izigame.me

I'll start just saying that this game is INSANELY good and worth it

Either to play for yourself or friends, it has many fun moments, good voice acting Hibari's voice is the worst though sorry, great character design, entertaining gameplay with amazing combo mechanics, god tier music, very cool art/CG and there's just so much.
While it's not in reality a long game if you don't plan to 100% all of it then you might not find as much worth in it, but it's still very good to entertain you and up to 3 other friends (in local at least), I've been using Parsec to play with other friends and it has been working great, I myself bought this game with the idea to 100% this game no matter if it was going to be solo or multiplayer.
When I started playing these games I did not think I'd play such a "big" game, I expected the typical beat 'em up run one way until the end, defeat some boss, game over. The shock when I figured out we had a whole map to explore freely it was actually one of the best things, surrounded by Megan's McDuffe magnificent synth and singing, honestly the music is so good and so fitting, it'd be a loss to at least not give a chance to listen to some of the music even if you're not interested in the game.
There are so many references around the game either in the enviorenment or in the conversations or characters you'll meet that's also nostalgic for some, and fun to see references from "culture" of the recent times as well, there's a lot of attention to design and writing at the very least for these parts.
My only real issue with this game is that even in nightmare difficulty it's still very easy, I think there's only one particular boss that gave me a headache, you will still die though don't get me wrong, but if you're like me you'll powercreep easily without the secret items.
The other issues is that there are a huge amount of weird bugs and issues regarding some maps, character movement, the strange 30fps lock issue as well and the game has been out for a month, at the time of this review, the latter can be dealt with if you enter the Open Beta Branch for this game so it can run 60fps.
While I can forgive some of the movement glitches and running out of the map or getting locked out (most of the time...), the game has been quite stable for me without a single crash or freeze throughout my entire journey, however, there are other weird stuff I noticed:
+ There's no actual way to set the music in hideout, it resets every now and then to the default one which kills a bit the purpose of buying the discs, but it's a minor inconvenience
+ Switching characters or retry can take the accessories off your character which you have to pay attention to put them again. (this is probably due to things being "set" per the character and not per "player")
+ Entering a hideout does NOT heal your Strikers, neither does the Sauna, which kinda should but yeah minor inconvenience (kinda...)
+ "Retry" button can sometimes not really track any progress but still take money away (Since last map entered)
+ While the UI is now improved and we're allowed to use items without going through the menu, the first game had a "multiplayer" pause which would show at least two phones at the same time and players could set whatever they wanted, the issue with this was that if a player removed the pause then both would return to the game instantly, it was probably changed due to that and 4 player implementation, but it was a cool idea in the first game that sadly didn't carry on here and can make things a bit of a slog if you play multiplayer, then again, minor inconvenience and not really game breaking.
+ Characters don't actually have many (if any?) unique voicelines in different combinations, each character will take an archetype of either "Kyoko" or "Misako" and then play their same voicelines but on a different voice acting, this is fine because there won't be any fear of missing dialogue due to choosing different characters but it is also a bit disappointing since the characters are so interesting to me. (Cutscenes do not include other voices than Kyoko or Misako (Or than the characters supposed to interact at this time of course). Keep in mind, for solo you can choose who your "Companion voice" is from pause menu > settings (This is applied per character if you do play multiple characters) which is a great setting, in multiplayer however, the voices will depend purely from "Player 1" (host) and "Player 2" (Based on which controller connected in order, and not which player joined the game...), whoever is considered Player 3 and Player 4 will have no interaction whatsoever during dialogues.
+ Spanish text translation is a bit off (but this is clearly the normal for videogames no matter what if they don't have a native speaking working on it, I guess) but it still works nonetheless for those who may need it to understand the game better.
The reason why some of these issues throw me off is mostly because it's stuff that in the first game didn't seem to happen at all and they were introduced in the sequel somehow, while I don't know nor really care much about the specifics, they were all things that caught me off guard, there are still a lot of improvements and a lot of enjoyment to get but be aware that in some situations you'll just encounter silly issues.
I haven't tried online at all but I've read complaints about it being limited for 2 players...? Which is kinda strange and it isn't the only game that does that if it's true, since I remember Streets of Rage IV do the exact same thing, making 4 player multiplayer local-exclusive (which is terrible and I don't know (nor care) from a developer point of view but from my view there's no way that should be exclusive lol).
While I think there's a lot of other things that could be added to make everything feel smoother, it's an outstanding game with a lot to give and I heavily encourage playing it, if you're not really sure about wanting to deal with a few issues or you don't think you'll play it as much it'd be perfect to wait for a sale as well. Hopefully in the future some of these issues will be addressed for people who might want to give this game a try so they may have a more enjoyable experience, or at the very least, a smoother one, it'd be a terrible that people were missing on this game over minor things.
Honestly as I'm sitting here thinking what to say or what to add I just think that I write too much, and while I still listen to the OST after I just got the 100% completionist achievement, I can only think that I'm sad there's nothing else to be done other than just replay, but you know how it is sometimes... just ain't the same.
tl;dr BUY THIS GAME it's fckin great and the whole OST is a BANGER I love it all.
and PLEASE ADD A STEAM POINTS SHOP :boohoo: