Fight'N Rage

Fight'N Rage is brawler heavily inspired by the classics. Despite all its qualities, I found it too difficult and something about it just doesn't hold my attention.

Fight'N Rage is an unfortunate mixed bag for me. As a big fan of the Beat em up genre, it was something I have been waiting to play for some time. It came recommended by people in my Facebook group, "Beat 'Em Ups". Ever since Sega dropped the Streets of Rage franchise (that is, until recently thanks to Streets of Rage 4), I've been looking for a spiritual successor to it outside of the Beats of Rage game. Despite playing many of these games, I haven't quite found the one that does it for me. FNR does alot to get there, and it deserves credit for doing so much, but my overall experience didn't make me want to stick with the game for much longer than a single completion.

Fight'N Rage plays alot like Streets of Rage 2, even down to only using three buttons: Attack, Jump and Special. Despite that, you can do alot with these. Combos, parries, dash attacks, anti-air attacks, air bounce attacks, desperation attack, forward special, aerial specials and you can link these attacks together into longer combos especially if you are able to wall bounce enemies into juggles like Tekken. It's a decent set of mechanics that an average button mashing player might not recognize the nuances of. Thankfully, there is a training mode to teach you the ropes. In fact, training rewards you with colored belts much like tiers of belts in Karate upon completing each training course, which unlock additional colors for said character you complete it with. Some are tough to execute, or rather, they aren't tough to execute, but the game doesn't quite recognize you making the inputs fast enough, despite your character actually performing the action the game is asking you to do, require a strange, and intense amount of speed AND precision. It boils down to most training segments being perfectly doable, but a couple feeling way to hard to complete.

You can choose from three characters: Gal, the promo art character with speedy attacks and huge, animated breasts, Ricardo a humongous and super muscular bull and man hybrid mutant, and F. Norris, a ninja with moves much like Guy from Final Fight along with deadly Izuna drop slams. Go into arcade mode and you're treated a 7 stage campaign with multiple endings. The character you use and the paths you take as well as how many player playing with you can determine you ending from a matrix made up of 2 to 3 dozen endings. One ending involves you running away from the starting mission instead of opting to save the civilians. I'm almost sure one ending involves saving the female npc killed by the boss at the end of the first stage, but I haven't figured out how to save her. I've always wanted to see a brawler offer multiple paths and potential endings, though 30+ endings seems excessive.

Fight'N Rage is HARD.

I consider myself somebody decent at these games, with Streets of Rage 2, Sengoku 3, Battle Circuit and Alien vs Predator being among my favorite in the genre. But even as somebody who has played alot of these games, I had difficulty completing this game in any setting besides easy. I could do a few things to optimize the damage I took, and even on Normal and Hard, I could get into setups where I'm doing tons of damage and clearing out screens of enemies with ease, but it seems like despite all the tools the game gives you to deal with enemies, I'm destroyed through a battle of attrition with my health and lives. There are infinite continues, but this resets your progress, requiring you to restart a level segment or the entire level depending on how far you got. There's always that one encounter that wipes out 2, 3, or 4 lives I have out of my 3-4 lives in one section of a level due to some rather extremely annoying enemies, or enemies hitting you while you are finishing a combo, or a boss from a previous level turned into a miniboss. I'm usually able to mitigate such problems in other similar games with dodging and careful use of attacks, but the game throws so many enemies at you and I often have to attack a swath of enemies or deal with one really annoying one just to be rushed attack in my back from another or accidentally fall into another enemy's devastating wake up attack. Those cats that can shock you like Blanka from Street Fighter 2 after being knocked down is an absolute nuisance when you're dealing with multiple hordes of enemies. Oh, and the Dobermans with long range straight punches are absolutely cheap. One segment has you fighting on a raft were falling off takes away a third of your health. One moment, I'm destroying hordes of mooks and then a split second later, a fly knocks me into the water. The game has a Street Fighter 3: Third Strike style parry system, but a parry system with such a strict window input (ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS THE MOVEMENT BUTTONS) has no business in a beat 'em up in my opinion. I'm able to do a parry maybe 1 or 2 times out of 10, and I'm more often than not better off attacking, jumping or dashing. I'd like to "git gud" at this game, but there's is no way I can use the parry effectively.

The game has a pretty good soundtrack, though, nothing I can directly remember off the top of my head. Combat feels pretty good with strong sound and visual effects and a good variety of enemy types. Despite this game having some sort of real good quality to it, for some reason it kinda leaves me bored, and honestly nothing in this review I said up until now can explain why. Good mechanics, presentation, and lots of challenge, and yet, I struggled to complete a full campaign. After I did it once, wasn't entertained enough to do it again. I can't tell you why the game made me feel this way and even if the game was easier so I could complete it without having to spend so many continues, I think i'd still feel the same way.

Fight'N Rage is a high quality indie beat em up with loads of potential content in multiple endings, co-op, 2 player battle, and other modes I haven't seen yet, but the strange mix of difficulty and it's inexplicable ability to bore me makes this problematic for me to recommend - though plenty of people love this game, so I can only say the problem is me.