Battletoads is a series with a rather interesting and unique legacy. The original game on the NES was famous for its incredible visuals and varied gameplay and infamous for its intense difficulty which ranged from tough as nails, but mostly fair, to something clearly designed by a sadist for the purpose of breaking the player. Making a follow up to a game like this is guaranteed to be divisive no matter what direction you go in. You'll have fans demanding that you retain the insane difficulty at all costs, and how the unfair game design is the point of the series. You'll have fans who want a challenge, but want the difficulty to arise from a more fair style of game design. And then you'll have some people who just want the game to be more accessible to people who don't want to dedicate years of their lives to trying to clear the third level of a game. It's naturally impossible to please everyone, but trying to make as many people happy as possible is no easy feat either. There's a reason you don't see as many people talking about Battlemaniacs or the excellent Battletoads Arcade game. Battletoads (2020) chose to mostly focus on the second crowd I listed earlier, trying to craft a game that is tough as nails, but with challenges that are more comparable to the best levels of the original game rather than the cheaper ones like Surf's Up.
The game offers the player 3 difficulty options ranging from Tadpole, the game's easy mode which lets newer or less experienced players dip their toes into the world of Battletoads, Toad, the normal difficulty which provides a brisk and engaging challenge to most players, and Battletoad, the hard mode which evokes the original's brutal reputation. Each difficulty is well suited and balanced for their intended audiences with Tadpole being simple enough to breeze through in about 6 or 7 hours while the Battletoad difficulty takes the average player roughly 15 hours to grind through. Most of the game's difficulty is fair to the player, making the challenges hard, yet do-able with some practice. Levels will often give players a chance to learn about and adjust to whatever gimmick it revolves around before really forcing them to master it to get through the level.
Like most of the prior Battletoads games, gameplay is a mixed bag of various genres and styles that vary from level to level including the jet bike/sled races, puzzle platforming, shoot-em-ups, timing based mini-games, and of course the main beat-em-up sections. Each toad controls slightly different, enough to give each character a unique feel. Pimple is slower but hits a lot harder, Zits is speedier with a great combo game, and Rash is somewhere inbetween. Each character is designed to fit a preferred playstyle while never feeling like a chore to use if you preferred using a different toad. Some parts of the game were clearly designed with 3 player co-op in mind. While the game's design and mechanics usually do plenty to compensate for having just one or 2 players, it still becomes very noticeable. But this detail does draws attention to the game's single biggest flaw: it's baffling lack of online co-op, instead opting to focus on just local couch co-op. There are also a few stages that do get frustrating such as some of the later shoot-em-up stages which rapidly evolve into bullet hell, and especially Emergency Stations, a mini-game focused level which has so much stuff on the screen that it becomes very difficult just to tell what you're supposed to be doing most of the time. But these aside, the game shows that you don't have to be sadistic and frustrating to provide players with an engaging challenge.
As for the presentation, the Battletoads 2020 does a few things wrong, but a lot more things right. The game has a fun, colorful art style with creative character designs, wildly absurd animations, and some funny if sometimes intentionally cheesy dialogue that makes it feel like you're in the middle of an old Saturday morning cartoon. Though not everything about it is perfect. The standout example for the fans is the Dark Queen's redesign. While some fans immediately complained at they intentionally taking away the sex appeal of her old design, I feel the bigger problem is just how boring her new look is. And speaking of villains the game's new antagonists, the Topians, are dull and uninteresting additions with okayish designs, and completely uninteresting and unfunny personalities. The writing and humor itself can be hit/miss as a lot of the meta humor surrounding the Battletoads as irrelevant, washed up relics of the 90s completely fails to hit the mark The attempts at self aware humor at the ridiculousness of the Battletoads universe also fails to hit the mark, especially with how jarring it is after the Toads' recent appearances in other games where their absurdity is played completely straight and serious. But the best part about these drawbacks is that the bland and unfunny bits are really brief in comparison to the genuinely funny humor the game has to offer. The game's writing and story does a great job at fleshing out each toad as a unique and funny character with his own quirks and personality. Likewise, I also liked how the Dark Queen was fleshed out as a character, being cunning and manipulative, but also not quite so above the quirky heroes as she'd like to imagine she is. When the writing isn't making jokes at the expense of the series or focusing on the Topians, it mostly produces gold. On top of all of this we have the game's soundtrack which is phenomenal. The music is mostly rock songs including both original tracks and arrangements of iconic songs from previous Battletoads games, including the original, Battlemaniacs, and most surprisingly even draws from the Double Dragon crossover. Each track perfectly conveys the mood and tone of the game and the setting they are used in.
Overall Battletoads (2020) is a humorous, fun and challenging experience that fans of the series and the beat-em-up genre should not miss.
The game offers the player 3 difficulty options ranging from Tadpole, the game's easy mode which lets newer or less experienced players dip their toes into the world of Battletoads, Toad, the normal difficulty which provides a brisk and engaging challenge to most players, and Battletoad, the hard mode which evokes the original's brutal reputation. Each difficulty is well suited and balanced for their intended audiences with Tadpole being simple enough to breeze through in about 6 or 7 hours while the Battletoad difficulty takes the average player roughly 15 hours to grind through. Most of the game's difficulty is fair to the player, making the challenges hard, yet do-able with some practice. Levels will often give players a chance to learn about and adjust to whatever gimmick it revolves around before really forcing them to master it to get through the level.
Like most of the prior Battletoads games, gameplay is a mixed bag of various genres and styles that vary from level to level including the jet bike/sled races, puzzle platforming, shoot-em-ups, timing based mini-games, and of course the main beat-em-up sections. Each toad controls slightly different, enough to give each character a unique feel. Pimple is slower but hits a lot harder, Zits is speedier with a great combo game, and Rash is somewhere inbetween. Each character is designed to fit a preferred playstyle while never feeling like a chore to use if you preferred using a different toad. Some parts of the game were clearly designed with 3 player co-op in mind. While the game's design and mechanics usually do plenty to compensate for having just one or 2 players, it still becomes very noticeable. But this detail does draws attention to the game's single biggest flaw: it's baffling lack of online co-op, instead opting to focus on just local couch co-op. There are also a few stages that do get frustrating such as some of the later shoot-em-up stages which rapidly evolve into bullet hell, and especially Emergency Stations, a mini-game focused level which has so much stuff on the screen that it becomes very difficult just to tell what you're supposed to be doing most of the time. But these aside, the game shows that you don't have to be sadistic and frustrating to provide players with an engaging challenge.
As for the presentation, the Battletoads 2020 does a few things wrong, but a lot more things right. The game has a fun, colorful art style with creative character designs, wildly absurd animations, and some funny if sometimes intentionally cheesy dialogue that makes it feel like you're in the middle of an old Saturday morning cartoon. Though not everything about it is perfect. The standout example for the fans is the Dark Queen's redesign. While some fans immediately complained at they intentionally taking away the sex appeal of her old design, I feel the bigger problem is just how boring her new look is. And speaking of villains the game's new antagonists, the Topians, are dull and uninteresting additions with okayish designs, and completely uninteresting and unfunny personalities. The writing and humor itself can be hit/miss as a lot of the meta humor surrounding the Battletoads as irrelevant, washed up relics of the 90s completely fails to hit the mark The attempts at self aware humor at the ridiculousness of the Battletoads universe also fails to hit the mark, especially with how jarring it is after the Toads' recent appearances in other games where their absurdity is played completely straight and serious. But the best part about these drawbacks is that the bland and unfunny bits are really brief in comparison to the genuinely funny humor the game has to offer. The game's writing and story does a great job at fleshing out each toad as a unique and funny character with his own quirks and personality. Likewise, I also liked how the Dark Queen was fleshed out as a character, being cunning and manipulative, but also not quite so above the quirky heroes as she'd like to imagine she is. When the writing isn't making jokes at the expense of the series or focusing on the Topians, it mostly produces gold. On top of all of this we have the game's soundtrack which is phenomenal. The music is mostly rock songs including both original tracks and arrangements of iconic songs from previous Battletoads games, including the original, Battlemaniacs, and most surprisingly even draws from the Double Dragon crossover. Each track perfectly conveys the mood and tone of the game and the setting they are used in.
Overall Battletoads (2020) is a humorous, fun and challenging experience that fans of the series and the beat-em-up genre should not miss.