Really digging Double Dragon Gaiden. Haven't finished it yet- did a run and got to the final boss level, but ran out of continues. It's meant to be kind of a rogue lite type game so I cashed out and deleted the save to start over. Not sure if the stuff I got to level up Bimmy n' Jimmy carries over with a deleted save -guessing not- but I got enough tokens to unlock Linda who seems to be pretty awesome. The way this game works is that there are four main areas, but they are broken up into three stages each. You won't play all of the stages on a run-through and what you do play depends on the order you do the areas in. So the first area you pick will be one stage long and will be the easiest. The second will be harder and have two stages and a mid-boss. The last area you pick will have all three stages, mid-bosses, and the level boss will be powered-up and much harder. Difficulty in general goes up with each level. Inbetween stages you can also purchase upgrades to power up your character and occasionally tokens you can buy to unlock stuff.
You start with four characters (Billy, Jimmy, Marion, and Uncle Matin) and can unlock all of the main game bosses to play as (which includes some old-school faces like Linda, Abobo, Chin, etc.) including the final game boss. There's also unlockable hints, art, and music.
I used Billy and Jimmy the whole time, but the last boss of the fourth stage I was on just wrecked me so I switched to Marion and found that I could then destroy her, easily, by spamming Marion's special bazooka attack. I tried Uncle Matin after this on a new playthrough and he is AWESOME. Wish I used him the first time. It seems like only Billy and Jimmy can pick up and use items, but Uncle Matin doesn't need that shit. He is a powerhouse. Marion is all ranged weapons and I wasn't feeling her as much, but based on that boss fight it seems like she could come in handy as a good tag partner to bring in and spam bullets from across the screen. Linda uses a knife and whip and seemed pretty OP. I'm gonna try the next run with her and Uncle Matin.
This game doesn't really play like other Double Dragon games (it's supposed to be just like Streets Of Red, by the same devs, but I don't remember that game very well), but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty fun. The controls are pretty basic and there's like one basic combo per character, but you have multiple special moves and you can tag in your partner to keep it going.
The game has some nice pixel art and good tunes, including new versions of classic DD music. It's worth checking out if you like beat-em-ups!
