Not very familiar with the series myself, Streets of Rage 4 is an overall great beat 'em up with some pretty beautifully drawn art in my opinion, a great soundtrack and just some good old fun action with the only caveat being one of the biggest difficulty spikes in the final two levels that almost made the term "Streets of Rage" live up to me and my friend's playthrough of it.

The thing that caught my eye immediately was how great the game looked in general, I was playing on an OLED Switch so the colors and the art seems to pop off a lot more than expected personally but I can imagine on normal monitors that it would look just as great. The gameplay loop itself was pretty fun too, was surprised the gameplay itself can be pretty simple but there seems to be some technical stuff you can do with your moves that makes it one of those games you can get really good at if you take enough time with it. The music does an excellent job of providing the energy these games usually bring with some good electronica and even some synthwave here.

I want to say this is just a personal skill issue but man the final two levels felt like such a huge jump in the difficulty. Most of this stems from the final level which stacks some of the most annoying enemies constantly here which can take a bit out of you than it is followed by an insane boss gauntlet I didn't expect. Nonetheless I can chalk it up to mostly my own skill lacking despite the game's difficulty being pretty great on Normal before that.

I've even failed to neglect the insane replayability and modes this game has too which I've barely scratched the surface of. Streets of Rage 4 is a very beautiful and energetic beat 'em up that I can imagine does the series proud.

Thanks to Zoda for playing this one with me. Thanks for clutching that final boss man, that entire sequence was crazy.