Double Dragon IV Critic Reviews

Double Dragon IV is fun for a limited time. while it captures the look and feel of the classic games, it tends to get a bit stale and starts to grind on your nerves. Its awkward platforming and imperfect controls hinder the overall experience, while the lack of online play hurts as this game would be perfect for some drop in / drop out action! Overall, I still liked the entire package and can ignore its minor issues long enough to have a great time. New players may find it boring, while fans of the classic games will feel right at home. Pick this up if you want to try out what beat-em ups were like in the '80s!

It’s a love letter to the franchise’s history, and really it’s only for fans of the series.

Despite how fabulous the extra stuff is, though, Double Dragon IV just isn’t a good game. It is, however, a compelling and fascinating oddity. For franchise fans it’s a must-purchase, since it’s as much a historical trip as it is a new entry. While I can’t recommend it based on gameplay, the fact that it’s such a straight-faced resurrection of a long-dead style alone makes it worth a look.

Double Dragon IV has some nostalgia value for longstanding fans of the franchise or those that just want a glimpse of what brawlers looked like in times long gone, but it offers little in terms of compelling gameplay or interesting mechanics. I’m a big fan of seeing old series recapture glory, but in this case, Double Dragon is an experience better left in the past.

Arc System Work's staunch dedication to the retro aesthetic for Double Dragon IV is admirable, but still falls short of the mark even when juxtaposed to several of the series' own entries. Punch and kicking dudes as Billy and Jimmy still works, but many elements of IV just feel a little too off-brand for my liking.

Double Dragon IV feels like the developer Arc System Works discovered an unreleased old NES game and emulated it on PS4. Its graphics, sound, and gameplay are utterly authentic to the period. Unfortunately, so are its cheap shots and frustrating design elements. It's certainly a lot of fun to play for a while, but once its nostalgic novelty wears off, only hardcore retro fans will likely want to come back for more.

As a positive, cautious first step with a beloved series, Double Dragon IV provides an enjoyable combat experience. The chosen art style undermines the game’s quality somewhat and the retro principles can lead to moments of frustration but I think this is worth your time. It’s unrefined and lacks bravery but it’s not bad.

Double Dragon IV is a sequel that came about three decades too late. While it’s a great follow-up to the games from the 8-bit era, it also unintentionally shines a light on the shortcomings of the time—which only the most diehard of fans will be able to overlook.

Double Dragon IV is a return to the good old days of beat 'em ups that fans may enjoy but it's also a flawed experience that modern gamers will likely be baffled by. Although it's not as good as I was hoping, I'm glad to see Bimmy and Jimmy kicking ass in 2017.

It does seem as though Arc System Works were relying entirely on the nostalgia to sell Double Dragon IV. And while it captures the essence of those original games it falls short of being a good game today simply because the original hasn’t aged well. It would have been pretty rockin' back in the 80s though.

Double Dragon 4 plays the nostalgia card harder than most, but its narrow-sighted reliance on this has left it feeling like a relic that perhaps shouldn't have been disturbed. The combat can be simplistic fun but is ruined by cheap AI, and the trio of modes don't offer much to stick around for. The presentation is a cool look back at the 80s school of design, but once the novelty wears off, you're left with a frustrating beat-em-up that inadvertently highlights the leaps in gameplay, animation, and visuals that games have made over the last three decades.

Sadly, I would only recommend Double Dragon IV to you if you are a Double Dragon fanatic or very die hard beat ’em up fan, and if that’s the case, you probably already own it. It is fairly cheap, but even then, I have played much more enjoyable games for the same price.

Double Dragon IV sounds like a surefire winner on paper. Craft a sequel to one of the most beloved arcade games of all-time, keep it retro in spirit, profit. However, seeing as the game was announced and released in just over a month it feels like about that much effort went into crafting this game. Will we ever get a solid follow-up to one of the greatest arcade games of all-time? Things are not looking promising for Billy and Jimmy.

I am certainly not immune to the charms of 80s and 90s game design, but the NES version of Double Dragon wasn’t a great example for Double Dragon 4 to follow. It’s not just that this simplistic beat-em-up formula didn’t age well graphically or mechanically, it’s that it simply isn’t very fun or engaging to play in 2017.

Double Dragon IV serves as an inelegant reminder that sometimes the past is better left in the past.

The ‘80s nostalgia is laid on so thick you could almost choke from it, in this joyless proof that too much nostalgia can be a bad thing.

A Double Dragon for the current generation could have been a great thing, but this semi-revisiting of the franchise's heyday falls way short of the mark.

Even for those looking for a nostalgic trip through time, you are just much better off playing the original game and avoiding the mess that is Double Dragon IV.

Stripped of the context of time (the 1980s) and space (the amusement arcade, where every life has a financial cost attached), that spell has been severely weakened.