the campaign or survival, you pick two characters and can tag out at any time so long as your special gauge is full. Like in the old Marvel vs Capcom versus games, recoverable health of the character tagged out replenishes over time.

This leads to a kind of meta-strategy as you are playing. You have to know when to tag in and out to keep both characters healed up. Some characters are going to excel in certain situations more than other characters too.

For instance, if you know you are going to be surrounded and need to take out a heap of enemies, a character like Abobo can either smash the ground or do a jumping piledriver that clears out all the enemies around you. But if you are trying to avoid lightning strikes from the sky, you'd want to switch to Billy or Jimmy for the faster move speed.

On that note, all the characters have different move speeds, health pools, attack speeds, and other special properties.

For example Jimmy Lee can do two of his special moves while in the air leading to extended air combos. The Lee brothers are also the only characters in the game, to my knowledge, who can pick up enemy melee weapons and use them. Their "special" button causes them to enter a simple grapple state, where they can bash or throw enemies.

Meanwhile the ninja Yagyu Ranzou can't pick up weapons but has a dedicated katana, and his "special" button causes him to do a teleport attack that can hit grounded enemies. So you can do combos with him that lead to a grounded state and then pick enemies off the ground with his teleport attack.

There's TONS of stuff like this, and I could go on and on.

The harder you make the game, the more money you beat out of enemies, and you exchange money at the end of runs for "tokens" which you can use to unlock new characters, stages, and artwork.

There are a lot of characters and what's super impressive is that none of them feel cut-and-pasted in. I assumed the boss characters would feel generic and stripped down, kinda like how it feels to play as Bebop & Rocksteady or Shredder in Shredder's Revenge.

That's not the case. Each of them has their own fully fleshed out moveset and characteristics. I just finished a Survival session as Linda, who wields a dagger and a whip. She's got good move speed and her dagger is used for fast up-close attacks. All her whip attacks use her special meter and give you insane range and crowd control potential.

If you get the game, make sure you head over to the gameplay options and disable the "Special KO" freeze and enable double-tap run. These features were evidently patched in and not present at launch, and I couldn't imagine playing this game without either feature.

Not a super long game, but it's extremely fun to play and the Survival mode and extra characters give it legs. A great time-killer game... oh and did I mention the music is superb? It's at least as good as the Shedder's Revenge OST.

Only downside I can really think of is a stage progression in the campaign where everything is dark except for your spotlighted character. Makes it hard to see which enemies are around you and is a bit brainless. But this is a small gripe.

The value you and enjoyment you'll get as a beat em' up fan is huge.

9/10

The Good

I really like this game and I recommend it for beat-em-up fans, though it plays more like Fight'N Rage than any Double Dragon game. Very customize-able difficulty makes the game fun for all skill levels. Being able to have four different final bosses based on the stage selection order is a fun and novel idea and it makes the first few replays very enjoyable.

The Bad

It doesn't support two controllers. How can you release a split-screen-coop game without working controller support in 2023? Is this a joke? Someone should be fired over this. Manually remapping the 2nd controller to the keyboard with Steam Controller Configuration is extremely tedious but your 2nd player won't work without it. If you aren't comfortable making custom Steam controller configs, you will be stuck here. Lots of people will probably refund based on this alone.

The marketing is dishonest. This is not a roguelike game. For the one millionth time, RANDOMIZED POWER-UPS DO NOT MAKE A GAME ROGUELIKE. The marketing says, "Experience endless playthrough possibilities with a dynamic mission select". You have the choice from 4 levels, then 3, then 2, then 1. That's 24 possibilities. That's nice, that's not endless. After beating the game several times, I can say there is no significant variation from run to run except from the order of levels. This is not a roguelike, it's an arcade game, and its replay value will be relatively limited.

The $25 price tag is much too high. Even on sale at $15, I wonder if I got my money's worth. I think $10 is probably the right price point for this game considering the short length and shallow depth.

The Extras are garbage. Most of what you will be unlocked is background music, tips and hints that should have been free, concept art, and extra stages for versus/survival (at least one of which I already want to relock because it's awful).

Versus mode forces you select 4 powers each for 2 characters per player which really kills the momentum and makes it impossible to just jump in and play a quick round before you start another mode.

If you like beat'em up games and is itching for one. You can no doubt looks to Double Dragon : Rise of the dragons. Controls are tight and game play is good. It might not be on par with Teenage mutant ninja turtles or street of rage 4 but it is still up there.

My biggest complaint is the last and final boss mayor. This boss is downright lame to the core. Aside from the minions they throw at you which is easily manageable. Your first shock after that will be all four of the earlier bosses will appear to fight with you first. If you somehow managed to defeat them. The final boss will arrives, this boss is downright lame. He can breaks through all your combo, have three super long health bar, summon endless swarm of minions and pulls out some of the most terrible combos ever. Due to this boss, i can't give a thumbs up for the game. Hopefully developer nerf the last boss fight and make it more manageable. Get a cue from games like teenage mutant ninja turtle or street of rage 4. Why create a boss whereby it is next to impossible to beat.