Brawlout!

[flameboy]

Surprised to not find a thread for this Smash Bros a like!

It looks pretty good. Considering picking it up for some online action over the festive season!

 

[Hero-of-Time]

I've been reading impressions from other places and the game sounds a bit rough. Characters are bland, the game has framerate issues ( not great for a brawler ), online connections are all over the place and the AI is said to be inconsistent. Some of these things are going to be patch later ( the issue of indies pushing out borked games continues ), so things may improve later on.

 

[Ronnie]

(from videos at least) it looks a very polished game

[Ganepark32]

I've been playing the game for a couple of hours and there are two main issues I see with the game. The first is that the grind for characters and stages seems a bit excessive. You use in game currency (awarded from playing matches and completing daily objectives) and spend it on pinatas but the issue is that you only get 1 item from each of these and from my play, character drop rates are low unless you use crystals for the top pinatas which are hard to come by.

For levels, you only start with 3 unlocked and through playing the arcade tower mode you can play on the others. But to unlock the other maps you need to get characters to LVL 10 each so there's a substantial grind even to get 1 of them let alone the other 10 or so that are locked away from quick or online play.

That needs to be addressed by Angry Mob Games but the biggest is how some characters seem unbalanced and can pretty much chain you in grapples or hits which you can't block, and the dodge mechanic doesn't seem to always take when trying to get out of these. Against the AI even on easy, characters like Paco will chain grapple and even throw you under the main platform on some maps making it impossible to get back up and so you lose stock. And just generally, some characters lend themselves to spam attacks to easily, such as Chief Feathers which is who you'll encounter a lot online.

Those things need addressed but the devs say they're going to be updating the game regularly, with new characters every 2-3 months and such. It's still a solid game tho and a decent Smash clone.

With regards to online, as I mentioned in the Indie Games thread it's peer to peer so the wonkiness of the online will depend on your connection and your opponents, nothing to do with server issues. It's been fine for me from what I've played of the online. And frame rate issues are really few and far between. They're more apparent when there's 4 characters fighting it out but even then you'll only have a quick momentary jump to catch up with the gameplay or the game only dropping minimal frames (single digits at most) so it' not such a big issue.

As I say, it's a decent game that hopefully the devs will keep updating to iron things out.

[Dcubed]

Finally got it.  It’s actually pretty great! Had a “quick go” with @Glen-i and we ended up playing it for hours 

 

It’s actually quite different from Smash.  It’s a lot more combo heavy and the characters are all very unique and fresh.  None of them feel like anything you’ve seen in Smash (unlike a certain other Smash-like that rips characters wholesale from Melee... [COUGH]Icons[/COUGH]).  They’re all a lot of fun to play as (I’m particularly fond of the Frog Guy, Olaf Tyson, Juan and King Apu) and I like the aggressive focus it has.  Some of the characters might look generic, but they certainly aren’t generic to play as! From the grapple heavy Frog Guy, to Juan (AKA Hits-Like-A-Truck Guy), to Olaf’s ridiculous ability to conjour ice platforms to block people from recovering, they’re very unique! And fun too!

 

The removal of blocking and the rage mechanic also make it feel quite different too.  The latter has quite a bit of nuance to it too, you can use it early as a defensive mechanic to save yourself when you get knocked off, or you can save up your meter and use it to unleash hell!

 

It also feels really surprisingly polished for an indie title.  It feels fast and smooth to play, with no hint of slowdown at all (there’s a stuttering bug when playing with CPUs, but that’s getting patched shortly apparently), looks great (indeed, running at full 1080p 60FPS Docked/720p 60 FPS Undocked as the developers promised) and it’s just a lot of fun!  My only real major complaint is that I wish it had voices.  It does feel a bit weird to not have characters make grunts and groans, nor have an announcer, but hopefully they can add these things over time if the game sells well and they get a bigger budget to work with.  Speaking of which, I’m looking forward to the new characters and stages they add going forward (and if Nicalis’ tease is anything to go by, one of those new characters is gonna be Quote from Cave Story! Can’t wait to see what they do with him!  )

 

The stages are quite simple compared to Smash and of course lack the insanity and pizazz of the SSB games but they still manage to feel distinct from each other and have some interesting ideas here and there.

 

There’s some longetivity to it too, with lots of stuff to unlock (though the requirements for doing so are a bit ridiculous; I hear that the dev is looking to change this though).

 

Guys! Give it a try! It’s good stuff and a lot more unique than it looks at first glance.  There’s lots of small differences that add up to make something that feels pretty distinct from Smash.  I’m very happy with it so far!  

Edited December 26, 2017 by Dcubed

[Glen-i]

Also, it deserves extra credit just for this alone.

I'm particularly fond of Chief Feathers and his ridiculous Down Smash, Bayonetta would be proud. I also like Hyper Light Drifter. A sword user that actually feels different to anyone in Smash. Kudos.

Provided every player has a good connection, the online is nice and smooth. We've only seen 1 Vs 1, mind. We'll have to see how it copes with 4 people.

But yeah, I agree with @Dcubed This game is surprisingly polished. I'm looking forward to future updates. And maybe some N-Europe get togethers.

[RedShell]

Does this game support video capture?

Looks like the kind of game that could create some memorable moments, you know... a bit like this:

And we wouldn't want to forget stuff like that now, would we @Glen-i?

[Dcubed]

2 hours ago, RedShell said:

Does this game support video capture?

Looks like the kind of game that could create some memorable moments, you know... a bit like this:

And we wouldn't want to forget stuff like that now, would we @Glen-i?

Not yet, but the devs said that it will be coming in an update.

[Dcubed]

Well this just appeared in the Switch News app...

 

 

Cool way to tease new characters! Never thought of using Switch News for something like that!

[Dcubed]

https://www.gonintendo.com/stories/301345-pr-merge-games-partners-with-angry-mob-games-to-bring-party-fig

 

Retail release is happening!  

[DazzeL]

The long awaited patch is apparently out tomorrow, too.

[Sméagol]

New (guest) character reveal. A pretty good one! But still not nearly enough to entice me.

[Glen-i]

I swear I'm not biased, but this news makes me very happy!

[Hero-of-Time]

This is probably the closest we are ever going to get to having Banjo-Kazooie in a Smash Bros game.  

[Sméagol]

I'll admit, they're on the right track. If they keep this up, it may get to a point where I'm actually interested in this game (despite Smash).