Double Dragon Gaiden - Full Game 1CC (Marian & Uncle Matin / Ending B)

Double Dragon Gaiden is a brand new Double Dragon game from Secret Base. I'm not familiar with this developer, but the good news is they did a great job!

This game has a pretty unique structure for a beat 'em up: you can play the stages in any order, but every time you clear a stage, the difficulty and length of the next one increases. There's also a roguelike reward system in place - each time you clear a section, you can buy a random powerup with the money you earned throughout the stage. You can even tweak the difficulty before you begin playing, by adjusting your HP, the cost of the powerups and continues, and the enemy's stats and aggression level. They had some fresh ideas, and thankfully they executed them very well.

The combat is pretty fun with some tag team mechanics that encourage you to constantly swap between characters. They do this by limiting your use of special attacks and tags - both are tied to your special meter, but you can only start using them when your bar is full. Once you use a special, you can chain a couple more into your combo and tag out at any point, but once your attack ends, you're locked out of specials and tags until you completely refill your bar. So ideally you'll want to use a special or two, then tag in your reserve character. It flows really well and is quite fun to play with.

I wasn't sure if I'd like this game based on the preview videos, but I'm glad I bought it. It's really good, and I haven't played another beat 'em up like it. Give it a shot, I recommend it.

My first video was an Ending A playthrough, which is more like the bad end. Declining the mayor's offer sends you to the final stage where you get to fight him. Thankfully this stage is only one section long, they just pack it with a bunch of enemy types, which is cool. But after playing this more, I'm starting to dislike the balancing. The first 95% of the game is pretty easy, but the bosses towards the end of the game do a ridiculous amount of damage - one mistake can easily end a deathless run. So it's best to just play safe, like I mostly try to do in this video. Marian is pretty OP - you can basically chain combos on bosses and heavy enemies just by using her mine and throwing in some bullet shots or a running attack while the enemies are incapacitated. So a 1CC with her isn't that; I'm not sure how other characters will fare just yet. I can only assume that some will struggle with the final battle - fighting all four bosses at once is kinda silly.

PS. I'll mix up the stage order as much as I can with my runs. It looks like Anubis is the easiest boss to do last; his ultimate form is easier to deal with than his regular one, lol.

Chapers
0:00 Intro
2:07 Killers' Fortress
8:12 Okada Clan Headquarters
20:09 Royals' Hideout
40:21 Triangle's Junkyard
1:01:42 Town Hall
1:08:17 Last Bosses
1:12:00 Ending & Credits
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Beat 'em Ups (e.g. Final Fight):    • Beat 'em Ups  
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