Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons Preview

I am a huge retro game fan and game collector — aka hoarder — so the Double Dragon series is no stranger to me! I have good memories of the titles on the NES, except for Double Dragon 3. That title starred Bimmy (how did they screw up the name so badly!?) and his brother Jimmy… and it was so freaking hard I couldn’t even get through the first level. So despite being excited, I came to this new instalment with feelings of trepidation. Would Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons be insanely challenging to fit along with the difficult roguelike titles that people nowadays enjoy, or would it feel more like the beat ‘em up games that I grew up playing?

Upon starting the game, the first thing I noticed was the great pixel artwork. The loading screen features 2D, 8-bit versions of the four starting characters, and the logo featuring the red and blue dragons looks great! The developer, Secret Base, knew the quickest way to channel feelings of nostalgia for fans of the series, the music that you hear is remastered right from the original titles. I hadn’t even started the game, and it already felt so familiar!

The Main Menu currently has a Story Mode, Leaderboard, Options Menu, and a How To Play guide. It also features a Token Shop where you spend tokens to unlock:

• Characters — you start the game with four unlocked, but there are another nine that you can purchase starting at 10, 25, or a mystery character for 50 tokens each. 

• Tips — there are 28 available to purchase on a variety of topics to help you be more successful. Each one costs one token to unlock.

• Art — 28 pieces of artwork of all the characters that you can buy for three tokens each.

• Music — a selection of — you guessed it — 28 different songs that cost three tokens a song from the game's soundtrack.

Now you are probably wondering how exactly you unlock these special tokens. While playing, you are constantly beating up enemies and smashing every piece of destructible furniture or object you find. Defeated enemies and demolished objects will leave money, gems, or piles of dollar bills. This cash can be used to revive yourself and purchase upgrades — or tokens themselves — at the end of that sector. Once your game is over, if you have any remaining cash, it will be converted into tokens and will earn you a spot on the leaderboard.

I haven’t even touched on the game itself and how it feels to play. When you start your playthrough, you select if you are playing 1P co-op (you will control two characters and switch in between) or 2P co-op (where each player controls one character); there are three options for when you die and want to continue: costs five tokens, permadeath, or infinite. I was not ready to have my characters die permanently! You then get to adjust some sliders that will determine how difficult your run will be and the token exchange rate. Double Dragon Gaiden is not clear on if moving the slider to the blue or the red makes it easier, so my first run was over in like two minutes. Be sure to pay attention to the Enemies Stats and Enemies Aggressiveness bars and turn them down for your first playthrough so you aren’t instantly destroyed. To be honest, the game doesn’t tell you if being closer to the blue side makes that game more chill and easier or if being by the flaming red orbs makes you or the enemy stronger. The more difficult the game is, the higher the exchange rate, so your cash will get you fewer tokens. 

The year is 199X, and nuclear war has destroyed most of the world. Our story takes place in New York City, and what is left is controlled by four different gangs — The Killers, The Royals, The Okada, and The Triangle. They are constantly at war, trying to expand their reach. We see a man carrying a woman named Marian into the Sosetsuken Dojo, where Jimmy Lee and Billy Lee live and train. We find out this man is the new mayor of the city, and he is looking for help to save the city's residents from these violent gangs. Jimmy and Billy feel that it is their job to help protect the others, Marian volunteers to help, and after some badgering, they have convinced Uncle Matin to join the cause as well.

You select a primary and secondary character from the four. Each has a unique fighting style and different abilities that they can use: Jimmy and Billy focus on martial arts, Marian uses weapons like a gun and grenade launcher, while Uncle Matin is slower but stronger and uses his shield to plough through anything or anyone who gets in his way. It definitely takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what pairing you find most effective, but it adds a ton of variety. It is incredibly easy to swap between your two characters and can be done strategically to help recover lost HP before one of your fighters dies or to use a special attack. Each character has their base attack, a jump, a grab/dash button, and the most important move: their SP attack. This is the special attack that you can do once the blue SP gauge is full and can be used to knock out weaker enemies or do a lot of damage to the larger ones. If you manage to KO at least three foes with one attack, you will perform Crowd Control and will earn a food item that will replenish some of your health!

I am having a great time playing Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, and I can’t wait to play more and unlock more of the characters. If you are a fan of the other Double Dragon titles or beat ‘em ups in general, I think this is going to be a challenging title to try out!