Impressions:
Positives:
- Fantastic mix of JSR and JSRF.
- Takes the lessons from JSRF and makes arguably a better game.
Let's examine the main flaws of JSRF:
1. Enemies are only in corralled environment. They do not chase you or interact with you during actual minute to minute exploration play. This renders JSRF too laid back in contrast to the original JSR. There is no tension in the game. Just grind, find tags, paint.
2. Tags are too simplistic and require on button press to tag. However, this made the game about platforming so that you could actually find the tags. You would see it and you would go,"how do I get there?" So this negative is both good and bad.
3. Turned every character into a palette swap. In the original they all had their own playstyles, strengths, and weaknesses. You cannot access some areas with some characters in JSR because they're too heavy. In order to hit some parts of levels you need a character with speed and height. Some characters like Gum and Pirahna are great at getting points, so they're necessary for Jet ranks. Others, like Tab and Mew are great for graffiti challenges. In JSRF every character plays the same. This means you can articulate yourself how you want by choosing what character you enjoy the most without worrying about play style but it also makes JSRF have zero to no replay value of the original.
BRC fixes the negatives of JSRF by:
1. Letting enemies chase you outside of controlled combat scenarios. The inclusion of Heat (GTA like wanted system), which makes enemies come out the higher and the more you combo is fantastic. Enemies can slow you down and sometimes you need to take out turrets to get access to exclusive tags. This results in a unique mix of combat, platforming, and exploration being used to problem solve. Essentially this expands upon the original JSR's tier enemy system and makes for a more overall fun and tense game.
2. Focusing on one character. In JSRF the main character is Yo Yo but you wouldn't know because you can be any character you want. In BCR there's a larger emphasis on story and while you can play as other characters, and they're interchangeable, you have to put more effort into unlocking them. This is the main characters story. Unlocking characters in BCR is more earned compared to JSRF where they throw new characters at you like candy.
3. Made tags more complex to complete and therefore more fun to do.
Continuing with positives in BCR:
- Exploration is really good and there's lots to find, from new tags to new music, to new areas.
- Platforming is really fun.
- Trick and combo/chain system is fun. Easy to do, hard to master to get millions of points.
- Story is cool and adds a new dimension to the game in ways JSR and JSRF didn't have.
- Just a refreshing, fun as fuck game that feels and looks like it could have been on the original Xbox.
Let's get into the negatives:
- Soundtrack is...really disappointing for me. Too much upbeat music, not enough laid back songs like The Answer or Did You Call Me? Also, so far there's zero rock. The soundtrack is serviceable.so far but nothing to write home about. Hopefully it improves.
- Too much emphasis on tricks/combos in the gameplay. So far when challenging other gangs they only ever do so with a combo/point challenge. This means that BCR lacks variety compared to JSR and JSRF where there were races, graffiti challenges, regular story levels, exploration levels, point challenges;etc. The lack of variety in challenges is the main negative. This could be alleviated with DLC.
Xbox Series X performance:
Really good! 60 FPS is stable, no frame drops.
Overall:
So far really fun game that in my personal opinion fixes the negatives of Jet Set Radio's sequel. It is everything I've wanted in a Jet Set Radio 3, a few negatives aside.
