Clan N

Genre: Top-Down Arcade Brawler

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local, Online)

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Review:

Clan N is a game with Arcade Brawler-style gameplay, but with a top-down perspective, making it a game that’s fairly unique, even though it feels familiar. Released on multiple platforms in 2020, including the Nintendo Switch, this is a game that has you playing as one of four ninjas fighting an army of samurai (and other less realistic enemies) after your village was attacked.

The presentation here is fantastic, using a pretty detailed pixel art visual style that’s fairly zoomed out from the action, yet that still conveys a lot of personality. This is accompanied by a soundtrack that’s clearly meant to evoke the era the game depicts, and while it’s not especially memorable, it works just fine for the purposes of the game.

As for the gameplay… man, I really wanted to like this one more than I did. At least on paper, this game has a lot to offer, with a good variety of enemies, a decent variety in your combat moves, and some interesting stage-based hazards to consider, as well as occasional (and fairly fun) mini-games strewn throughout the game. Unfortunately, the core gameplay here just isn’t satisfying, for multiple reasons.

The hit detection feels off, with attacks that seem like they should hit whiffing instead. However, worse than this is the problem that the tiny characters means you have a tiny reach with your attacks, yet your character moves a lot when attacking, often moving through and into groups of enemies as you fight them, only to get punished by the enemies that are now behind you. The game does have a dodge move, but it’s located inconveniently on the right stick when your right thumb will most likely be devoted to using the face buttons on the right side of the controller to attack.

It hardly matters though, because the dodge doesn’t seem very responsive and often doesn’t succeed at evading enemy attacks at all. In fact, attacks in this game in general feel like they have a bit too much in the way of recovery frames in between attacks, even when using fast attacks, and the result is combat that’s slow and plodding, and certainly not as fast-paced and exciting as you’d hope for from a ninja game.

If you can put up with Clan N’s many gameplay flaws, it’s got a lot going for it, but that’s a big “if”, since the actual combat itself just isn’t all that satisfying. I would have loved to see a game like this with more fluid and responsive combat, but as-is, this is merely an interesting take on the genre that I can hope inspires someone else to do something similar but better.

tl;dr – Clan N is an Arcade Brawler with a zoomed-out, top-down perspective. The presentation here is fantastic, and the game has plenty of variety, but the core gameplay suffers from a multitude of problems that just leave the combat unsatisfying. Fans of Brawlers may want to give it a look if they’re curious to try something a bit different, but most should probably skip this one.

Grade: C

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