Straddles the line between being a legitimately great beat ‘em up and a Kusoge: You’re overequipped to fight enemies that can already be easily corralled offscreen with your most basic moves, you can skip half the game and avoid fighting the toughest bosses by destroying some background elements to change what route you’ll take, and you can stunlock the final boss by tossing him into the right side of the screen (turns out wake-up attacks are important). Needless to say, I had a blast with this.
Really like the way the Final Fight games let you toss enemies at the end of a combo, so there’s always a feeling that there’s a decision to make, even as you’re tossing out your most simplistic attacks. With *3 specifically, movement feels great, with Guy and Lucia able to dash into an extended combo- always fun to catch a cluster of enemies with it. This isn’t even mentioning the backdash, the special moves, and each character's super (which always seems to be available), meaning you have a ton of options for how you approach each fight- while the overall design of the game can be lacking, it nails that innate satisfaction of trying to get the most value out of your full moveset.
Most of the shortcomings I can handle, though: dumb bosses and the undercooked structure ended up adding to the busted charm of the experience. No, what really bothered me was the lack of atmosphere during the whole thing. Don’t know if it's a technical limitation or a matter of implementation- but most of the bosses don’t have their own theme, so you're in what should be these big climatic fights, only to have them set to the pleasant stage music. Sounds minor, but there’s not much heat in these encounters as a result, none of the drama that something like the Abadede fight in Streets of Rage 2* has. If there isn’t already, there’s probably a paper to be written about how psychologically disarming the effect is, not sure if you’re fighting a miniboss or actually at the end of the stage.
It’s a weird one, to be sure. All my metrics for gauging a game are screaming at me that this a complete wreck, a title with a great moveset and a complete absence of design- whatever, this a game where throws have the same visceral impact of what would be a screen clear in any other game. Play it.
Really like the way the Final Fight games let you toss enemies at the end of a combo, so there’s always a feeling that there’s a decision to make, even as you’re tossing out your most simplistic attacks. With *3 specifically, movement feels great, with Guy and Lucia able to dash into an extended combo- always fun to catch a cluster of enemies with it. This isn’t even mentioning the backdash, the special moves, and each character's super (which always seems to be available), meaning you have a ton of options for how you approach each fight- while the overall design of the game can be lacking, it nails that innate satisfaction of trying to get the most value out of your full moveset.
Most of the shortcomings I can handle, though: dumb bosses and the undercooked structure ended up adding to the busted charm of the experience. No, what really bothered me was the lack of atmosphere during the whole thing. Don’t know if it's a technical limitation or a matter of implementation- but most of the bosses don’t have their own theme, so you're in what should be these big climatic fights, only to have them set to the pleasant stage music. Sounds minor, but there’s not much heat in these encounters as a result, none of the drama that something like the Abadede fight in Streets of Rage 2* has. If there isn’t already, there’s probably a paper to be written about how psychologically disarming the effect is, not sure if you’re fighting a miniboss or actually at the end of the stage.
It’s a weird one, to be sure. All my metrics for gauging a game are screaming at me that this a complete wreck, a title with a great moveset and a complete absence of design- whatever, this a game where throws have the same visceral impact of what would be a screen clear in any other game. Play it.