It’s time for the return of the Battletoads and this time they’re meeting up with the Double Dragons. It’s one of those games you wish they had waited like 20 years for though because we could have had a killer story with it. Instead, this is pretty solid for the gameplay but there’s not a whole lot to the story itself. Still, it is pretty fun to see the characters again after playing the other Battletoads title not too long ago. Would have been good to have had more dialogue out of the Double Dragons though since they didn’t get much dialogue at all here.

The basic plot is that the villains are back and causing chaos again so the Double Dragons and the Battletoads must unite and fight. That should give long time beat em up fans chills as you go through the levels. I opted to go with the double dragons and beat up the opponents with the old school techniques. It’s fun to hit them with the various combos and in this game enemies tend to wait their turns. That’s good because now I don’t have to worry about being surprised by a cheap shot from behind. Perhaps it makes things a bit easier but I can live with that.

In general you can see how they toned down the difficulties. None of the levels are anything close to the Battletoads racing levels. You still will be dying a lot and I had to use the rewind feature quite a bit but nothing compared to Battletoads. The game also feels a lot shorter here as the 7 levels go by in the blink of an eye. As long as you have your fundamentals on point then you will eventually score the W though. Just focus on landing those blows and your best bet is the dash attack.

When you time is right, no boss can hit you before you land it. Then you can back up and quickly do it again. I was able to land as many as 4 dash attacks in a row before quickly retreating, regrouping, and trying again. It’s an absolutely broken technique so you need to take advantage of that. Going in and trying to win with pure hand to hand combat is going to backfire and fail on you hard. The enemies almost always have better range at their disposal which is a big issue for your fists.

They are durable so you will need a lot of dash attacks but you will eventually win. Just make sure to walk up or down after the dash attack so the boss will follow you and that gives you enough time to land another one. If you follow this procedure the right way then you should definitely not have any issues. It is easier said than done so expect to get blasted a few times while you are perfecting this.

The graphics are pretty solid. The game is very colorful and also expressive. The characters have their eyes popping out whenever a villain shows up in total shock. Additionally you can pogo stick enemies into the ground and they panic as they sink deeper and deeper. The studio clearly had a lot of fun with the facial expressions and I definitely appreciate that. It helps make the whole thing more enjoyable. When the gameplay and graphics are on point then you have a winning formula.

The soundtrack is less memorable but it’s not bad. It’s just not something that you will really be humming in the parking lot afterwards or anything like that. In terms of replay value, there really isn’t any though. Perhaps the cutscenes are slightly different with other characters but I’m not sure. The double dragon I played as only had one line so if that’s the case with the others then you really aren’t missing out on much. It’s a great deal to play through the Switch Online but I would say it’s probably not one you would want to spend money on because of how short it is.

Overall, It is always fun to play through a crossover. They didn’t really do much with the concept as the two sides don’t interact among the main heroes but the game itself is very sound. As long as you enjoy playing beat em up titles then you will definitely be having fun with this game. It has no real weaknesses aside from being fairly short but I would say that’s more of a genre issue. In general none of the 2D beat em ups are all that long and mainly what extended the other Battletoads game was the crazy difficulty which was definitely limited in this one. I imagine after a while you may memorize the frames and attack animations though. At that point you will really be unstoppable. Final shoutout to the game for having a bunch of notable bosses. That was a nice touch not to have them look like normal minions. With these bosses you could tell that they jumped up a tier.

Overall 7/10