So following up my great Metroid thread, here's my hot takes on Streets of Rage.
Beat SoR2 first with Axel, tried all the characters, played through it about twice. Game was fantastic. Everything from the move set to the sprite work to the level layout to the bosses, awesome. Also was way easier than I expected in that it was challenging but like the final bosses in the last few stages didn't ramp up and weren't particularly harder than the earlier bosses, so it was pretty fair and fun.
Beat SoR3 (JP) next with Zan. Music was awful, art direction was bizarre, disco level is annoying, fighting kangoroos and shit, idk. Most of the enemies were re-hashed from SoR2 but strangely less agreessive? Lot of standing around enemies you go and throw. And throw and throw. Anyway while some of the stuff was neat like rolling into and out of the vertical space, the combat just felt off in this one and some lame ass stuff like the construction truck chasing you in stage 3 as you fight barriers. AI is so dumb, I saw them jump into pits and stuff all the time lol. Anyhow there's definitely some improvements/good things to see in this but it just wasn't fun and didn't feel right so I don't care for it.
Went through about half of SoR3 (US) with Blaze. Wasn't as bad as I heard from the changes. Still was getting a few stages in on one life which the star system for blitz attacks is designed for since you don't get 3 stars until like stage 3 if you haven't lost a life. One thing I did like which I didn't get to experience as Zan was how when everyone else uses the pick up weapons, some weapons have their own blitz & desperation attacks which is cool like doing a power dash with the katana or swinging the knife around in a desperation attack. Anyhow even with Blaze's moveset and 3 star blitz flip and slide the combat just wasn't fun and enemies were so dumb and only threatening when you don't know what to do. Having just gone through the game, I generally knew what to do each stage and it was fine outside some bosses being a bit annoying.
Just Beat SoR1 w/Axel. This is a very interesting game in hindsight. It's more basic, but it's also crazy strategic because like even at endgame the generic basic punk enemy can still run at you and beat you to your punch animation and get 2-3 punches off on you and take 3/4ths of your HP in a second. Every.enemy.is.a.threat. You really have to master crowd control and weaving up and down and tossing people into each other to keep space and beat people to the punch to avoid hits. On the other hand your standard ppp combo is REALLY STRONG and if you can line the enemies up and stun-lock them in ppppppppp and kill them all it feels great. Interesting enough the weapons have more unique uses here than the other games. They don't necessarily do more DPS, but like the pipes get you extra range which helps if you time it right to keep whacking people before they get to you. But you can do more damage if you just get in their face with a pppp combo or pp -> grab -> pp -> throw. You also have to be really careful with weapon pickups because an enemy will run up and punch you in the face when you try to pick one up and there goes your weapon and half your HP. It becomes pretty strategic in when and how to pick up weapons.
The bosses in SoR1 are INSANE and unlike anything in 2/3. The reason is that your moveset loses the boss moveset everytime. Meaning I was struggling to even land a single hit and figure out how to get any damage in on almost all of these bosses. I was so lost at how to fight them I relied on using the special police bazooka on bosses and just sacrificing lives and spamming that. Well until these bosses became regular enemies and I had to learn how you actually deal with them. It was really interesting because one at a time I'd figure out the 1 specific way you can hit the boss. Like on the freddy krueger claw guy you can't punch him, you can't jump kick him, but if you move down or up to vertically avoid his claw 2-slash attack you can then run into him for a grab and get hits/throw off the grab.
Meanwhile a boss like fire breathing Karnov, your punch can't beat their fire dash they do back and forth, your jump kicks can't touch them either and you can't get throws in. Then I figured out the trick was when he dashes breathing fire you move up or down vertically to just barely avoid his dash by a sliver and then flip around and punch him in the back as his dash just misses you for a 3 hit ppp combo. But you have to be careful because if you do it a millisecond too soon you'll grab him as he passes and then he'll sit on you from your grab and do big damage on you. So you have to have this perfect rhythm/timing of baiting his fire breath dash, just avoiding it vertically, flipping around and getting a ppp off on him. When you have it down and can do it over and over and beat him, it's satisfying.
The wrestler guy does the horizontal dashes so you bait and then move up or down out of the wait and then come back down for a few ppps and then move out of the way and repeat, etc...
This became very helpful for stage 8 because they take away your police bazooka special for the stage, and you have to fight all the bosses again, so if you can't hit them you can't win. The 2 girls I still don't really know how you're supposed to beat them because they invincibly jump through your punches as they jump around and if you run up behind them as they land for a jump kick, 9/10 times they grab you and throw you. Somehow once in a while I'd get the grab and get a throw in but it took so long I ran out of time and lost a life to the timer. I tried like everything and have no idea how you hit the two jumping girls. Gonna look it up.
But yeah, between the normal enemies being able to fuck you up on a dime and do 3/4ths of your life in a couple punches and the bosses being very hardcore requiring specific strategies and near-perfect timings, this game is one of the hardest games I've played in my life. I was playing on the D3 Genesis collection with rewind and I had to use the fuck out of that to get through this game. I'm sure my playtime is double or triple what a normal run is from all the attempts I'd take to not die and get hits in. Fwiw, I played SoR2 on the Mini with no rewind and when I played SoR3 the only time I needed to use rewind was the final Mr. X boss because of the 3 minute timeline and that he's annoying af in how he moves around.
Still I think SoR1 is a kind of awesome game in how deeply strategic it is for its simple visuals and combat. Hell the combat even has some progressive stuff like throw escapes (which are very useful). If I had played SoR1 on NES or GB or something instead of Double Dragon when I was a kid I would've been obsessed with this game. The music and level design and art design is pretty good too for it being very simple 1991 stuff. But yeah I feel like this is a game you can really master over time and now I wanna watch someone good do a 1cc run of this.
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So overall SoR2 was still the best and is the only one of the three I'd like to replay more in the future. But SoR1 was really unique and interesting game and I respect it and enjoyed it. SoR3 despite having the fastest combat and the most moves, and the most stage interaction, just never felt right, and I kept playing it but could never bring myself to like it.
Anyhow, I guess I'm ready for SoR4 now. And should play Streets of Rage Remix a bunch in the future.
Oh and the one thing I learned about SoR series is you always have to watch out for punching people near a pick up because across all 3 got beat a bunch of times when I'm doing a combo and then I reach down and get the crap beat out of me. This happened every game. Pickups essentially are danger traps you have to always be aware of on the field while fighting.
