I really REALLY like this game, although despite how much I like it, I kind of struggle to justify $40 for it unless you're a really big Jet Set Radio fan like me. I took the game kind of slow, tried doing a lot of side content, picking up collectables, etc. and my final play time was somewhere around 11 hours.
I do have a lot to say, and although some of it might come across as kind of snarky, please keep in mind that I do really like the game! I just write like that.
The gameplay is phenomenal, with tricks and graffiti feeling very nice and snappy to pull off, altho the 3 styles of movement all feel very similar. They do have slight differences to things like speed, but its so small that they might as well be the same. This game has a surprising amount of combat, but i felt like it basically came down to attacking once and then jumping and spraying graffiti. Plus the fact that it will automatically swap you to on foot controls makes it kind of annoying to hit & run enemies. It isn't the focus of the game though, just a minor portion, and any combat usually quickly ends, and you go on your way, jamming out and doing art, just as god intended.
The art, world design, and character design is also amazing, I was extremely impressed at just how well they were able to faithfully recreate the Jet Set Radio style, down to the resolution of the textures and kinda janky outlines. Some may not like the jank, but i find it charming in a sort of nostalgic way.
The soundtrack can be hit or miss, but thats kind of to be expected with a game with so many musicians from different genres. Personally, I prefer the more upbeat, crazy songs with lots of sampling, and definitely early in the game its a lot less of that, but the further i went along the more i enjoyed it, and even the songs i was iffy on at first grew on me.
Everyone is always going to point to Hideki Naganuma's songs, because he's well known and well liked and did a lot of JSR and JSRF's soundtracks, but there's a lot of really good songs on this games OST by other artists. Klaus Veen, Olli and Doctor Lazer, artists with songs in Team Reptile's other game Lethal League Blaze, make an appearance and have great songs, although i'm also quite partial to the songs by 2 mello, kidkanevil, KiloWatts, Sebastian Knight, GRRL, and wev.
On a different sound related note, the sound effects are... kinda lacking. Sometimes it feels like they didn't have time to make one, at one point someone gets hit with a skateboard and it makes the most pathetic little like hand lightly punches fabric noise.
Story is eh, I pretty easily predicted mostly everything that was going to happen, but if you're playing the game for the story i don't know why you're playing it, so thats minor.
And lastly, because of this game's obvious massive inspiration from Jet Set Radio, i think it'd be fun to do a little compare and contrast, talk about things from that game which aren't in this game which i miss. I unfortunately haven't played JSRF so i can't compare with that.
Firstly, I kinda miss having a few characters that were fully voice acted. DJ Professor K is such a character that it'd be impossible to fully live up to him, but the fact that he has no counterpart here makes me sad. at least his voice is so burned into my mind that I can imagine him saying various lines of dialogue. but even aside from K, this game doesn't really have a dedicated "police" character, like Officer Onishima from JSR, who I always liked, with him slowly getting more and more angry as he yells through his radio to bring in tanks and shit. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk kinda makes you think they'll have that, with 2 police characters, but neither of them show up outside of boss fights and cutscenes, with the latter just kinda dropping off the face of the earth for... some reason. I don't think he died or anything, just stopped existing.
I enjoy the fact that alongside the 31 tracks in the game, the game primarily uses these "mixtapes" which essentially fulfill the purpose of seamlessly blending between 2 tracks, with various elements from the next song kinda getting added to the previous song, which I loved from JSR. the one issue with it is that you're always going to know the order of the songs, because they only go into one other song, but the songs are good enough that i don't mind listening to them a lot as I play the game for... nearly 7 hours with minimal breaks jesus christ what is wrong with me.
compared to JSR the controls are so much more fluid and easy to use, JSR always felt weird to me, with jumps being really high and floaty, and doing literally anything giving you so much momentum making it hard to turn. BRC fixes both of those things and then if the momentum is still an issue you can swap to on-foot movement at any time, which is great.
Uhh thats all i can think of, I really like this game a lot, but i'm not sure if its worth $40 unless you're a JSR super fan, so maybe wait for a sale. Sorry Team Reptile, but $40 is a lot for a game that i think most people will probably beat in 4-8 hours and never play again.
For me a big part of JSR was the replay value, and at least right now, aside from a few challenges unlocked in the post game, I don't think there's a way to do any of the previous challenges (not that they're very hard to begin with) without making a new save. Maybe in the future they'll add just general challenges like score attack (without a "get more than this high score to win and then never do this again"), time attacks, etc., but until then its looking kinda like a game with a set end that most people won't go back to after that.
I do have a lot to say, and although some of it might come across as kind of snarky, please keep in mind that I do really like the game! I just write like that.
The gameplay is phenomenal, with tricks and graffiti feeling very nice and snappy to pull off, altho the 3 styles of movement all feel very similar. They do have slight differences to things like speed, but its so small that they might as well be the same. This game has a surprising amount of combat, but i felt like it basically came down to attacking once and then jumping and spraying graffiti. Plus the fact that it will automatically swap you to on foot controls makes it kind of annoying to hit & run enemies. It isn't the focus of the game though, just a minor portion, and any combat usually quickly ends, and you go on your way, jamming out and doing art, just as god intended.
The art, world design, and character design is also amazing, I was extremely impressed at just how well they were able to faithfully recreate the Jet Set Radio style, down to the resolution of the textures and kinda janky outlines. Some may not like the jank, but i find it charming in a sort of nostalgic way.
The soundtrack can be hit or miss, but thats kind of to be expected with a game with so many musicians from different genres. Personally, I prefer the more upbeat, crazy songs with lots of sampling, and definitely early in the game its a lot less of that, but the further i went along the more i enjoyed it, and even the songs i was iffy on at first grew on me.
Everyone is always going to point to Hideki Naganuma's songs, because he's well known and well liked and did a lot of JSR and JSRF's soundtracks, but there's a lot of really good songs on this games OST by other artists. Klaus Veen, Olli and Doctor Lazer, artists with songs in Team Reptile's other game Lethal League Blaze, make an appearance and have great songs, although i'm also quite partial to the songs by 2 mello, kidkanevil, KiloWatts, Sebastian Knight, GRRL, and wev.
On a different sound related note, the sound effects are... kinda lacking. Sometimes it feels like they didn't have time to make one, at one point someone gets hit with a skateboard and it makes the most pathetic little like hand lightly punches fabric noise.
Story is eh, I pretty easily predicted mostly everything that was going to happen, but if you're playing the game for the story i don't know why you're playing it, so thats minor.
And lastly, because of this game's obvious massive inspiration from Jet Set Radio, i think it'd be fun to do a little compare and contrast, talk about things from that game which aren't in this game which i miss. I unfortunately haven't played JSRF so i can't compare with that.
Firstly, I kinda miss having a few characters that were fully voice acted. DJ Professor K is such a character that it'd be impossible to fully live up to him, but the fact that he has no counterpart here makes me sad. at least his voice is so burned into my mind that I can imagine him saying various lines of dialogue. but even aside from K, this game doesn't really have a dedicated "police" character, like Officer Onishima from JSR, who I always liked, with him slowly getting more and more angry as he yells through his radio to bring in tanks and shit. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk kinda makes you think they'll have that, with 2 police characters, but neither of them show up outside of boss fights and cutscenes, with the latter just kinda dropping off the face of the earth for... some reason. I don't think he died or anything, just stopped existing.
I enjoy the fact that alongside the 31 tracks in the game, the game primarily uses these "mixtapes" which essentially fulfill the purpose of seamlessly blending between 2 tracks, with various elements from the next song kinda getting added to the previous song, which I loved from JSR. the one issue with it is that you're always going to know the order of the songs, because they only go into one other song, but the songs are good enough that i don't mind listening to them a lot as I play the game for... nearly 7 hours with minimal breaks jesus christ what is wrong with me.
compared to JSR the controls are so much more fluid and easy to use, JSR always felt weird to me, with jumps being really high and floaty, and doing literally anything giving you so much momentum making it hard to turn. BRC fixes both of those things and then if the momentum is still an issue you can swap to on-foot movement at any time, which is great.
Uhh thats all i can think of, I really like this game a lot, but i'm not sure if its worth $40 unless you're a JSR super fan, so maybe wait for a sale. Sorry Team Reptile, but $40 is a lot for a game that i think most people will probably beat in 4-8 hours and never play again.
For me a big part of JSR was the replay value, and at least right now, aside from a few challenges unlocked in the post game, I don't think there's a way to do any of the previous challenges (not that they're very hard to begin with) without making a new save. Maybe in the future they'll add just general challenges like score attack (without a "get more than this high score to win and then never do this again"), time attacks, etc., but until then its looking kinda like a game with a set end that most people won't go back to after that.