Akane

Genre: Top-Down Action / 2-Stick Shooter / Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Best Action Games 5-in-1 bundle, along with Akuto Showdown, Door Kickers, Real Boxing 2, and Utopia 9 – A Volatile Vacation. It is also included in the Dex & Akane bundle, along with Dex.)

Akane is an Arcade-y top-down Action game that has you fighting off wave after wave of Yakuza attackers as a lone woman with just a katana and a firearm. However, it helps that this woman seems to have taken her cue from the likes of John Wick and The Bride from Kill Bill.

Akane is presented in a pixel art style with a lot of stylish, bloody combat. It’s nothing impressive, but it does a great job of bringing players into the mood of the game. The game’s soundtrack is also fitting for the fast-paced action, though it can get a bit repetitive at time and the brief instances of vocals in the music are distracting.

The action in this game is fast-paced and intense, where one hit kills. However, enemy mooks tend to be much slower than you, making it a simple matter to plow through hordes of them without breaking a sweat. Having said that, the game is still quite challenging, with gunmen who can easily pick you off from afar, a lightning-fast boss enemy, and even the mooks themselves can manage to swarm you like zombies.

Players have a pretty nice array of attacks, including the standard melee with a sword, as well as a gun. However, players need to balance the two, as using the sword too much can tire them out, and using the gun too much can leave it empty and needing time to recharge. In addition to this, players can dash and use a variety of unlockable special attacks, with players starting out with a special dash attack that can plow through a huge crowd of enemies in an instant.

The fighting in this game is immensely satisfying, as players feel challenged not only to avoid enemy attacks, but also keep their own attacks going regularly, in order to build up the game’s combo meter. There are also various goals players can strive to complete to unlock various upgrades to their character that unlock abilities or change their stats. However, this game’s greatest strength is that the simple act of fighting enemies in the game is a blast.

This game has its fair share of issues, though. With rare exception, enemy AI us dumb as rocks. Mooks run directly toward the player, making it easy to herd them into one group by running in circles. A few will occasionally surprise the player by running away, but mostly they stick to their pattern. Enemies with guns, on the other hand, can feel really unfair, especially to new players who haven’t learned how to deflect bullets, and don’t have any good way to approach their attacker in time.

However, probably this game’s biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that it builds this absolutely amazing groundwork of spectacular action gameplay… and then doesn’t really go anywhere with it. Players just keep fighting wave after wave of the same enemies, and the level you start the game in is the only level there is.

Please don’t get me wrong, I had an absolute blast playing Akane, and I very, very, very much hope that developer Ludic Studios builds on the stylish, fast-paced Action gameplay they’ve created here into a more fully fleshed-out sequel. But damned if this doesn’t feel like an incomplete game due to the lack of variety in enemies, locales, and any sort of game progression.

tl;dr – Akane is an Arcade-y top-down Action game that has players as a lone woman fighting off the entire Yakuza using only a gun and a sword. It’s a game that channels Kill Bill and John Wick extremely well, with some really fun action. Unfortunately, the game is lacking in variety and progression, but the core gameplay here is phenomenal and well worth playing for fans of Action games.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2019 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Value, Most Underrated

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