Double Dragon is a series that I’ll always pull for to succeed. I have so many amazing memories of playing through Battletoads & Double Dragon on the Super Nintendo with my brothers growing up. I don’t think we ever made it past the first few levels due to the difficulty, but that didn’t stop us from banging our heads against the game (and to the music) over and over again. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to revive the series through reboots and reimaginings, with varying results. Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons came out just a couple of years ago and was a welcome change of pace for the series, managing to shake up the long-running beat ’em up’s formula in an interesting way and going for a drastically different art style.
As a result, I was cautiously optimistic when jumping into Double Dragon Revive, hoping it could continue that momentum with a modernized remake of the original game. Unfortunately, Revive not only fails to bring anything new or interesting to the series but also fails to even capture what made the earlier games so much fun.
A Familiar Setup
As with the other games in the series, Double Dragon Revive stars Billy and Jimmy Lee, two brothers who are among the few capable of performing Sosetsuken, a lost martial arts form. Having learned that their friend Marian has been kidnapped, the brothers set out to rescue her and figure out who is behind the other recent kidnappings in their city.
Together, they work their way through the city’s underbelly and streets, beating up thugs and members of the Shadow Warriors Gang. There are some loose story threads that the game dangles in front of you, but these are largely just excuses to get you from one location to another and barely make sense under even the lightest scrutiny.
No one plays these games for the story, though. The real meat and potatoes of any good beat ’em up is found in beating the pulp out of every generic-named thug and boss that dares cross your path. Unfortunately, it feels like developer Yuke’s did not quite get the memo about that. Double Dragon Revive‘s combat is sluggish, unresponsive, and just plain not fun. Regardless of which of the four playable characters you choose, they all feel like they are walking through mud after having spent the night getting wasted at the pub. The 3D movement on each stage feels like your character can’t decide where they want to go when moving diagonally, and because the camera is just a bit too even with the stage, it can be difficult to judge your depth in the stage and whether you are level with an enemy to strike them. It makes combat too random and chaotic, but not in a good way.
There is also no oomph behind their attacks. Hitting an enemy in a beat ’em up should have some weight behind it. I mean, it’s right there in the name of the genre. Instead, Revive’s attacks are unsatisfying and weak feeling leaving almost every enemy encounter unsatisfying and monotonous. For example, you have a special meter that builds up as you form combos, kill enemies, and use environmental takedowns. When activated, your character unleashes a super attack that usually clears a whole screen. Whenever you use this special, however, you only see you enemy attacking a single enemy, and when the screen zooms back out, all the other enemies are just dead on the ground. It just feels half-baked and unsatisfying to use, which is the opposite of what you want with a super. It is inexcusable when a game misses the mark this badly in the core foundations of its genre.
Bumps in the Night
Bosses are also incredibly uninspired. I played on normal difficulty, and, for the most part, you can button-mash your way through almost every single one. I managed to get no hit by the first boss in the game without really trying. However, there are a couple of bosses where the difficulty spikes to an absurd degree. This isn’t due to new mechanics or the boss having a difficult move set, though. Double Dragon Revive subscribes to the idea that whenever it wants to up its boss difficulty, the best way to do that is just flood the arena with mobs. I found myself getting stunlocked by a group of enemies in a boss fight and having my health drained with no way to get out of it. These boss fights were beyond frustrating and some of the lowest moments in an already mediocre game.
The stages themselves are also a disappointment. It seems like they were just checking boxes, trying to cover every cliche theme known in the genre. We have the generic street level, bridge level, sewer level, and, of course, the casino level. It’s not like all these stages are directly from the original game, either, so you can’t just chalk it up to them being faithful to the original Double Dragon. I wish there were more variety thrown in with the stages; games like these deserve more creative environments to fight through.
One aspect of Revive I will give credit to is its music. The Double Dragon series has always had great soundtracks, and Revive manages to hold its own in that regard. Some solid tracks in here capture the spirit of the series and had me bobbing my head from time to time. I especially would like to shout out the casino level’s theme. It’s a really well-done funky tune that has worked its way onto my playlist rotation and will probably be there for the rest of the year. There isn’t anything groundbreaking here, but it is a decent soundtrack that can be viewed as a small bright spot in an otherwise lackluster package.
Back to the Drawing Board
I managed to complete my first playthrough of Double Dragon Revive in about three hours, and I felt like I saw everything that game had to offer after the first thirty minutes. The redundant combat, level design, and boss encounters left me numb to the whole experience of Double Dragon Revive, with the occasional moment of frustration over obscene difficulty spikes. There are additional extras to unlock by beating the game as different characters or completing missions in an optional game mode. However, after playing through a few of these, I just found that they amplified all my gripes with the main campaign. I could see there being some truly hardcore beat ’em up fans who could find some fun in Double Dragon Revive, but it just failed to capture me in almost every regard during my time with it.
I’m not sure if this will be the final nail in the coffin for the Double Dragon series, but I see no clear path forward for this franchise unless it drastically shakes things up in future titles. If it doesn’t, it is in danger of being completely left behind and forgotten like so many other games of its ilk.
Disclaimer: Arc System Works provided a PlayStation 5 copy of Double Dragon Revive for review purposes.
