So got to try this out, and figured I'd throw in for what my opinion is worth:
Good:
Graphics: The graphics and art are IMO gorgeous. Very clean and expressive.
Stages: Some cool stage designs and creative interaction. I like little touches like live wires causing damage, and that police and punk enemies are also hostile to each other.
And that's about it really. Now the bad...
Story: Story is isn't as bad as people say, problem is the game never goes anywhere with it. I can accept Shiva's semi heel-face turn, but why? In the last game he was willing to die for the syndicate. Now he's just fighting you as a worthy opponent and calling you brother - there's no transition or explanation at all. The twins thing is sort of hokey but could have worked, except the game just kind of ends with a single page of Adam cuffing them. It's like a Stephen King story, it builds up and up, then, the end.
Design: The visual aging is very inconsistent, almost ridiculous at times. The main characters have explicit ages, barley into their mid twenties when SOR3 ended. Now it's ten years later and they're in mid thirties. So makes sense they'd still look young and fit, right? Then what happened to Axel?! Poor guy looks like a buffed up Hell's Angel just this side of retirement. The enemies fared much better. You'd think after three beat-downs and ten years of hard living the original punks wouldn't look younger than they started, but whatever. Then there's Shiva - dude aged back so far he probably gets carded at the Pine Pot. Some of the other design choices are a bit out there too. Not terrible, just a lot of anime cliches that fit more with KOF than Streets of Rage (hello X twins).
Mechanics: Combat is exactly what I thought it would be - juggle or die. I'm sure some people love it - I do not. IMO, it's the worst of SOR3 and SOR2. In SOR2, your mobility is static and limited, especially compared to some of the enemies - but everything you did looked, sounded, felt, like it HURT, and combat was very tactical. SOR3 took away all the impact of SOR2, but somewhat made up for it with dashing and rolling, along with bringing back the team moves and environmental effects from SOR1. SOR4 takes all the sluggishness of SOR2 with the wet sock impact of SOR3, and throws it in a blender with Castle Crashers. The MP as recoverable life idea is interesting, but poorly executed.
Production values: Interaction is just plain atrocious, right up there with poorly made OpenBOR modules. It's all over the place, but most prevalent in grappling. Grab an enemy at top of the screen, and notice how he binds on the wrong side of your character. Get thrown by a Signal enemy and you are slung backward (i.e. facing wrong direction in relation to the throw). Remember in SOR1-3 how a suplex would smash the enemy head first into the floor with a specific animation, hold a second, then they'd fall away? Nope... now they are just pulled into a generic fall, completely disconnected with the atttacker's animation, and bounce backward. That sort of lazy production may be overlooked elsewhere, but here it's a
huge step backward from the source material.
Music: Quickest way to know any one aspect of a product will suck is when the developers talk about it too much. How many times did they mention how important the music was, and how much effort was going into it? Well... it's crap. But at least you can ignore it. That's a step up from the actively annoying tracks in SOR3 I guess.
I wanted to like this and support it, I really did. On its own SOR4 would be a mediocre game. Another Castle Crashers or Scott Pilgrim - lackluster fighting mechanics but interesting enough in other ways to keep you playing a while. But SOR4 is a sequel to one of the greatest beat em' ups ever made - the very reason our own engine and this forum exist. Big shoes to fill, but certainly doable. Look what Bombergames and
Kratus did!
TL;DR: The artwork and graphics look amazing, but only when they aren't interacting with each other. Everything else is trash or incomplete. I'll be over here playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake - that's one remake/sequel that got done right.
DC
. Shiva will be the third playable character to come.
