Classic beat em up titles can feel like a dime a dozen from the old days so it’s really important to have something that helps you stand out. In this game’s case I thought it would be the extra continues that come as part of the game but unfortunately they are finite which hurts the second half a bit. It’s a fun game but yeah without much of a story or anything like that, I don’t see it doing much that other games haven’t already done.

There’s barely even a story here. You have the opening cutscene and then nothing until the very end. I would have liked a little more than that. Ah well, the controls are of course fairly basic. You have your normal hits and then your power moves. The power moves deal a lot of damage but the price for using them is very high. See, every time you use a power move, it drains part of your health bar. So that’s extremely risky and I would only recommend using it if you are fully surrounded. In this game the minions actually use a lot of teamwork so being in the middle is a bad idea.

For example, there’s one enemy who will restrict your arms while the others start punching you. Others will rush in with a quick sneak attack so while you’re punching one minion, he breaks your combo and then the original one hits you. It’s actually impressive of the A.I. I’d say. So the game gets progressively harder and harder as you go through it. There are a few cheesy enemies here though. Whenever I am in the middle of a combo and the enemy activates super armor and hits me anyway…I’m a little skeptical. There’s no way to block or dodge mid combo so that means you have to eat the hit. It doesn’t really seem fair. Then your only option is to go for single aerial hits that can’t be stopped midway but it means beating the level will take forever.

So that shouldn’t be happening. The flying enemies on the jetpack are also a bit much. Your normal attacks can’t reach them so you’re always having to jump up to try and land a blow but it’s just not easy. These enemies are a bit annoying so I’d rather we stay to ground based opponents. You could also just say that the execution was a bit off since otherwise I really wouldn’t have much of a problem with these guys.

The graphics are okay. I wouldn’t say they are anything special but the game was at least trying something as opposed to phoning it in. Then the soundtrack is more on the generic side. So nothing bad but nothing to really write home about either. The game’s length is fairly short. There are 8 levels although each level is longer than the average beat em up title. You’ll have it beat in maybe 80-90 minutes or so. Add or remove time based on how good you are at the game. The initial lives lasted me all the way to level 6 but after that I had to start busting out the rewinds and everything.

There are just so many enemies and they get so good by the end. It’s hard to see how you can get past them on your own. The final boss as well since he is so fast and is always shooting bullets everywhere. He was fairly unique as you would have to get behind him but your character can’t run and is very slow. So you have to try to get to the corner early but that’s how villains end up taking you out. There’s definitely a lot of strategy here.

Overall, Streets of Rage 2 is a decent game but one that still has a big pet peeve of mine. The fact that when you lose you have to go all the way back to the beginning of the game. That’s something that I can never condone. I feel like you should be able to play through the whole title and if you get a game over, you restart from where you left off. Maybe it means that your score resets or something but give me the option to continue. There’s no way I would let myself go back to level 1 and just try to restart again without some kind of progression. So if you have the Nintendo Switch Online, give this one a quick view. It may not change your life but it’s still a fun playthrough.

Overall 6/10