Scott Pilgrim EX PC review — Toronto City Rampage

Series creator Brian Lee O’Malley has teamed up with Tribute Games (makers of the most recent Ninja Turtle and Marvel beat-em-ups) to deliver a successor to the old Scott Pilgrim beat-em-up from some years back. The game continues the developer’s trend of making pretty good licensed games, although this one didn’t impress me quite as much as their others. It’s a neat, incredibly short River City Rampage throwback with great spritework, some curious checkpointing, and some disappointing padding, making for an experience that’s worth having despite feeling a bit too slight overall.

When Scott Pilgrim EX begins, you’re given a choice between a whole bunch of characters. Each one is actually substantially different in terms of their abilities and combat focus, too, which is a welcome change of pace compared to Marvel Cosmic Invasion‘s samey roster. After a short tutorial, you’re dropped into the streets of Toronto and given a series of quests to go through. The world is laid out in a way similar to the River City Ransom/Kunio-kun games, so you can freely move to-and-fro throughout the city, fighting enemies, collecting coins, and buying food and accessories. It’s a winning structure no matter how much time passes.

But the world is very small. Toronto itself is really just a handful of small screens, and quests send you through rifts to complete objectives and beat bosses. Rifts themselves are also usually quite small and tend to all basically lock you in a single room while you fight waves of enemies until a boss shows up. One aspect of the game’s premise is that Toronto has kind of splintered, and sections of it are in places they shouldn’t be. For instance, there’s a beach jammed in between a neighbourhood and city streets. This makes the game world feel incongruous and a bit jarring.

Rifts lead to different time periods. The one you see first on the beach takes you to the Ice Age, for instance. Many task you with rescuing one of Scott’s bandmates, who will then join you as assists. No, Kim, Wallace, and Knives aren’t playable. Instead, you’ll mostly pick from several of Ramona’s evil exes, with Roxy Richter being my personal favourite. Each character has their own default string, three strong attacks (four if you count one of the ones you can combo into via the fast string,) a block, throws, and supers.

There’s a fair amount of depth to the inputs here, including some surprisingly deep cancels and the possibility of pulling off some satisfying tech here and there. But the movement is honestly kind of clunky, which robs the game of some of its promise. I often felt like I couldn’t move as I wanted to, as the movement can feel rigid.

Combat is decently satisfying, however, and you can juggle and rack up some rad combos. There are also items all over the place that can be used or thrown. Items thrown at enemies will bounce off of them, allowing you to catch them in mid-air, if you so choose.

Scott Pilgrim EX makes use of some RPG elements, too. Some enemies (and side quests) will reward you with level-up items that increase one of your four attributes (HP, special energy, damage, and speed.) But most of your level-ups will accompany food you can purchase around the map. Many foods replenish your HP or special energy, but a lot of them will boost one of your attributes as well. What this means is that levelling up is really comprised of grinding coins dropped by enemies to use at restaurants. Certain foods can even be equipped as snacks, but I’m not sure how to differentiate between those that are and those that aren’t.

The downside of this is that you’ll naturally need to level up each character individually if you want to max them out. You might want to consider doing this, too, as Scott Pilgrim EX can be somewhat punishing. If you die during boss battles, you’ll always have to replay the enemy waves leading into them. This is compounded by some bosses simply being kind of cheap. Boss fights follow a typical rhythm where you hit them until they fall down, back off, wait for them to use an overpowered attack, and then you knock them down again. The clunky movement can make avoiding some of these easier said than done, and having to start an entire section over again because a boss got a cheap shot in wasn’t something I enjoyed.

The game is really only about two-and-a-half hours long, depending on how much grinding you do and how many times you have to restart sections due to boss fights. Character levels end up going up to the hundreds, too, so switching to another character (which can be done at a house near the game’s start) isn’t a particularly good idea. Granted, the game does feel balanced around co-op, and I only played solo. Once you beat the game, you can start a New Game+ that retains your character levels and equipment (which can be purchased at various shops.) However, the game feels shorter than the last couple from the same devs.

It doesn’t help that you spend so much time simply running from one end of the map to the next. Tribute Games’ last releases were a few hours long with linear stages, so this being shorter, in addition to the fact that you spend so much time just running to a different spot, is disappointing. When you get to the last area in the game, it tells you that you need to return to three places you’ve already been to fight enemy waves to unlock the way. Then you walk back to the last area and fight the last boss.

I wish there were more modes, such as maybe an arcade mode or survival, which could extend replay value, but maybe we’ll have to wait for DLC to do that. This is a pretty decent game that does scratch the River City Ransom itch, plus seeing the gang again is neat, but the game’s shorter and more frustrating in spots than I would have liked. With that said, it’s hard to dislike a chunky 16-bit beat-em-up that has you walking around town smacking thugs for coins.