Completion Criteria: Story Mode (Normal)

I've played a couple of 2D Beat'em ups. Nothing has really stood out to me outside of Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. Whilst I've enjoyed bits from others, overall I've treated them as, harsh but, brainless.

I want this to be clear because this is the first 2D beat'em up to break my expectations. Maybe this is purely just by the addition of a "trials" mode but the complexity of skill and utility felt immeasurably higher then others of the same standard. Whilst playing the idea of how to attack were more clear. And the risk Vs reward of special skills makes each move feel more engaging. The variation across the cast had me interested in playing many members of the cast and more importantly interested in replaying the games which is something I don't usually have.

Considering the amazing soundtrack, great artwork and great gameplay. It's hard to really find any faults in the game. From a design perspective, it does exactly what it intends to the only reasonable flaw I can throw at it is theres a difficulty spike in the final levels, which may be due to it being designed for a 2 player experience.

I look forward to going back and trying other characters and bumping up the difficulty

SOR 4 is my first sor game and their newest release is amazing, a good beat em up.

Gameplay
Good visuals nice shading and the stages are not getting repetitive with each new mark on the city, 12 stages with each final boss at the end. Sadly I had to play this game at a lower volume due to not owning headhphones at my school and yes I finished this game at my school when I had freetime. 3 hours is all you need for this game even with extra content after you finished the game, heard the soundtrack and it rocks and can't wait to play the others on fighcade, mostly played with blaze and max.

Conclusion
Could not understand so much of the story being this one the first game that I played but the last 2 bosses at the castle were a bit tough, but traversing through the city and beating people in 12 stages is enough to say that this game has unique graphics and nice levels and combos to learn.

Being a huge Streets of Rage fan in the 90s, I was super-excited to play the 4th entry into the series, and I was not disappointed in the slightest.  The vibrant hand drawn anime art-style that they went with was a great choice.  Everything looks absolutely stunning, from the character models to the environments -- I was enthralled by the visuals throughout my entire playthrough.  Also, It was so incredible to see most of the classic SoR cast, along with all of the classic enemy-types get this visual upgrade, with many cool new enemy-types as well. 

Another high expectation I had was for the music, and it did not disappoint.  The bar was set high because of how amazing the music of Streets of Rage 2 was, but they really knocked this soundtrack out of the park as well.  It was so awesome to hear that Yuzo Koshiro -- the original SoR composer -- came back to do a few tracks for the game.  I would have loved to have heard a whole new soundtrack from him, but Olivier Deriviere -- who took over as the primary artist featured on this soundtrack -- did a wonderful job, and I still loved nearly every single track.  I'm actually listening to the soundtrack as I'm typing this review, and I'm adoring the hell out of it! It really sounds like Deriviere paid a ton of homage and respect to Koshiro's style, which I can severely appreciate.

The game plays just like I remember Streets of Rage playing on the Genesis, and that is not a bad thing. I wouldn't say that the game did anything mechanically innovative to move the genre forward -- it really is just your classic 90s-era BEU with a few extra move sets -- but it feels timeless to play, and it's hard to not have a good time.

I guess my only complaint is that the game is a bit short.  I'm not expecting some 40-hour banger from my BEU titles, but I was able to get through the entire game on normal mode in roughly 3-4 hours.  At the end, I felt like I would have appreciated at least a few more stages.  But still, I had a great time in those few hours, and these games are always fun to play back through on higher difficulties with different characters, or with friends, so there's plenty of reason to go back for more. If you're a Streets of Rage fan, you owe it to yourself to play this entry. As long as you're not looking for something revolutionary, I can't see how you could be disappointed.