I ended up playing Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons. I finished the game in one sitting, so it's not too long. I owed @slimerancher@lemmy.world a short review of this game from a few months ago!

Last time I played this game I had recently been playing Streets of Rage 4 and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, I think I was expecting it to be like those games, but it's a different thing. I did enjoy it much more this time around. I was also playing solo, whereas last time it was co-op.

They really went for replayability with this one. The order in which you play the initial 4 stages affects the whole run, since stages will be different depending on the order you play them, which is interesting. Now that I finished the game in a certain order, I do feel like doing another run in a different order. The upgrades at the end of each stage do help, making it easier to face harder stages as you advance.

The different characters are also essential to the gameplay, as is the case in many Beat 'em ups. My playthrough was with Billy and Jimmy, and to me, Billy sucks compared to other characters. I mostly used him while recovering Jimmy's energy in the background. I already started a new run with Jimmy and Uncle Martin, who is amazing and super strong. You can unlock new characters as you collect tokens when you finish the game. I've unlocked Abobo, which should be fun to play! The tagging system adds some fun with the energy management between your two characters, and can also affect the gameplay more depending on the upgrades you choose.

The big defect I still find is how sometimes you get unlucky, and you've been doing great all stage and with one trap or succession of enemies you get your entire life bar taken out. It's like a loop of bad things happening to your character you can't stop (or maybe I haven't learned how to break this). But this happened maybe twice or three times.

Overall, a fun beat 'em up, I'm definitely going to play some more and unlock more characters, and it's a fun one for co-op too.