Speed Brawl Reviews

The graphics of this game is just amazing, however I wish the gameplay was more about "speed". Granted that I don't think I have a good grasp of the game mechanics yet, I was expecting a "constantly accelerating feeling" where you breeze through the screen, while it mostly feel like a super smash bros battle. It has COOP though, so in my book that's a great plus (I play with my daughter). 6 on 10 probably. Worth playing, I recommend on discount. It's sad because the graphics are top notch, like a 10.

I mean, It's not a terrible game but it feels very unfinished. Certainly not worth the cost outside of the quality of the art. Some of the issues: -There are very little characters and all but two of them really feel "fast" which is what the game is about -the ability tree doesn't feel all that in-depth (No new skills or abilities just very basic leveling) -the music is HORRENDOUS, like GOD awful. The music was so bad and cringe I had to turn it off, Most of the characters voices aren't much better. -Loot and items: the item list in the game is insanely short and what drops doesn't really add any cool mechanics. -Lack of replay value: I picked this game up to have another local multiplayer game which is ok but for a 2D game it doesn't have any customizable content or direct PvP. This game should be the kind of game that has a lot of modding opportunity but sadly it does not. Idk if it relies on character sprites being plugged in with highly specific animations or not.

Great presentation, soundtrack, character designs. All of that is top notch and drew me in. But a "fast" game, confining you to small arenas? It does not feel like you are speedy if you stay on the same screen for an entire fight. Maybe i just expected something more akin to pizza tower, that game is FAST. Moreover, the enemies are not proactive enough. I admittedly only played through the 1st "world" and the 1st stage of the second "world" but i rarely had reason to use the parry/counter, as i would have to *wait* for enemies to attack: to *wait* in a "fast game" is not good. Only exception being the boss of the area. That might change in the later stages but the first hour of gameplay just was not interesting or fast enough. The game is also bogged down with systems like loot or skilltrees. Having to go through 3 (equipment, skill and market) menus and then additional dialogue, just to get to a stage after engaging with those systems (because why wouldnt you level up your character in a game) just sloooows the game doooown. The characters having itemisation also feels wrong for a speedrunning game. Speedrunning, and fighting games often as well, is about skill, reactionspeed and memorization. But if i can just give my character an item with more damage, and subsequently clear stages faster as i have more damage- did i really become better at the game? Skill memorization and all that? It also throws out the balance for the stages, because i could just come back later to those first stages with lategame items. Is reaching a gold rank better this way, or earned? I dont believe so. In the end it feels like the game could not really become "fast", gameplay in levels, from layout to enemies, is to slow, and there is too much stuff that bogs you down before you get back in a level. I think for a brawler its fine, i just would not call it a fast game. I am also biased as i cant keep trying to compare the game to pizza tower's speed while playing it - and i recognize that is not fair. After all pizza tower came out 5 years after this game. But the whole menu, itemization and proactive enemy angle of criticism, is valid i think.

Really cool game that's criminally overlooked. The combat is fast and fluid with plenty of characters with distinctive playstyles, and the game's art is extremely good

The character-design and soundtrack are really, really good! Combat's got a nice curve wherein you learn to get better and better at building your momentum along with your combo-weaving. You'll continuosly be challenging yourself to get faster and faster, more and more accurate! A solid recommendation!

Seeing some reviews I have no idea how you can rate a game with literally less than 20 minutes played lol. That said I can say with 2 hours in so far the game is quite fun. It takes some time to get use to the combat. You do more damage based on how fast your moving. Sometimes it can be hard to counter certain attacks with the small window they give you but when you do it feels good. Missing the gold by mere seconds makes me want to go back and try it again. And not many games can do that for me. Also the music is great! At only 20 dollars this is a great buy.

Wow, this game is amazing. First few rounds left a mediocre impression, as I spammed basic attack chains. But once I weaved in the godly Dash button, the training wheels were off. Kudos to the dev team for how much fun they put into that single button -- Dash attacks, Wall attacks, Pole attacks, directional input sensitive and chargeable. Great movement flexibility around the screen, being able to link basic attacks, up attacks, down attacks, double jumps, and dashes all while airborne. Plenty of depth with different specials, ultras, assist calls, and tag attacks between the 6 characters. Probably my favorite 2D combat system across hundreds of similar games. It hurts that this game didn't find a larger audience.

GOOD THINGS: - Game handles well and feels like there is a lot of potential to get good and string together satisfying combos. - Art style is excellent. - Music really gets you pumped. MINOR COMPLAINTS - Leveling up is a false way to feel like your getting better at the game. It actually does so little if it wasn't there I wouldn't miss it. - Random equipment for mission complete. All this does is make a messy inventory that wastes time with menuing to sell things. Straight gold rewards and a standard shop for standard equipment would have been better for a game about going fast. - No option to disable cut scenes on missions that have already been completed. - Cut scenes have a lot of text dialog that really don't say anything. By the second area I stopped caring and skipped them entirely. - Sometimes I can spam calling in my partner to do an assist attack. Sometimes I can't call them at all. I have no idea why. They were alive and had no status effects on them. MAJOR COMPLAINTS - No intuitive way to know if enemies will super armor through hits. The first area mostly lets you button mash things to death. By the second area some enemies seem to randomly hit you out of combos or do uninteruptable combo attacks. - The amount of twitch reaction required to avoid some attacks is frustrating. It is NOT a matter of 'learning the timing' because the attacks have random start up times. - Enemies running away or not bothering to engage at all. On some of the bigger arenas it seems like some little piss ant has just been chilling in the corner for the entire combat section and ends up eating precious timer to go hunt it down. - Bad enemy spawn triggers. Remember that enemy that was hiding from you the whole fight? Turns out killing that one spawns 1 more, which in turn spawns another after that one! You just lost 30 seconds flailing around to kill 1 thing over and over again. On longer levels where this happens each fight it becomes really tedious to have to learn what to target first to save time on spawn ins. - Bosses The other gripes weren't enough to spoil the game for me. The bosses are a big part of why I wish I had just refunded my money after the first one. The game is called speed brawl. Taking on the enemy hordes is entertaining and satisfying as you fly around the screen knocking them around and dodging attacks. Bosses are counter intuitive to this. The first boss makes you think, "Okay, I'll wait for it to charge, jump over it, and attack." But then it immediately turns around and punishes you for it. So you think "Okay, I'll wait for it to charge, jump in FRONT of it to avoid the attack, and wait for it to turn around." But it doesn't turn around. So you think, "Okay, I'll jump over, jump over it AGAIN, then I can attack it." So you jump over the first attack, jump over the second, land thinking you can finally hit it... and it turns around AGAIN and hits you. Now there are other tools you can use to deal with this, like using a stamina move to pass through it (which not all fighters can do), or getting a perfect dodge into a counter to knock it down (remember that random attack speed issue I mentioned earlier)? I always refunded because I wasn't sure if it was worth it to 'git gud'. If I wanted this kind of trial and error boss fights I'd play a souls-like. So I gave the game another chance and got gud, or at least a little better. Things went pretty well through the second area until I get to the boss. This was not a hard boss, it was a slog boss. You face 2 unflinching super versions of the ball and chain enemies that call in bugs. You could get them to flinch by dodge countering their ball and chain attack, but remember that random attack time issue I mentioned? Also poison shooting bugs and a flying sniper-like enemy constantly spawn in. You would think, "Okay, I'll kill the adds, focus on the bosses while they summon new ones, and repeat until I win." Except the adds just keep coming. They join in so fast it isn't even worth killing them except for maybe the crystal sniper eye-thing. So most of the fight is getting a small combo on one of them, dodging away from the 5 projectiles (and maybe a ball and chain) coming at you, and flailing around to try and get behind one of them again for free damage. Except your fighter loves to move forward, so when you're mashing away at their massive health bar you frequently clip into them and get hit by the ball and chain attack. Once again I'm faced with a 'git gud' situation. I tried the fight a few more times and couldn't seem to improve this time. It wasn't fun or engaging. It sucked the 'speed' part out of the game. There you go. Angry story time of how bosses ruined a solid but unpolished game for me. I have no further desire to deal with the minor gripes about the game just to lead into more frustrating and tedious boss fights that feel out of place compared to the rest of the experience.

Awesome sprites, awesome music, awesome cut-scenes--how could this possibly be bad? Well, it isn't. It just ultimately isn't awesome either b/c there's way too much of the same thing. or b/c there's no challenge. I'm 80 minutes in, and I've even acquired a new character, and everything looks and sounds exactly the same as when I started! The challenge is not so much surviving and progressing (as in most brawlers) but in doing it as fast as possible. Rather than encourage creative gameplay, this encourages being cheap--doing the same thing over and over (dash hit combo over and over). On top of that, the enemy sprites aren't that diverse (I've encountered 4 so far), and the level music sounds... the same! Compare this with the sublime Fight-N-Rage where you have such a fun arsenal of combos, an ever changing soundtrack for every area and killer boss-fights along with a great difficulty curve, and there is no competition between the two. I wish I could recommend this game, but I can't. I hope the developers take this well-intended critique to heart and rethink things for their next release.

Speed Brawl is a game that seeks to combine brawling side scrolling action with time trials. You assemble a team to speed through the streets of London bashing baddies to wow the audience and collect fat pay checks. Immediately Speed Brawl hits you with gusto after you boot it up. The opening animation is fantastic with lots of character. It pumps you up and gets you ready for fast paced action. However, as you play that game you'll realize the opening feels nothing like the gameplay. The game itself has many layers that attempt to build complexity on the brawler formula- you have an elemental system, loot drops, ailments, cash, shops, skills, characters, and more. Mechanically, there is a lot. However, most pieces are shallow and don't have a large impact on the game. The elemental system, for example, never feels like it matters. The game mentions that certain elements (all weapons and armor have an element) are more or less effective on certain baddies, but to be honest you can defeat enemies all the same. I never felt more or less vulnerable by diversifying or consolidating my elemental gear properties on a character. The loot system if fairly thin- each tier may only have a dozen or so pieces of equipment, so there isn't much choice or thinking when it comes to picking the best gear. Just go for the biggest numbers. As such, most items are pawned off for money. Furthermore the equipment is divided: one type for brutes while other are made for speedsters. Yet when it comes to the numbers they are both the same. This means your slow brutes do the same damage output and armor as your speedy, rapid attack characters. Trinkets, items that grant a passive ability, feature a “give and take” design at tier 2 and above. Most don't impact the game that strongly to justify the design philosophy, as such tier 1 trinkets tend to be the most efficient. Character choice and skills on the other hand, tend to have the greatest impact on play and refine a player's particular play style. The skill tree is simplistic but empowers a character in various ways like giving them more health or making their special moves more deadly. The skill tree is done well. The controls can feel slow or off when first starting the game- though this is due to a delay inputted to ease online play. (like all games that can be played online) But Speed Brawl doesn't care if you are online or not- you get the delay anyway. You can reduce this by going into some the program files and change the delay to 0, but as of yet there is no in game way of doing this. Worst of all, half of the character cast just don't feel fun. The game's brute force characters get the short end of the stick and just don't do enough damage, have enough reach, or other fun things to differentiate themselves from the speedy ones. Hell even when you turn on a characters' stats they all have roughly the same variables- save in speed. Most bosses tend to be rinse and repeat affairs. Tough side, weak side, lots of turning, with time as your greatest enemy. The remaining bosses are just beefed up normal baddies with tons more HP and greater attack strength. Even then the only “unique” bosses (a mantis-like creature) is used three times and the other (a beetle) used twice while also used as an uncommon enemy. This is disappointing because boss fights ought to be something different from the norm- the cherry on top. Only the roof-tops (the half-way point in the game) has a unique boss and how it is used. The stages can be hit or miss. While the hazards can be fun and challenging they tend to be the only unique factor from stage to stage. Most stages are horizontal runs with stopping points where you fight. Though the game tries to mix it up with pole racing or an “excitement meter” (In order to pass you must fill the meter by attacking, but not get hit) it still feels very same-y. Even older beat'em ups shook up game play with auto-scroll levels (Like in Turtle in Time), shooting galleries (Like in Sunset Riders), precise platforming (Like in Double Dragons), and other diversions to keep game play fresh. For example, Speed Brawl could have very easily had at least one vertical-styled level since every character can double jump, wall cling, wall slide, and air dash. (That's a lot of air time! ) Hell it might have been an “infamous level” that sticks in your mind, but instead the stages are all forgettable. There is also no “retry” button on the results screen if you fail or just want to try again for a better time- forcing you to wait through a few loading screens, dialog, and confirmations to get back where you started. Yug. If you enjoy games like Captain Commando, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, and the speed of the side scrolling Sonic series, you won't get your kicks here. Players who are new to either racing or brawling genre want to steer clear of the title. Though this game bursting with charm, it doesn't not have the polish to match. Which sucks, because I think there is a good game in here. It just needed more time to be tweaked, get additional feed back, and polish.