Double Dragon Revive Review

I have never played a Double Dragon game before this but I surprisingly had more enjoyment from this game than I thought I would. Is it as good as Marvel Cosmic Invasion which also came out the same year? No. It is however a solid game in it's own right. At first I thought this was going to be yet another typical yet fun 2D beat em up but there were some surprising innovation that even more modern games don't have.

The story is just kind of there. It does seem very Fist of the North Star inspired with it's character designs and setting. It's fine in the moment and is mainly just there to keep the action going. Nothing was outright terrible or remarkable either. I did find Raymond to be a moderately fun villain to hate since he got a good worf effect before actually beating him later in the game.

Gameplay seem like your typical 2D beat em up but there's some cool innovation here like contextual area of effect attacks like an slam from jumping off a wall or swinging from poles. You even got Sleeping Dogs' contextual environmental takedowns if you grab an enemy. A quick environmental weapon that is in the background to attack with as well as enemies being able to bounch into walls. There is a special move meter where if filled up you can do a dual button contextual melee takedown. Enemies can be attacked while they are down, some needing to be finish off this way. That is also partnered in with modern 2D beat em up mechanics like a dodge button.

I wasn't expect any of this ideas to be in this game and sparked my enjoyed greatly because of it. Partner that with no limited continues, not doing an overwhelming amount of content upon death and getting active health refils and pick ups and it's easy to see why a game like this caught me by surprise.

There are some issues however. One since pick up, drop weapon, hitting downed enemy, and using contextual area of effect attacks are all mapped to R2, there are times where I want to hit a downed enemy but dropped the weapon I was currently holding instead.

Mandatory platforming sections can be very insufferable since I didn't come here for that however thanks to the aforementioned checkpoints and not redoing lots of content I can put up with this.

The bosses range from being doable in one try to being very aggrevating. A lot of the bosses can be pushovers but then you got Williams where he dart around the map and you have to dodge the flame bursts as he is moving around meaning you have to watch two things at once while the dodging the aforementioned hazard you could get hit by Williams dodging or vice versa. Most bosses after are easy but Raymond is a difficulty spike and is hard on easy too.

He can regenerate his health when you get him at critical and he will slowly chip away at yours with clones and critical attacks. Fighting him is a long battle of attrition. I was only able to beat him because I had two finishing area of effect attacks lined up when he got to critical. I'm especially glad there are no limited continues here.

Overall, I was expecting Double Dragon Revive to be a typical yet enjoyable beat em up but I ended up having more fun with it than I initially thought I would.