Double Dragon Gaiden Switch Review

I rediscovered the Double Dragon Series very early on in my recovery with Double Dragon 2, a game I feel was ahead of its time. The set pieces like fighting in a helicopter or jumping across building rooftops while fighting off gangs were exciting, and imagine as the kid on the street with a copy (I still have the cartridge,) it must have been very popular in my household growing up. While I hate the thought of being called a gatekeeper as I strongly believe the more people are introduced to a series the better, when I saw that a new Double Dragon game was coming, I was a bit worried about Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons being a cash in on an older franchises name. Thankfully, like a cyclone kick to the face, I was wrong.

Enter Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons, a throwback to the beat em up era starting in the arcades and finding a home on the NES (well for me anyways.) I smiled when I saw the first line of exposition pop up with “The year is 19XX” which in a funny way, assured me that I was probably in for a great time. I was right, however, there are some conditions.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons is a very slick package presented as a rogue-like reimagining of the classic series. The game is presented with some very stylish art design made up of impressively expressive and well-animated 2D pixel characters and environments. There are some really great liberties taken with the art style, with comic book-style animations flashing up on the screen when you land a good combo, slick boss introductions with nice cutaways, and an overall polish that makes the game a real visual treat when in action. It’s a great homage to the series and the bad guys look great in their new forms, there are even some cool options to play as certain infamous characters (but more on that later.)

In a bit of a switch up, you can now play as Billy, Jimmy, Marion, and Uncle Matin. Selecting 2 characters before you start, you can switch between them in a Tekken Tag style system which helps one character recover health while you keep punching your way through the game. Each character has a unique playstyle and move set, and there are 9 more characters to unlock. Billy and Jimmy deliver that classic Double Dragon style punch and kick action, Marion has a gun and almost plays like you’re in Metal Slug, and Matin uses a riot shield to charge enemies and beat them down with some good old fashion power hits. I really liked the style of mixing it up a bit when it works, but other times, certain characters made certain sections of the game a chore. For example, I was playing 2 players and my second player was Matin, we went through pressure-plated traps, and due to Matin’s speed, he got hit and juggled till his health was depleted. While it was incredibly frustrating in that one instance, it was not really a game-breaker. Also thankfully you can tag out to your secondary character, adding further depth to the mix and provided they aren’t knocked out, switching to them can avoid a situation like this… although our secondaries were both knocked out.

Combat is simple, but not shallow, and allows people of all skills to join in the fun of the game. I played for a few hours with my son while telling him all about Double Dragon 2 and we had a blast fighting our way through the hordes of gangs to bring justice back to the world. This is where Double Dragon Gaiden takes its biggest step away from the previous game by adding rogue-like progression and a really cool difficulty scaling system.

The Rogue-like progression is tied to money and tokens. The more money you earn with your specific difficulty modifiers you can buy character upgrades to help you progress further, or when you die, you can cash that money in for Tokens. The tokens are used to unlock art, music, tips, and playable characters. It’s a nice touch to the game and adds a bit more meat to the bones. The other great change is you can tackle the gangs in any order you see fit, but with each gang you defeat, the other gangs grow stronger from the power vacuum. This also increases replayability as it unlocks additional stages to the fight and adds variation and difficulty to the bosses, some, frustratingly so.

As a huge fan of the series, I found so much enjoyment in playing Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons. The gameplay is slick, the art style is fantastic, and the combat and controls are simple, yet satisfying. While I feel in my time playing I have seen most of what the game has to offer, I’m looking forward to playing it some more with a different character team-up. While the price point of $40 is a bit high compared to games of a similar vein on the E-shop, fans of the Genre will certainly get their money’s worth with this true-to-source homage to the fantastic double dragon series.

So What’s it Like?

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons is a cross between Double Dragon 2, and Scott Pilgrim Vs The World.