Double Dragon Revive Review — A Little Less Dragon

When I was younger, we had these things called arcade cabinets. I was born a bit after the boom of full-blown arcades, but during a time when you could still find a healthy collection of machines in your local pizza shop or laundromat. I still fondly remember the days of waiting on a Round Table Pizza in the somewhat dimly lit restaurant, shoving quarters upon quarters into whatever arcade games they had on tap. Some of the most iconic ones, of course, were fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom, shooters like Metal Slug, and, of course, the side-scrolling beat-’em-ups essentially founded by the likes of Double Dragon.

It goes without saying, then, that Double Dragon Revive is a game that makes a lofty promise just with the title, claiming to be a resurrection of a franchise that built an entire genre of game. And why shouldn’t it live up to that promise? Bearing the Double Dragon name already implies almost 40 years of excellence in the genre, and when backed by Arc System Works, publishers with a lot of street cred in the fighter sphere right now, Double Dragon Revive should have been everything it promised itself to be.

“Should have been” being the operating term here, as the game doesn’t quite live up to the expectations of the name.

I’ll admit, however, that it won me over at first. Stepping into my first level of Double Dragon Revive was a very exciting experience, seeing the main characters fight through a post-apocalyptic, shockingly ’80s town full of mohawked gangsters that felt like Escape from New York mixed with a kung fu movie. I was immediately charmed by the game’s combat, admittedly simple though it may be. It allows for a mixture of light attacks that can be comboed, a heavy attack, and some dodging with your special move thrown in here or there when an enemy is low enough. Hit feedback is satisfying, and the combat scratches a very basic beat-’em-up itch, even if it gets repetitive.

While each playable character has its own move set, there is very little else to say about the combat system. There are no real combos, no secret complexities or rewards for mastering it, nor is there really anything to master. It is a button masher to its core, and you’ll really only need two or three buttons to win any fight.

I also was a fan of the game’s 3D style, as well as the 2D still cutscenes, at least when it came to the art. This is apparently a pretty controversial opinion, as many of the reviews I read after my playthrough suggest that people weren’t big fans of either. I admit that the enemy designs are rather simplistic, and the cutscenes can really drag on, but I still thought everything looked nice.

There is more to a beat-’em-up game, however, than looking nice and having decent, simple, repetitive combat. There are so many things you can do to mix up the experience of walking from one end of the screen to the other, punching enemies along the way, and Double Dragon Revive simply doesn’t do it. Interactable objects are incredibly limited, and when the game does break away from the typical format of “punch a lot of guys,” it only does so to introduce boss fights that are a bit tedious and platforming segments that are extremely tedious and don’t feel like they belong in the title.

The tedium in those boss fights comes from a sort of artificial difficulty spike by way of near-impossible-to-dodge attacks that tank your health in some of the later fights. Outside of those moves, fighting a boss is mostly just repeating the same, simple, repetitive combat, but with a character who has a far larger health bar.

Repetitive quickly becomes the defining characteristic of Double Dragon Revive. There is simply nothing done to revolutionize the formula, and it even seems to forget some of the basics. Simple, boring levels take up the game’s runtime, impeded by the awkward movement controls that can send you up or down the screen and make you miss your hits on a very obvious, in-your-face enemy.

Unfortunately, the game’s runtime isn’t that long, about four hours of gameplay, with very little incentive to go back and replay it. While the repetitive nature of the game would probably make a longer runtime kind of unbearable, the game simply costs way too much for the lack of content it provides, both in its playtime and the very limited interactivity of the actual levels.

Double Dragon Revive doesn’t feel like a revival of the series. It hardly feels like a Double Dragon game at all. While it provides just enough for a die-hard fan to appreciate it, I don’t think it lasts long enough, nor gives you enough to do in its short playtime, to warrant its price. It isn’t a bad game, just a subpar one, feeling like the developers got the basics down and then didn’t bother to really expand on them.

If you’re super interested, try it out for yourself, but I would personally recommend waiting for a 30–40% off sale before giving the game a try.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Double Dragon Revive. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Double Dragon Revive is available on Steam, Epic Games, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.