The parade of revitalized beat-'em-up franchises continues with Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons. Several years after Dotemu breathed new life into Streets of Rage and TMNT with Streets of Rage 4 and Shredder's Revenge, respectively, publisher Modus Games and developer Secret Base have revivified Double Dragon with Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons. Featuring new rogue-lite mechanics and chibi art, it's a fresh take on the 36-year-old property. Does that freshness translate to greatness, though?

The premise in Rise of the Dragons is a nice nod to the past — the sort of apocalyptic plot line you'd find in a 1980s arcade game. It's the year 199X and New York City wallows in the devastation of nuclear war. From the chaos rise four criminal gangs, who terrorize the streets and citizens of the Big Apple. When the newly-elected mayor comes to brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee asking for help, the young martial artists snap into action to drive the gangs out and return peace to their beloved city.

Despite the dramatic setting and the inclusion of icons Billy and Jimmy Lee, the game's story never really goes anywhere. The characters are two-dimensional and the plotting predictable. There are two endings, one "bad" and one "good", but neither is completely satisfying. 

Like its arcade and console predecessors, Rise of the Dragons is a 2D side-scrolling beat-'em-up. The general thrust of the game remains unchanged: punch and kick your foes into oblivion to save the day. But Secret Base has tweaked the mechanics to focus more heavily on combos and character switching — to strong results. You can still execute a flurry of basic attacks, but you can also perform one of three special moves once your special meter is full. If your special move knocks out a bad guy, you'll notch a "Special KO", which is the mechanic around which the entire game revolves. Only by defeating an enemy with a Special KO will you earn cash to upgrade your characters and unlock tokens. Furthermore, if you use Special KO to eliminate three or more opponents at once, you'll earn food to replenish HP. This system adds layers of risk and strategy that make the moment-to-moment gameplay quite entertaining.

Combat is elevated further through character switching. Instead of depleting your special meter to deploy a powerful move, you can use it to "tag" in your secondary character to either extend a combo or break up an enemy's combo. And if you're playing with two players in local co-op — which really is the best way to experience the game — each player can carry two characters, allowing four fighters in the field. 

While Rise of the Dragons benefits from reliable momentary gameplay, it loses something as a result of its quasi-rogue-lite formula. A lot of fans balked when they learned their beloved arcade beat-'em-up had embraced roguish tendencies, but that hesitation was misplaced. Indeed, I wish Secret Base had leaned more into the rogue-lite market, or simply stuck with an entirely bespoke campaign. Currently, the game sits in an awkward place between the two sides, suffering from the repetition of the rogue-lite but not fully benefiting from the sub-genre's excitement and unpredictability. 

The main rogue-lite elements in the game are modifiers, dynamic levels, and upgrades. Modifiers allow players to adjust the difficulty of each run, in order to earn more (or fewer) tokens, which unlock items in the token shop. You can change player health, revive cost, enemy aggression, etc. There's even a permadeath modifier for the truly brave. Once you've set all modifiers, you can choose which of the four gangs to attack first, à la Mega Man. After you topple the first gang, the others will move to fill the vacuum, which means additional sub-bosses, harder-hitting foes, and additional stages in the remaining territories. Depending on the order you attack the four primary gangs, you'll see stages that wouldn't normally appear in a different sequence, which spices things up a bit. Pro tip: save the Killers' Fortress for the end; the elevator section and final showdown with Machine Gun Willy are worth it.

Then there are upgrades, which appear for purchase during mid-stage interludes. Here you can spend accumulated cash to enhance your special moves, running speed, partner tag options, and more. Choose wisely, to guarantee a long run.

Although these elements greatly add to the game's replay value — important since you can see the end credits roll after about three hours — they don't introduce enough rogue-lite randomness. Again, Secret Base needed to choose a full roguish experience, with more classes, builds, weapons, mutators, NPCs, and spontaneous events, or a longer, tailor-made campaign in the vein of Streets of Rage 4. This feels like a half measure.

While Rise of the Dragons' rogue-lite elements seem under-cooked, its slew of purchasable rewards are just the opposite. The game generously supports 13 playable characters — the 4 base fighters plus 9 unlockable guest stars — each with their own combos, special moves, and limitations. In addition to Billy and Jimmy, you can play as the bazooka-toting Marian and the riot shield-carrying Uncle Matin, not to mention former villain Abobo, an incredible hulk with a wrestling moveset, and Linda, a mercenary with a long-range whip. You can use tokens earned in each run to buy these fighters, alongside gameplay tips, concept art, and music. Whether you'll feel compelled to replay the campaign several times over to unlock everything is another story.

On the subject of music, the tunes in Rise of the Dragons are appropriately thumping with lots of drum beats and electric guitar riffs. The punchy sound effects are equally solid. As for graphics, the slightly-deformed chibi models and pixel art settings are satisfactory. The game's art style doesn't embrace the gritty urban aesthetic many fans wanted, but it works fine with the title's arcade, pick-up-and-play sensibilities. 

Secret Base deserves credit for reinventing the Double Dragon formula. Thanks to it dynamic levels, modifiers, partner swapping rules, and cartoon graphics, Rise of the Dragons is a fresh look at a series approaching the four-decade mark. Not every change represents an improvement, however. While the new fighting mechanics and large roster of playable characters hit the mark, the rogue-lite elements don't quite stick the landing. Still, the game is a fairly fun beat-'em-up experience, especially with a friend along for the ride.