Final Vendetta

Basically everything Streets of Rage 4 should have been... kind of pathetic honestly that they put such a huge budget on such a pile of garbage but there it is... keep it simple, that's all you had to do. It has a banging sound track (200% better than the garbage they put in SOR4) takes you back to the 90's for sure... it's a vibe. The game play is incredibly simple, there's nothing cheap about the mechanics like boss armor. It's just good old fashioned recovery attacks and i-frames when bosses do their specials but other than that, standard solutions to old school mechanics. The game is just the right length for the demand of the achievements. Beating the game on Ultra is daunting, you have 1 life and there are no extra hidden lives in the stages on this mode so it's kind of nuts... but it is what it is, demands perfection, just like an old school game would. The game isn't perfect, the graphics / art design is kind of hit and miss... some of it looks good, some of it doesn't... just depends on which attacks you're using. The game is rather short and there's not a lot of combo potential but it's still fun. The ranking system is a bit cheese because it's based on how many times you're knocked down... this I don't agree with. So you basically start at an S rank and if you take too much time or get knocked down, you lose a rank... it's kind of dumb. Solid 7 / 10... there's a lot of potential here. Definitely worth checking out if you're in to old school 80's and 90's arcade beat 'em ups. Final Vendetta is definitely better quality than a lot of indie clones on Steam. Grab it on a deep sale for sure, don't pay more than $10 for this... it's not worth the $30 price tag.

not sure why but I'm having a lot of fun with this one. It's not really different in any obvious way, seems really generic honestly, but plays well and the challenge and length are spot on for me.

This one crosses a line between inspiration and simply being derivative. Unfortunately, the game plays it a bit too safe and ends up feeling like "we have Streets of Rage at home" rather than something new and exciting. Id recommend just replaying Streets of Rage 2 and only turn to this if you've completely exhausted the SoR series, and other beatemups on Steam like Beats of Rage and River City Girls 1&2.

Final Vendetta is one of the best ways to experience a classic style of beat 'em up. Read the manual, it will teach you everything you need to know in terms of the move sets. Like a lot of other popular bmups you get a choice between the average power/skill character (Duke), a speedy but weaker character (Claire), and then the powerhouse (Miller). Most people would consider the short clear time to be a "lack of content," which is one of the worst ideas that had been embedded into the minds of today's gamers. Final Vendetta offers a high skill ceiling for those who dare to step up to the challenge and put in the time. If you are a beginner and you want a game that will ease you into hardcore gameplay, this is the game to get your feet wet on. It will teach you a lot of action game mechanics that had been seemingly lost to modern gamers. Proper positioning, crowd control with the use of I-frames, and resource management. Yes, your health counts as a resource that you can trade off to get out of sticky situations. Overall a solid retro-style arcade game but with options to ease the beginners into the genre. The only downsides for me were that the button remapping could've been better, and Stage Select shouldn't have been tied with Arcade Mode because it trivializes a lot of the achievements.

Amazing game