What are you currently playing?

Originally posted by StyleTime
I don't know to be honest. I did a little digging, and most the streamers/leaderboard players seem to think Adam and Blaze are the best characters in the game. They have an infinite combo that completely trivializes boss battles apparently. And Blaze is pretty mobile if you don't using health for her air special. I wish the leaderboards showed which character the player used though. More data to work with.

Cherry seems to be in the "really good but trickier to get damage with" category.

Again though, that's from the more hardcore SOR crowd. I'm casual as hell, and play Cherry because I'm just too used to mobility in modern beat 'em ups. Even if she was weak, having to plod around during stages annoys me.

I had a couple in mind, but it depends on what you mean by "Castle Crasher types."

Do you dislike level progression systems in beat 'em ups?

ADAM:
Fixed Infinite loop
Added neutral special OTG property

FLOYD SOR4:
Floyd’s attack x3 infinite is fixed
Neutral special life costs adjustment
Floyd can no longer reset his grab move counter by jumping
Special take less HP

https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/09/07/streets-of-rage-4-patch-1-03-1-04-ps4-xb1-pc-update/

Speed runners gonna be pissed.

Honestly, I don't like it when they patch out exploits. If they take skill, let players play as they like.

Why did Streets of Rage 4 succeed, yet Guardian Heroes fail?

I absolutely LOVE the gameplay of Sega's Saturn brawler, and bought the HD remake on Xbox. I'd buy a Steam edition in a second, but that doesn't appear to be happening.

The game never sold well on Saturn or Xbox Live, which is odd considering how fun it is, and how vocal the same hardcore audiences who support Streets of Rage are.

The thing about Streets of Rage 4, is its a pure brawler.

Double Dragon Neon and Castle Crashers and Guardian Heroes have rpg elements. Streets of Rage is pure skill, you get all the tools you need from the start.

That's why I prefer it to rpg based beat em ups.

Ghost of Tsushima was going to be the next game to check off my backlog but I decided to wait until the dlc comes out to play it.

Still taking my time with P5R so there's no rush lol.

Beat my first few Mania levels. Not all that bad tbh. Also broke the "Combo Master" achievement.

With Floyd, who is easily the best character in the entire game because of his telescoping grab move, his ridiculous power that makes a mockery of shield carriers, and his neutral special, and his insane full screen throw. I think they nerfed something I read about where you can actually telescope grab a dead enemy and walk with him to the next area, keeping the combo counter running. Now if they're dead Floyd simply drops them.

Also had good luck with Blaze, and her various ways to bounch enemies off the floor for juggles.

Axel, little luck with unfortunately. Can't find any real strengths, his range is poor, his grand upper doesn't seem to have any invincibility frames past the windup, and the full animation is unsafe. I found out you can cancel the windup of grand upper into a special, but you can't do that with the follow through. Also, I'm not sure if you do less damage by only using the windup, as opposed to the entire thing.

Its too bad because I like Axel as a character.

Unlocked Shiva!

And got my first S rank with modern Axel, and popped related achievement.

The secret was to simply turn up the volume and rock out to the music. Works great. 🙂

Anyways, now that everyones unlocked and I passed the difficulty barriers and broke into the S's (Even if only on normal and Stage) feel like the real game is starting. Learning Axel's hard kick shuffle has become a priority, and I want to main a retro character. Honestly, all the complaints of lack of running or dodge rolling are simply proof one hasn't played very much of it, as Streets of Rage 3 unlocks can do all of that stuff. And it really doesn't make things any easier, at least in my experience. The runs are no substitute for a proper sprint like Adam and Shiva has, and enemies are constantly repositioning so that you end up dodge rolling INTO attacks as often as not.

Originally posted by cdtm
The thing about Streets of Rage 4, is its a pure brawler.

Double Dragon Neon and Castle Crashers and Guardian Heroes have rpg elements. Streets of Rage is pure skill, you get all the tools you need from the start.

That's why I prefer it to rpg based beat em ups.

All the ones I was about to suggest have them, although I think there's a difference between being a ball of stats vs well implemented level up systems. Enemies scale with you in some titles, so you can't just power level and steamroll the game. Most of my favorites have rpg mechanics, so I guess I can't you help much, although you might be missing out on some gems.

Fight'N Rage fits your description though.

Keep hearing about Fight'nRage.

What were your suggestions?

^ Have you tried The TakeOver?

Originally posted by Kazenji
^ Have you tried The TakeOver?

I almost bought it on the summer sale. That and Fight n Rage.

But looking at videos, I'm just not sure. The latter looks like a paid fan game, and the former kind of seems rough around the edges, at least compared to Streets of Rage 4.

Legend of Dragoon.

Originally posted by Jmanghan
Legend of Dragoon.

Possibly the most underrated RPG of that era. I enjoyed it a lot though.

Originally posted by StyleTime
**** yeah. 👆

Possibly the most underrated RPG of that era. I enjoyed it a lot though.

Looked at my Steam copy of Mark of the Ninja to see if I bought the DLC, and found they removed it! You have to buy the remastered version to get it now.

4.99 for an upgrade from the original, so I guess about as much as it would have cost to buy the dlc. Still, I'll be playing my Xbox copy which has the DLC.

Mark of the Ninja Special Ediition (360)

I suck at it! Fun though.

Crying Suns.

Loving it so far.

It's almost like the dev's played ftl: Faster Than Light "Captain's Edition" mod and thought to make a game based on it. Because that mod was full of events on every random node, like Crying Suns is. And there's even random crew events at empty nodes.

Crying Suns gets a lot easier once you get the hang of it. Main thing is to pick an offensive style:

1. Your ships guns are your main offense. This means your drones will be used mainly to play interference with the enemy drones.

2. Your drones are your main offense. This will happen depending on lucky drops and stat buffs, and especially certain ship types. Say for example you have 4 seconds to rebuild destroyed ships that are at a quarter health, while the enemy has 12 second cooldowns, you're gonna want to spam those drones and take down their drone hanger as fast as possible.

Kind of a simple system but fun.

Makes me want to go back to FTL and take a crack at hard mode, or maybe simply a win with all the ship types (One thing I won't ever do is reset all progress, those unlocks take way too long and are too RNG dependant, and I prefer having a huge selection of choices.)

Just played a bit of L.A. Noire (first time) on the Switch.

Aside from the shooting, the game is very good so far.

Playing Batman Arkham City for the very first time.. Very fun so far.

I'm also replaying Fallout New Vegas for like the dozenth time and xcom enemy within for like the 500th time lol. That's just how damn addictive that game is. It has an infinite amount of replay value because of all the different starting locations and all of the second wave options available.

I always play on impossible difficulty as it is the only one that gives me a real challenge. Classic is way too easy for someone of my tactical ability, though that wasn't always the case. When i first started playing classic I got my ass handed to me over and over again until I finally learned how to beat it. Now it's just a joke to me.

Impossible though, that is an entirely different animal. I usually lose on impossible within first two months of game with all of the second wave options I use that increase difficulty even further. Hell, it usually takes me like 3 or 4 tries to successfully complete that first mission, though this time I got it on first try.

Don't think I've ever played a game with as much replay value as xcom ew.

Too bad no one plays MP anymore. I miss playing against an actual intelligent opponent.