Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons Review

Grab your acid-washed denim vest and get ready to hit the streets of New York to clean up the city and take out the members of the four rival gangs and any innocent abandoned crates that stand in your way. The year is 199X, and nuclear war has destroyed most of the world. We see a man carrying a woman named Marian (fans may recognise her from the previous Double Dragon games), who has been injured by the battling rival gangs. This man is the new mayor of the city and has come to the Sōsetsuken Dojo, where Jimmy Lee and Billy Lee live and train. He is desperate and is hoping that these martial artists can help 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 and with prodding, they have convinced Uncle Matin to join alongside to fight.

The four gangs that you will be standing up against are:

• The Killers — Ex-militant members make up this gang. They have taken over an abandoned skyscraper and are heavily armed, so almost all the thugs you face off against will be shooting at you.

• The Triangle — An extremist cult that believes Anubis (the Egyptian god) is their leader and will bring the world back to how it was before the Nuclear War. Their base is at the junkyard.

• The Royals — A gang that is made up of teenagers and young adults that run the city's train system and smuggle exotic animals. Their leader Duke is a skilled martial artist who will prove to be a formidable foe in a fight. 

• Okada Clan — Led by the widow of the previous oyabun — the leader of a yakuza clan, this was the strongest gang before the nuclear war; they now run the city’s gambling business.
  
  All of the gang leaders are available to unlock, costing 25 tokens in the Token Shop if you want to use them on one of your runs!

Before jumping into battle, you will have to select a few options, like if you’re playing solo, swapping between two characters or if you talked someone into playing with you, there is a two-player co-op mode where each player controls one of the fighters. You get to select how you will continue when you die, pay five tokens, permadeath (where you are just dead, and it’s game over) or infinite, where you can keep continuing as long as you can pay the cash fee; it starts as a small amount and increases the more times you try to continue. I was not ready to have my characters die permanently, so I opted for the infinite option. To determine how difficult your run will be you will have to adjust sliders that will alter the exchange rate to obtain tokens. This section of the game I found incredibly unclear; each setting has multiple nodes on its line. You can move the slider to the blue or the red orbs on the line. I’m not totally sure which colour makes it easier, but based on my first run that was over in like two minutes, having everything set to red is not how you want to have it. When you begin the game, I suggest turning down your Enemies Stats and Aggressiveness. It makes the game more fair so that you aren’t defeated in your first minute playing. After some experimentation, I think closer to the blue side makes that game more chill and easier, and moving to 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. Either way, I think that it will take some playing around to figure out the perfect combination for your play style.

Instead of grinding for levels in a traditional RPG, here, you will grind for money that you can convert into tokens. These tokens are incredibly important in the game, they are used to continue your game if you die, or they can be exchanged for items in the Token Shop that is accessible in the game’s Main Menu. Inside this Token Shop, there are multiple things that you can spend your hard-earned tokens on including:

• Characters — you start the game with four, but there are another nine that you can purchase costing 10, 25, or a mystery character for 50 tokens each. Franchise favourites like Abobo (who is huge and insanely strong!) and Linda are here priced at a reasonable 10 Tokens; who hasn’t wanted to play as the enemies that you are usually tasked with defeating? 

• Tips — there are 28 available to purchase on a variety of topics like how to perform better combos and taking advantage of swapping between the primary and secondary characters to help you be more successful. Each one costs only one token to unlock, so it would be a worthy investment.

• Art — 28 pieces of artwork featuring the levels and all the playable characters in the game, each costing three tokens each.

• Music — a selection of — you guessed it — 28 different songs, including the great remastered tracks from the previous games in the series. Each tune will cost you three tokens.

The Stage Difficulty is determined not only by which stage you select but when they are selected. Each location has four different sections available: if you choose that level first, you will only have to play through one, but if you select it second, then you have to complete two, pick it third, then you need to do three, and the toughest is selecting it last because you need to play through all four sections to clear it. This adds a ton of strategy to the game: do you select the hardest stage so you only need to do one part, or alternatively, do you play the easier ones so you can collect money to exchange for tokens and unlock other characters? I think a mix of the two would be most advantageous. Once you figure out which team of fighters you like the best, you can then go and tackle the levels in any order you want. Chances are, either way, you will be doing a ton of runs before you hone your skills and become more familiar with the stages and bosses that you have to face. So get used to visiting the same areas multiple times!

On each run, you select a primary and secondary character from the ones you have unlocked. All the characters have different fighting styles and unique abilities that they can use. Jimmy is balanced and focuses on speed, whereas his brother Billy Lee is also balanced but uses more strength attacks. Uncle Matin is a power grappler who is slower but stronger and uses his shield to plough through anything or anyone who gets in his way; Marian has range attacks and is equipped with weapons like handguns and a grenade launcher to destroy her foes, it’s not the fastest weapon to fire, but damn it does a lot of damage! 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, especially once you unlock other characters that are on the roster. Double Dragon Gaiden makes it easy to swap between your two characters with just the hit of one button and, if done strategically, can help recover lost HP before one character falls in battle. Though if you manage to complete that section of the stage with only one person, the other will be brought back to life for the next stage or section. But I will warn you that if you don’t have enough money to continue, you can restart that same section again, or you cash out and your save file will be deleted. So any progress that you have made thus far is gone; this is also the option you will have to select if you want to try one of the other stages. This was super frustrating!

All the characters have their base attack, a grab/dash button, a jump, and the most important move: their Special (SP) attack. Performing all the different moves feels responsive and easy to carry out; it never felt like it was lagging. The powerful SP attacks can be unleashed once the blue SP gauge is full. It is strong enough to knock out weaker enemies or do a large amount of damage to stronger foes. If you successfully KO at least three foes with one SP attack, you will perform Crowd Control. This earns you a food item that will replenish some of your health, KO three, and you get a hot dog that replenishes 25 health, four will get you a burger that recovers 50, and five will get you a huge turkey that fills 100 HP! Besides the health benefits, the fallen enemies will drop money that you can redeem for tokens. 

Double Dragon Raiden: Rise of The Dragons is the most in-depth beat ‘em up game that I have ever played. It takes everything that gamers loved from the original games, including the super catchy music and vibrant pixelated characters, then dials up the intensity by combining the game style with elements of roguelite titles where you are constantly doing runs and replaying the same areas to unlock new characters and items. The game requires you to do a lot of experimentation as there are a lot of things it doesn’t explain enough — or not at all — that make it frustrating to figure out. But once you get a handle on it, this game is incredibly addictive and has so much to do and unlock that you will constantly be coming back for more! Oh, and thanks to Double Dragon 3, I will forever think of Billy Lee as Bimmy!