Brawlhalla

Genre: Fighting Game / Platformer / Party Game

Players: 1-8 (Local / Online)

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: UbiSoft

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS

Brawlhalla is a Free-To-Play Fighting game with Platformer mechanics that has garnered a lot of comparisons to Nintendo’s own Smash Bros. series. Like those games, the goal here is to knock players off the stage, and players who have taken more damage get knocked farther when hit, at which point they must use multi jumps and upward attacks to try to get back to the stage.

While this game doesn’t have a roster that’s quite as well-known as Nintendo standbys like Mario and Pikachu, Brawlhalla nevertheless gathers a wide and eclectic cast of characters in this game – in addition to entirely original characters, the cast here includes characters from Shovel Knight and Rayman, Adventure Time and Steven Universe, and even real-life WWE stars like The Rock, Undertaker, and John Cena.

Each character has a few special weapons they can gain access to, and it is these weapons that form a large part of that character’s moveset. However, as these weapons are shared by multiple characters and no character has any weapon that is unique to them (appearances aside), the result of this is that pretty much all of this game’s characters are interchangeable with a large portion of the rest of them.

In a way, this can be useful – the interchangeable nature of the game’s characters means that all you have to look at when picking someone you haven’t played is what their weapons are, and you know exactly how to play them. This is put to use by the game’s free roster, which is constantly cycling between available characters. However, players who enjoyed pretty much any other fighting game will likely be disappointed that none of these characters is unique in any way beyond their stats and which weapons they favor.

Well, that and how they look. Each character essentially acts as a skin for the weapon move sets they get, with some of these being really inventive and elaborate (Jake the dog from Adventure Time, for example, is particularly well-animated), and some of them less so. Add on to this the array of unknown characters created for this game and it really does feel like the quality here is all over the place.

However, the thing that really kills my enthusiasm for this game is the hit detection, which is frankly some of the worst I’ve seen in any sort of fighting game. Perhaps this is due to the way the game uses different animations to convey the same attacks, but time and again while playing this game my attacks went right through enemies without touching them, to the point that much of the fighting seemed less about outsmarting or outmaneuvering opponents, and instead it was simply about finding the right spot where your attacks would actually connect.

It’s a shame that Brawlhalla’s gameplay is so frustratingly awful, because I absolutely love the idea of a Fighting game where I can fight Shovel Knight using Stevonnie, and the rotating free roster is a clever approach to Free-To-Play. However, after playing this game for just a short while, I was frustrated to the point of disgusted, and for all its promise I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to anyone.

tl;dr – Brawlhalla is a Free-To-Play Fighting Game with Platformer mechanics that plays like Smash Bros. but with characters from various other disparate franchises. Unfortunately, the game mechanics make the entire cast of rotating characters largely interchangeable, and the hit detection is so awful that battles become a struggle getting your attacks to connect. This game may be free, but your time is too precious to waste on it.

Grade: D+

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