A viciously hard beat em up that looks pretty but fails to deliver
The main issue I had with this game were the control, every combo is of three inputs, if you press to fast the last input won't be recognized, if you press to much the string of combo will end and immediately start a new one, which can leave you open.
In the game menu you'll find some help notes that are meant to tech you how to play but do a very bad job of it, and a "book of knowledge" that by playing and meeting certain criteria will unlock more informations about the enemies, and also unlocks finishing moves that, although are cool to watch, you have no power over as they are randomly selected when you performed them with either the square or the triangle button ( when an enemy has been successfully stunned with the specific combo )
Beside story mode, which takes you to the journey of Han Tao which, although a little cliche, works well within the game and its theme, you also have endurance and time trial mode,
endurance mode in my opinion is the better of the two, time trial it's ridiculously hard and frustrating, I personally haven't been able to achieve a gold medal yet (and I probably never will) the time window for you to reach it it's, in my opinion, too short and if you add the unresponsive control of the game, the outcome it's a disaster.
The old school approach they had with this game might have been refreshing, but after dieing the three times, purchasing two more lives sacrificing points, and then dieing again after suffering one lousy combo it's just preposterous, that is because in the game your enemy are more skilled than you are, every class of henchmen can block while you can only dodge, some of them even have unblockable moves, which you don't have, they take a crap load of health out of you with one string, they are also smart, they will circle you, close you in and attack you from both sides, high and low, and in this instance there is nothing you can do to save yourself but dodge and run, so the all game becomes a cat and mouse chase, where you try to gain some space to reheal yourself while they hunt you down like a pack of bloodhounds, all you have on them is some sort of hyperactive mode that can be activated once the the attack meter and the dodge meter meet somewhere inside the yin - yang gauge, beside that, trust me, you gonna get your ass whopped, specially in later stages.
This game could have been a real hit but it's a disgrace to beat em ups, if you don't like beat em ups steer clear of this, if you do you might wanna give it a shot, but please don't judge the whole genre on this game, there are tons of beat em ups that made history of videogaming, this one here hopefully will be soon forgotten, or, should they make a sequel, let's hope they take into account that beat em up players want good, fun, decently controlled gameplay out of their games, not eye candy, 3d visuals and point racking based unresponsive controls
I hope this review has been helpful, i don't want to diss this game and I tried to keep my criticism on a constructive level, I hope my opinion haven't offended anyone.