What are some actually good beat em ups? i'm new to the genre, I started with SoR4 and liked it enough to try out SoR2 which I was surprised was pretty good. Digging around the "classics" I was disappointed pretty heavily. I tried final fight 1 then 3 then TMNT and felt like they just weren't on par. Just didn't feel like they had the depth or challenge.

So where do I go from here? I have fight'n rage on my list but other than that what are some actually fun beat em ups that are actually challenging and have a good amount of move depth and stellar enemy design?

>>716110501 (OP)
Cadillacs & Dinnosaurs, The Punisher, Alien vs Predator, The King of Dragons and Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara.

>Power Rangers Rita Rewind
>GI Joe Wrath of Cobra
>Double Dragon Gaiden
I know we're in a beat em up resurgence, but are these as good as Shredder's Revenge or Streets of Rage 4?

>>716110501 (OP)
Download the Streets of Rage 1 remake, it's a hodgepodge of the first three games with a shitload of unlockables. Really cool stuff.

>>716110501 (OP)
Captain Commando
The Takeover
Battle Circuit
Knights of Valor series
Dawn of the Monsters
Sengoku 3
The Gladiator

>>716110501 (OP)
This game was way too overrated to me. Not even mid but slightly below mid. A 6/10 game in my eyes. Was quite disappointed considering how much praise it kept getting from beat em up fans who I guess I now realize actually have low standards.

>>716110984
SORR is a much better game than SOR4. These guys should have been the actual guys to make a fourth game.

Fight'N Rage is fantastic, good to see you already got it on your list.

>>716110843
>>716110985
I'll check them out game.

>>716110984
Didn't know there's a remake, i'll have to try it out

>>716110843
Can you give a quick run down? I've heard a lot of people talk up punisher and AvP, even heard some people say one of the batman ones is really good but surface level gameplay looks pretty generic

>>716110501 (OP)
The Punisher
Alien vs. Predator
Streets of Rage 1 (lacks the depth of later entries, but is very good for an early entry in the genre)
Bare Knuckle 3 (This is SOR3, but play the Japanese version with an English patch. The US version was butchered.)
Everything in the Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle

The Yakuza series is also great. The entries with the best combat are 0 and Lost Judgment.

>>716111490
>The Yakuza series is also great.
dude yakuzas combat is ass, nobody is playing those games for that shit.

>>716111563
Not going to lie, I play it for UFO Catcher

>>716111490
On that, Sleeping Dogs is a great beat em up

>>716110501 (OP)
I'd like to mention SoRR again. I'd also recommend looking into OpenBOR and see what fan made projects people had created.

>>716110501 (OP)
Dynamite Cop
Power Rangers on Snes
Battles Toads x Double Dragon on Snes/Genesis
Konami Simpsons
Fight n Rage
Jujitsu Squad
Shredder's Revenge
Ace Wild
Matrix Path of Neo is actually pretty fun, has really good animations and feedback.

>>716110501 (OP)
The ninja warriors once again is interesting since it's purely 2d

You guys still get online multiplayer games with beatemups except for the new releases?

Turtles in Time
The Bouncer
Armored Warriors

>>716112205
>Jujitsu Squad
It's just Jitsu Squad.
It's also got based Johnny Gioeli on the soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lRqrcu_Gq0

>>716110501 (OP)
Not that one, modern beat em ups suck ass and are combo based without even having fun combos. Here are the actual best ones.
Shadow Over Mystara
https://youtu.be/ne-DINyjSy0
Amazing game with several wildly different characters, multiple routes, items, and fun OTG looping. Very nerdy tech heavy game to 1cc.
Alien vs Predator
https://youtu.be/ZxS8eY3cyJg
Lightning fast paced game with enemies spammed everywhere and actual fun combos. There's so much cool stuff you can do. Absolute king shit.
Guardian Heroes
https://youtu.be/if8Zhi5FpHk
Extremely unique game with several different characters, further customizable with an rpg system, whacky combos, multiple routes, just really different and interesting game.

Also worth mentioning that Viewtiful Joe and God Hand are techinically "beat em ups", they just aren't belt scrollers.

>>716112381
Ur right, fun game that kind of feels like BR/SEA Castle Crashers. I should've gotten the name right since I've platinum-ed it, but it's been a long while.

Does anyone know that 2D Chinese DMC like game?

Try Return of Double Dragon, not super double dragon. The Japanese release wasn't broken to hell, the game is unfinished but still a fun game to run through in a couple hours

came here to say Guardian Heroes >>716112436

>>716112818
also Dragon's Crown

>>716110501 (OP)
The SNES version of Turtles in Time is really freaking good.

>>716110995
but sor4 has the deepest mechanics of any fighting game out there.

hit stun wall bounce OTG combos and the specials give you grey health that you can recover.

Can you explain your opinion a little bit further? I'm genuinely curious.

>>716110501 (OP)
Play River City Girls

>>716112736
Rainblood Chronicles: Mirage

>>716113297
Thank you thank you.

>>716113030
>but sor4 has the deepest mechanics of any fighting game out there.
NTA but I'm sorry, i just don't understand how people can say dumb shit like this
>It's deep because.... combos heal you
This is a borderline bot-like comment

>>716113040
The first one is fine, the second one is dogshit

>>716110501 (OP)
Urban Reign is Tekken juryrigged into a brawler with brutal enemies.
However the lockon system is ass so fighting more than two guys is an absolute pain.

>>716113030
>attacking gives you back health
Its this kind of crap I didn't like. Its a god awful game mechanic that completely ruined the combat system. But many of the enemies and boss fights and levels also sucked. The final boss and level in particular was pretty damn lame.

Dragon's Crown
golden axe 1-3
streets of rage 1-4
mother russia bleeds
fight n rage
scott pilgrim was pretty good
river city girls 1 and 2 if you want more RPG style games

>>716110867
DD Gaiden is more puzzle like than other beat em ups(you set multiple enemies up to get killed in 1 special to get food) but I think it's fine. Don't forget to turn off the special KO screen in the settings once you get tired of it

>3D beps
no one asked!

>>716110501 (OP)
Dragon's Crown

>>716112436
Any other good beat-em up like Dungeons and Dragons with level ups and items and stuff on a playthrough? I'm building an arcade playlist for my friend and we're looking for short stuff to play, not 10 hour games like Viewtiful Joe.

>>716110501 (OP)
there is a disgusting lack of Streets of Rage Remake mentions in this thread. its not a soulless modern cashgrab remake; its a masterwork crafted by fans. if you liked sor2, you will love sorr.

>>716110501 (OP)
Final Fight 1 was revolutionary when it came out but yeah it doesn’t hold up at all.

>>716110867
Power ranger fag here the game is worth 10 burgers at best and that's without including the fucked up launch that they dropped support relatively early to the game's life
t.fag that wanted white ranger

Final fight LNS Ultimate has a massive roster and you can cancel into supers which is real fun.
I like it better than SoR4 only because SoR4 being so heavily focussed on combofiending and high scores is a bit of a betrayal of how bare knuckle streets of rage is by design.
SoRR is kino

>>716117803
Sucks, I was interested in it but it looks like characters dont have super distinct differences and ranking system apparently sucks. Also saw in the steam updates they post launch added a SoR style AoE special??? why the hell wasnt that in the base game?

>>716117970
Haven't played since 2023 and the last update I know about it was that the dev added CVS characters. Did anything cool happen after that?

>>716110501 (OP)
Nothing but fucking retards in here as usual. No, sorry, you've played the best (the only truly great) side scrolling beat em up ever made and it's only downhill from here. Fight n Rage is good, that remake of The Ninja Warriors is worth a play, Mother Russia Bleeds is a bit shit but interesting. The SoR4 devs have a new game coming out soon that looks very similar to SoR4, probably going to be good.

>>716111348
Punisher at its fundamentals is nothing you haven't seen before, besides the gun system where the PCs will pull out unlimited ammo handguns to shoot any time a thug with a gun or a super major threat of a weapon appears on-screen, and put them away when the threat's gone. So the game periodically turns into a run-and-gun, but can be used to optimize how the auto-aim weapon works to do some serious damage on bosses and enemies BESIDES the gun-toter. Gives the game a bit of some unpredictable adrenaline bursts.

>>716113464
>>716115116
Why are you misrepresenting the system? It's a cool mechanic, and not as simple as attacking restoring your health.
Special moves usually drain health, but 4 has it so that using those moves converts the health into a separate bar that is restored through attacking, but getting hit once causes you to lose it all.
It adds a cool risk-reward factor to special moves that didn't exist in prior games.

>>716110501 (OP)
There aren't any the two that can be considered good are sor and dragon's crown. One relies on its soundtrack and the other is dependent on whether or not you like loot. The genre is for retards.

>>716110501 (OP)
captain commando and battle circuit are fun
if you want the deepest beat em up, i'd say it's probable the gba version of double dragon, or maybe gba river city ransom if you prefer but i would disagree
aside from that beat em ups are a pretty shit genre and no one has EVER done them right desu, unless you want to include dfo, which for some reason makes pedantic niggers seethe andnfroth at the mouth if you do, but even that really only applies to older incarnations of dfo, current dfo is ruined because neople is retarded

>>716110501 (OP)
Congrats, you started your beat em up journey with the best one that BTFO everything just like SoR2 did in 1992. Maybe try the RPG ones like D&D and River City Girls and see how you like those
Also, follow Absolum, pretty much a roguelike SoR4 from the same devs, there a Steam demo you can try

>>716120310
I didn't realize just how fucking incredible the game was until I started going for S ranks on every level. The genius risk reward health/ special system, but then the fact you get a point bonus for collecting health items at full health means that taking any damage feels extra punishing. Juggling dead enemies gives you spent health meter back so it's not just about looking cool but it has strategic value. Game is a fucking masterpiece.

>>716120789
>>716120310
The big thing is that because SoR4 was such a departure from the older games (different devs, different design philosophy, a mix of SoR2 mechanics with no proper running besides two characters wish dashes at launch and the risk-reward special system with juggling getting a high emphasis), a lot of people simply shut it down because it wasn't playing exactly like the old games. And I mean, that's what the Remake fulfills to a fault, if someone wants pure SoR hybridized goodness. When you can peel back 4 on its own merits it's a damn fun game, especially with the extra variety of things to unlock from Mr. X's Nightmare, but you can't go swinging at it like old SoR habits.

>>716120789
And the biggest thing you forgot, how your combo dies if you get hit, so you have to decide if you want to cash out the points when it gets high, or risk losing it all for a better bonus.

Vigilante
Vendetta
Final Fight
Knights of the Round
Captain Commando
The King of Dragons
Legionnaire
Ninja Warriors Returns
Warriors of Fate 2
The Punisher
Violent Storm
Metamorphic Force
Night Slashers
Alien vs. Predator
DoD: Tower of Doom
DoD: Shadow over Mystara
Battle Circuit

>>716121129
>warriors of fate 2
actually i preferred dynasty wars to any of the sequels

>>716110501 (OP)
The only good turtles one is TMNT 4: Turtles in Time

>>716121484
Shredder's Revenge was pretty good.

Alien Storm

actually you know what? little fighter 2 deserves a mention, it's fun as fuck

>>716121596
It was. I'm excited to see what they do with Marvel.

>>716121939
Having Nova in the cast sold me immediately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIJG5nrzLQk

>>716122087
I love that they're not even trying to pretend that they didn't take massive inspiration from MvC.
Maybe I'm just ignorant but I genuinely don't know of any other beat 'em up with tag fighter mechanics.

>>716122194
Oh, there's no ignorance. Just look at the attack animations, and you could almost swear some of them were just traced from MvC2.

>>716110501 (OP)
Just about everything I'd mentioned already has been, but I want to throw a nod to Konami's Aliens in here.
Technically it's a shooter, but it's in the vein of other side-scrolling shooters in that they play like beat-em-ups but with guns, and I think that's close enough for fun's sake, since I'd just be repeating other anons otherwise.

>>716122294
>>716122194
these devs are quite shameless about it, pretty much all the april moves in their TMNT game were "inspired" by le classics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfzvVDVrOLk

>>716122980
Based SF Alpha is fucking awesome

Does the Beat'em Up community not like Comix Zone? Or is it just not a well known game? I don't think it's one of the best mechanically speaking but I never see it mentioned in this type of thread despite it having an unique style going for it.

>>716123660
It's shit

>>716123660
It's just a bit too obscure and a bit weird. Too simple for really interesting combat, a lot of lulls in the action for either dialogue bits or really weird and basic puzzles, shit platforming sequences. It's all style, and very muddy substance; can't even really call it a beat em up in the same sense as most games in the thread.

>>716123660
comix zone is literally a 30 minute style over substance game with 1 char and zero replayability, why do you think no one gives a fuck?

>>716110501 (OP)
Aces Wild is great

>>716123660
it's not a beat em up, it's a glorified beltscroller and its combat sucks ass

>>716110501 (OP)
the Ninja Saviors Return of the Warriors
https://imgur.com/a/yaksha-promotional-art-screenshots-aRR3mUD

>>716115704
>not 10 hour games like Viewtiful Joe.
It's longer than most of the games mentioned in this thread but VJ's still only about three hours at a push

>>716115704
The answer is obviously Dragon’s Crown though I don’t think it’s quite as good as Mystara.
There’s also its predecessors. D&D Tower of Doom is solid and while King of Dragons and Knights of the Round are a little rough (especially King of Dragons) it’s interesting to see how it all evolved.
Mystara is still the GOAT though. There are only a couple of Capcom beat ‘em ups that are even close to as good as it.

In addition to Dragon's Crown, try Muramasa: the Demon Blade and Odin Sphere

>>716120310
>It adds a cool risk-reward factor
Are you genuinely retarded

A lot of the best ones have been mentioned so to not be redundant:
>Final Vendetta
>Panzer Bandit
>Urban Reign
>Dawn of the Monsters
>Spikeout & Slashout
>Mad Stalker: Full Metal Forth (X68000 or PS1 remake)
>Way of the Passive Fist
>Double Dragon Advance
>The Making of Karateka's remake of the original Karateka (it also has a ton of dev builds and ports of it playable too)
>Tekken Force mode in Tekken 3 & 4
Getting into general 2D Action would add a lot of great games like Magenta Horizon, Viewtiful Joe, Aces Wild, Aztez, etc.

>>716116686
FF1 gets a lot of the little things so right that it established a baseline for combat design that stuck for decades. It's also insanely fucking hard to beat in a reasonable amount of credits let alone 1CC so it's hard to notice all the good design when you're getting your ass handed to you. I prefer FF3 personally, and even Mighty FF for some of its original ideas (and being an actually reasonable 1CC).

>>716122194
Jitsu Squad has tag stuff but it's also very clearly MvC-inspired just without having the actual license there. Beyond that the only one I can think of is the Rage Relay mode in the 3DS remaster of SoR2 where you swap characters each life.

>>716120310
>>716120789
>>716121060
I love SoR4 but I think the biggest misstep is designing around full comboing a stage. There's no actual risk and reward in the moment at that point; you keep your combo the whole level or you restart. There's no choices as to when to back off and let it cash out. Ironically this makes it way more impactful in the Survival Mode, especially since once you get deep the bonus Stars can make or break your run.

>>716129001
>I love SoR4 but I think the biggest misstep is designing around full comboing a stage
the fuck are you talking about? yes, you can do that and devs even made some changes to keep your combo going
but it absolutely isn't designed "around" full combos
you can easily do S rank mania without them

>>716127031
King of Dragons is weird, it barely feels like anything else Capcom's made let alone even other early beat-em-ups. I've seen people compare it more to the old Castlevanias in combat design just on the beltscroller format and that helped me get it a lot better.

Personally I think Battle Circuit & Armored Warriors feel as complete and innovative as Mystara does even if some of their earlier games might have a more solid core like Punisher & AvP. Battle Circuit feels like an important step in action game design since its coins you spend on moves and upgrades between stages feel like a precursor to the scoring & upgrade systems in Dino Crisis 2 and DMC1.

>>716129487
It's not required but it's built to accommodate it and having that option there kind of kills the micro-decisions in favor of the macro-decision once you're good enough.

Spikeout and Slashout are cool

>>716128889
I think the thing FF1 gets the most right is just how it looks. There’s a lot of memorable designs and goofy little moments that stick with you.
There’s a reason why people still want to see Haggar show up in a Street Fighter game to this day, even from people far too young to have played Final Fight when it was in arcades or on your SNES AKA me

>>716129631
well, if your goal is leaderboard high score autism, i don't see what's bad about the game giving you an opportunity to do the perfect run

>>716110995
>6/10
>below mid

Retard

>>716113030
>but sor4 has the deepest mechanics of any fighting game out there.
>hit stun wall bounce OTG combos and the specials give you grey health that you can recover.
This combo nigger shit kills all the fun in video games holy fuck I hate it

>>716129587
>Battle Circuit & Armored Warriors
Hadn’t played either until the bundle and now I think Battle Circuit might actually be my favorite beat ‘em up.
Armored Warriors is great too I should really get around to trying Cyberbots

>>716110501 (OP)
Anon, do yourself a big favor and set up arcade/Xbox emulation and play Spikeout. This is right up there with God Hand and Dynamite Cop as the kings of 3D beatemups. Insanely fun, kino 90s Sega aesthetics, challenging 1cc too. Don’t tunnel too hard on the 2D games exclusively

>>716112224
This game is my pick for the best modern beat em up. It has the perfect amount of complexity without any move feeling redundant. Also looks great