Brawlout Review
- Brawlout
- Angry Mob Games
- Angry Mob Games
- PC, PS4, Switch
REVIEW TEXT BELOW
Brawlout’s inspirations are obvious. There’s an attempt to bring the fast and technical flow of competitive Melee here, with a focus on combos and tight execution. Characters move quickly, moves recover fast, and there’s plenty of wavedashing and edge control. Critically, Brawlout has removed some of the more painful aspects of Melee play–there’s no need for L-canceling, and wavedashes, moving the technical focus elsewhere.
That focus helped me enjoy Brawlout for a while. The ways combos flowed, the speed of the matches, and the ease of which you could follow up attacks made it fun to see how long I could maintain control. But the longer I played the more it became clear that this focus on technical play had made Brawlout’s combat feel sterile. The approach and combat flow felt the same no matter what character you picked. With few exceptions, character’s special attacks often felt less like a collection of different tactics, but the same one, aimed in different directions. Its useful for those long combos, but made each character feel one note.
Brawlout’s desire to bring over other traditional fighter concepts doesn’t help. There’s a meter that drains each time you use specials, but powers them up in return. Consequently, you’ll want to keep from spamming these moves, since keeping the bar full allows you access to more recovery options and a comeback style rage mode. This becomes troublesome since most characters’ recovery options feel weak, and it felt impossible to recover in most situations without the immediate use of the momentum cancelling the meter affords. It made everyone feel weightless, and there was barely the back and forth that gives the platform fighter genre tension. In the worst situations, it felt as if you might as well have had a regular health bar.
