Developer: Pufferfish Digital
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Platform: PC, Switch (2), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Tested on: Switch 2
Fallen City Brawl – Review
By EastAsiaSoft’s standards, Fallen City Brawl is a big deal. In recent years, most of the games in the publisher’s library have been cheap, bite-sized, digital-only games. However, Fallen City Brawl isn’t just available as a physical game, but there’s also a limited special edition as well! Before you rush out to secure your copy of this retro-inspired brawler though, it’s probably worth mentioning that you’re looking at roughly triple the price for the regular physical edition (€39.99) compared to the digital one, and at €69.99, the limited one will set you back nearly five times the digital RRP. That puts Fallen City Brawl in the same price range as much, much bigger titles. Can the game justify those price tags?
Story
The overarching story of Fallen City Brawl sees the titular city being taken over by Ignition Gear, a gang leader. Four unlikely heroes team up to clear the streets from the criminals that now run the dangerous suburbs. Each of the four protagonists has their own backstory that ties into why they are fighting back. There’s Iron Jackson, a towering, slow, and devastating juggernaut who wants revenge after being betrayed by the gang he once trusted. There’s Ricco, a special forces operative who lost his entire unit to Ignition Gear. Then there’s Natasha, a young mechanic who wants to rescue her sister from the clutches of the gang leader. Finally, there’s Sergeant Clay, an ex-SWAT team member who wants to clear his name, as he was framed for a crime he didn’t commit. If that all sounds familiar, it’s not just you. Fallen City Brawl’s narrative feels like it was cobbled together from ‘80s B-movies. It may be lacking in originality, but for the kind of game this wants to be, it’s perfect.
Graphics
The chunky pixel-art aesthetic brings to mind the arcade games of yesteryear. The large character sprites give the fighters a strong physical presence too, although there are jarring inconsistencies when it comes to sprite scale. This results in characters looking mismatched, as if they were pulled from other games and thrown together. They also don’t blend in with the environments very well, making them feel as if they are floating and that objects aren’t physically there. As for the environments themselves, they turned out to be much more varied than we’d expected. There were the expected rundown city and subway stages, of course, but you’ll also encounter a beach beside an industrial complex, an overgrown brush-filled stage, and even a torched gym. Much like the character designs, Fallen City Brawl’s stage backgrounds are inconsistent. Some are detailed, but others are indistinct, overly pixelated, and muddled to the point of visual noise. Inconsistency is also the magic word when it comes to visual performance. Screen panning, shaking, and camera zoom, as well as numerous explosions and dozens of spinning or pulsating objects, don’t just obscure the action, but they also hurt the game’s frame rate.
Sound
We cannot praise Daniel Lindholm’s ‘80s-style synth-and-guitar soundtrack enough. Fallen City Brawl’s music is high-energy, gritty, dark, and aggressive. It remains upbeat throughout and is one of the game’s standout features. It’s a shame that the remainder of Fallen City Brawl’s soundscape doesn’t live up to the OST. Sound effects don’t always trigger, resulting in motorcycles that glide silently, enemy grenade launchers that fire with barely a whisper, and flaming ceiling beams that fall like silent feathers, undercutting tension. When they are audible, the sound effects come across as harsh and mismatched, making the action feel oddly hollow. Voice acting is notably absent as well.
Gameplay
A retro-inspired side-scrolling beat ‘em up, Fallen City Brawl tasks you with fighting your way through seven linear stages, brawling against waves of street goons and bikers using basic strikes, combos, and weapons, before facing stage bosses. Along the way, you’ll collect crystals, which power up your super attack meter. Once full, you can unleash a character-dependent screen-clearing special attack, like summoning armed police cruisers or rings of fire. As spectacular as that may sound, the game doesn’t try to reinvent the genre, and instead sticks to what has been proven to work for decades.
Combat mechanics are Fallen City Brawl’s bread and butter. Genre fans will feel right at home here. The standard mechanics are robust, with punches and kicks that auto-combo, jump kicks, ground pounds, grappling, counters, parries, air throws, and forward-forward special commands. These form the backbone for the game’s deep combo system, which rewards juggling your enemies in the air and rebounding them off of screen edges. There is also a wide range of ranged options (hah!). These include shotguns, pistols, and even a massive throwable wrench. Rounding things out are environmental items like katanas, bats, pipes, and even throwable boxes and motorcycles. The stage bosses have long-range attacks like homing missiles and explosive rounds, and deal massive damage, easily wiping out half to three-quarters of your health bar in a single hit. This does translate into difficulty spikes and having to go for stun-locking strategies.
Being an arcade game, Fallen City Brawl isn’t very long, and you can easily complete the game in under an hour once you know what you are doing. Add in local co-op, and you’re looking at a fun evening or two with a friend. There are also online leaderboards, which add another incentive to keep playing after the credits roll. With four different fighters, each with their own moveset and two difficulty settings, Fallen City Brawl has high replayability, making that €14.99 RRP easier to swallow. Unless you’re a physical collector, though, there isn’t enough content here to warrant the non-digital price tag.
Conclusion
A passionate but rough-around-the-edges indie throwback to classic arcade beat ‘em ups, Fallen City Brawl mostly succeeds in what it sets out to do. The mechanics aren’t anything we haven’t seen before elsewhere, but they do offer a good distillation of what makes the genre so appealing in the first place. The game is held back by inconsistent production values and its short length, but the core experience is well worth giving a shot.
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