Stylish, challenging, frustrating beat 'em up with an isometric Diablo camera perspective and a twin stick control scheme.
About 30 levels in, Midnight Fight Express has quite the fun, yet flawed gameplay. You can attack, grab enemies, parry/block, dodge roll, use and throw guns/weapons (speaking of weapons, these are scattered just about everywhere for your disposal).
40 Levels exist, taking anywhere from 2-5 or so minutes. Score is based off of several performance factors. Completing levels rewards money, which can be used to buy in-game items to customize and outfit your character, and even buy enemy/boss skins to further set the appearance of your character. A skill and upgrade tree also exists for further developing attack, defense, grab and other combat abilities. Upgrades and skills are quite basic and don't go as deep as other 3D beat 'em ups or hack-n-slash games. I'd even go as far to say the most of the skills lacked impact or any real advantage over the few that really mattered. For an indie title, customization is quite deep with a fair amount of options.
Since the game is played in an isometric 3D format, there is more freedom on movement instead of just walking left to right. But levels are linear for the most part. Secrets and unlockables can be found in levels as well. Combat is fun if quite simplistic, but can become quite challenging and even a bit button mashy as levels progress. A lot of dodge rolling and parrying is involved, especially in middle and later levels where some cheap difficulty spikes occur. You'll be swarmed by enemies, some of which have weapons and attacks capable of either taking chunks of your health or one-hit-killing you, making sections require you to die an annoying amount of deaths before you get lucky enough to pass them. In this case, the game at several points ends up revolving around luck rather than your skill. This was all under my Normal mode difficulty playthrough, which is the default and easiest difficulty in the game. A few extra settings do exist to somewhat remedy this issue like setting your health higher and decreasing enemy aggressiveness, but it doesn't necessarily make the experience noticeably easier.
Achievements also exist, which is a very welcome addition for the Switch version seeing that most Switch games are void of achievements. With a statistics page, a best score/rank/time challenge for every level and different optional objectives per level (albeit difficult objectives), replayability and challenge is definitely there in Midnight Fight Express.
Graphics and Audio look and sound just fine. Visuals have a clean HD, 3D polygon style (like a PS1 or N64 game with full blown remade textures) and the music has an EDM techno, dubstep rock sound going on while bashing thugs up and down the various levels. No multiplayer or co-op is present. The only multiplayer aspect available are leaderboards for chasing after high scores. A training mode also exists to practice your skills against enemies with a decent amount of options available. Very smooth gameplay in handheld mode on Switch, with very few framerate drops at small instances.
Midnight Fight Express has the DNA and design of a well designed, creative 3D beat 'em up. However, the difficulty spikes that frequently pop up quite early in the game dragged down the enjoyment I had with this one. Have read that a patch has been deployed for the Steam version that has not made it's way to consoles yet. Unscored for now, but maybe when the patch released on Switch and I finish the final 10 levels, final thoughts may change.
About 30 levels in, Midnight Fight Express has quite the fun, yet flawed gameplay. You can attack, grab enemies, parry/block, dodge roll, use and throw guns/weapons (speaking of weapons, these are scattered just about everywhere for your disposal).
40 Levels exist, taking anywhere from 2-5 or so minutes. Score is based off of several performance factors. Completing levels rewards money, which can be used to buy in-game items to customize and outfit your character, and even buy enemy/boss skins to further set the appearance of your character. A skill and upgrade tree also exists for further developing attack, defense, grab and other combat abilities. Upgrades and skills are quite basic and don't go as deep as other 3D beat 'em ups or hack-n-slash games. I'd even go as far to say the most of the skills lacked impact or any real advantage over the few that really mattered. For an indie title, customization is quite deep with a fair amount of options.
Since the game is played in an isometric 3D format, there is more freedom on movement instead of just walking left to right. But levels are linear for the most part. Secrets and unlockables can be found in levels as well. Combat is fun if quite simplistic, but can become quite challenging and even a bit button mashy as levels progress. A lot of dodge rolling and parrying is involved, especially in middle and later levels where some cheap difficulty spikes occur. You'll be swarmed by enemies, some of which have weapons and attacks capable of either taking chunks of your health or one-hit-killing you, making sections require you to die an annoying amount of deaths before you get lucky enough to pass them. In this case, the game at several points ends up revolving around luck rather than your skill. This was all under my Normal mode difficulty playthrough, which is the default and easiest difficulty in the game. A few extra settings do exist to somewhat remedy this issue like setting your health higher and decreasing enemy aggressiveness, but it doesn't necessarily make the experience noticeably easier.
Achievements also exist, which is a very welcome addition for the Switch version seeing that most Switch games are void of achievements. With a statistics page, a best score/rank/time challenge for every level and different optional objectives per level (albeit difficult objectives), replayability and challenge is definitely there in Midnight Fight Express.
Graphics and Audio look and sound just fine. Visuals have a clean HD, 3D polygon style (like a PS1 or N64 game with full blown remade textures) and the music has an EDM techno, dubstep rock sound going on while bashing thugs up and down the various levels. No multiplayer or co-op is present. The only multiplayer aspect available are leaderboards for chasing after high scores. A training mode also exists to practice your skills against enemies with a decent amount of options available. Very smooth gameplay in handheld mode on Switch, with very few framerate drops at small instances.
Midnight Fight Express has the DNA and design of a well designed, creative 3D beat 'em up. However, the difficulty spikes that frequently pop up quite early in the game dragged down the enjoyment I had with this one. Have read that a patch has been deployed for the Steam version that has not made it's way to consoles yet. Unscored for now, but maybe when the patch released on Switch and I finish the final 10 levels, final thoughts may change.
Reviewed on Sep 22, 2022