Denjin Makai doesn't really do anything groundbreaking as a beat 'em up, but what it does it does pretty well in my opinion. It's a short one, maybe takes about an hour to complete but it's not much of a quarter-burner like some other games.

What I like is that the special attacks deplete their own power bar, which makes them a really versatile tool to use and not just a panic button to avoid certain death. The bosses are pretty easy for beat 'em up bosses and while there is some trial and error, each of them have pretty choreographed moveset and playing around their attacks feels rewarding rather than just throwing more money into the machine after the bbeg hits you with the bullet train to Chicago third time this fight. The playable character are also diverse and have their own strengths and weaknesses, allowing for great variety of play styles.

Of course, there's some gripes. I don't know if what I encountered is a bug, but it seems that the enemies have better range to their attacks than you do. Multiple times I walked up to an enemy and started smashing at them, only to realize that I'm just about too high or low to actually hit them, while they could hit me perfectly fine. Stunning enemies manage to always feel frustrating, especially in later levels when the game fills the screen with enemies and if they all have stunning attacks, it becomes a free-for-all tennis match. The difficulty also increases rapidly towards the end, the last level alone doubling my quarters spent on this game. The difficulty increase comes in a form of just increasing the amount of enemies on the screen, which doesn't give too much room to play around and just leads to lost quarters from action economy alone. This is a huge shame, since earlier levels showed some creativity with environmental hazards and level design, which would've been the perfect way to keep the difficulty high in the last level as well. The game is thankfully short, so these minuses for the game don't fortunately overstay their welcome and the final boss feels just like the ones before: fair and beatable with some clever strategizing.

Overall, if you like beat 'em ups, the game is worth checking out. It's a good way to burn your sunday afternoon.