Despite boasting some awesome ideas, fickle enemy behavior and an overly sensitive dash mechanic keep Denjin Makai from being as fun to master as it is to fool around in.

As I'm currently working on finishing Final Fight, I've come to discover the innate desire all humans have to throw dudes into other dudes. It's a simple pleasure, and one that beatemups have a unique opportunity to capitalize on. Denjin Makai, like Final Fight before it, largely succeeds in giving the player a grapple/throw that feels far-reaching and powerful.

Where DM stands out from Final Fight clones is its huge pool of moves to enjoy. By holding attack while inputting directions or pressing atk+jump in certain contexts, you can access a stupidly huge amount of special moves. It's worth checking out Denjin Makai if you just want to see all the crazy moves, but I don't know if I'd recommend mastering the game with limited credits.

The issue here is that DM has an extremely sensitive dash mechanic. This might just be my worn-out D-pad, but even after testing dashes on other games, I found that I frequently initiated a dash in DM when I didn't want to. I think the game registers a dash anytime you alternate directions 3 times, which doesn't feel intuitive at all. Pair this control issue with huge hordes of enemies that feel a little too unpredictable in their behaviors, and the game just ended up wearing on me once I got to Stage 5 with the 6 credits I limited myself to.

Still, I've got to give credit where it's due. Denjin Makai provided a decently fun arcade beatemup with tons of spectacular enemies, attacks, and backgrounds to gawk at before I groaned at another failed attempt to see it to the end.

Denjin Makai doesn't really do anything groundbreaking as a beat 'em up, but what it does it does pretty well in my opinion. It's a short one, maybe takes about an hour to complete but it's not much of a quarter-burner like some other games.

What I like is that the special attacks deplete their own power bar, which makes them a really versatile tool to use and not just a panic button to avoid certain death. The bosses are pretty easy for beat 'em up bosses and while there is some trial and error, each of them have pretty choreographed moveset and playing around their attacks feels rewarding rather than just throwing more money into the machine after the bbeg hits you with the bullet train to Chicago third time this fight. The playable character are also diverse and have their own strengths and weaknesses, allowing for great variety of play styles.

Of course, there's some gripes. I don't know if what I encountered is a bug, but it seems that the enemies have better range to their attacks than you do. Multiple times I walked up to an enemy and started smashing at them, only to realize that I'm just about too high or low to actually hit them, while they could hit me perfectly fine. Stunning enemies manage to always feel frustrating, especially in later levels when the game fills the screen with enemies and if they all have stunning attacks, it becomes a free-for-all tennis match. The difficulty also increases rapidly towards the end, the last level alone doubling my quarters spent on this game. The difficulty increase comes in a form of just increasing the amount of enemies on the screen, which doesn't give too much room to play around and just leads to lost quarters from action economy alone. This is a huge shame, since earlier levels showed some creativity with environmental hazards and level design, which would've been the perfect way to keep the difficulty high in the last level as well. The game is thankfully short, so these minuses for the game don't fortunately overstay their welcome and the final boss feels just like the ones before: fair and beatable with some clever strategizing.

Overall, if you like beat 'em ups, the game is worth checking out. It's a good way to burn your sunday afternoon.