Broad feedback about game mechanics, combat flow, etc.

[Rydog]

After having played a bunch of this game on every difficulty, and nearly 100% completing the Steam achievements (aside from the "level all characters to 10 in story mode" one), I have some thoughts.

My bias/perspective: I am a huge beat-'em-up fan. I played both TMNT arcade games as a kid, when they were brand-new. I've played all the classic console TMNT games. I've played pretty much every other major beat-'em-up game that exists, from Renegade and Double Dragon all the way up to Fight'N Rage, River City Girls, Streets of Rage 4, and now Shredder's Revenge. I have variously had the perspective of a "button-mashy quarter-muncher enjoyer" and "play for 1cc and/or time attack" player over the course of my life.

(I'm also a big TMNT fan; my entire mostly-complete Playmates line from childhood is displayed on one of my shelves.)

Anyway, some thoughts, many of them critical/constructive. Fight'N Rage and Streets of Rage 4 will be my main points of competitive analysis, since those games are both very recent and very good "modern" beat-'em-ups.

• The game is beautiful. The sprite work is some of the best "retreaux" visual design I've ever seen.
  
• It definitely checks all the "Feel the nostalgic feels, hit some buttons and clap when the Turtles say the thing or when there's a neat cameo" boxes. The developers did a good job with all this, and they clearly have a deep love of this IP. If your interest is limited to this alone, I dunno how much the rest of this list matters (or should matter) to you. A lot of my criticisms are aimed at the depth of the combat/game flow, which I think falls short of this game's competitors (at least for anyone who is not a one-and-done player).
  
• I only sort of like that the characters are all mostly homogenized with some slight differences. This makes it easier to play casually, but it is also a double-edged sword, as it means that characters with certain properties are just better. April's speed and game feel stands above almost every character; her and Raphael's cyclone super, and Donatello/Casey's vacuum super just flatly make them better than everyone else. I wish it leaned a bit more toward Fight'N Rage or SoR4's way more differentiated characters.
  
• The overall speed/pace of the game is relatively good. It's not slow and methodical like SoR4, nor is it completely superspeed crazy like Fight'N Rage. That said, some of the level design is a little too rote, which has a weird effect on dashing attacks. I feel like, a lot of times, the game doesn't really want you to use that stuff.
  
• Grabs/throws are just straight-up broken and bad. This is one of my biggest criticisms of the game; from moment one it immediately felt like something is wrong with the grab system. There are too many start-up frames or something on grabs, and it actually makes them too risky to use regularly. When you compare this to SoR4's excellent grab system, and the console port of Turtles in Time which heavily revolves around grabs and throws, the whole system in Shredder's Revenge just feels off, like it wasn't tuned right.
  
• A lot of random enemies seem to have super armor. Maybe it is fine on a couple of them, like the Triceraton shield dudes, but it feels weird to me that this is a mechanic that is used so excessively outside of boss fights. There are even some Foot Soldiers that have super armor!
  
• Speaking of bosses, a lot of their mechanics are kinda uninspired and same-y. All the bosses either just charge at you a bunch, or have a mechanic where they go invulnerable and shoot a bunch of projectiles for you to dodge. Some bosses (Leatherhead, Baxter) are neat I guess, but they are a lot less mechanically diverse than say, the bosses in SoR4.
  
• The taunt system is just busted. I've already seen a lot of arguments about this and I know there is a vocal "if you don't like it then don't use it" crowd. But the fact is that this is the design implementation that they decided to go with; it is the intended method of play, so it is fair to evaluate and criticize it. You can completely refresh the super meter after every enemy wave or in a safe spot, which is really weird, and it creates this optimal "taunt, super, repeat" meta that is just not great. The best beat-'em-ups have a "risk" system for supers. SoR4 lets you spend health and then hit enemies to restore it; Fight'N Rage has a meter that builds by hitting enemies, and if you use your super outside of that meter it costs health. I think Shredder's Revenge would be a lot better if supers built exclusively from attacks, and the taunt option did not exist (or maybe make taunts exclusive to easy mode).
  
• It's a small thing, but I wish there were just a basic stage select for Arcade mode, where you can easily practice any stage on any difficulty you've previously cleared.
  
• This is a direct "waaaaaaaah SoR4 is better" whine, but man, I wish every beat-'em-up had a survival mode like that one does. SoR4's survival mode DLC is a golden example of how to do it right.

Anyway, yeah, I think that's all for now. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[Radical Rat]

Publicado originalmente por KillScreen:

Publicado originalmente por Rydog:

No, I've definitely beaten the game on all difficulties including the hardest one.

Pick mikey without using taunts and let me know how it felt.

Seriously, if you can do 1CC clear with him like that, you have my respect

[Eliwood]

I don't like the fact that team attacks are hilariously difficult to pull off unless you're *extremely* coordinated. Some kind of "Team Attack stance" would be great, at least for something like the Canonball move? Finding time to do a team attack feels like most of the time it's not worth it, and something like that batter launch team attack other characters do generally only happen when the enemy is already dead, making its combat benefit near pointless.

Though maybe that's just me...

[Radical Rat]

Publicado originalmente por Eliwood:

I don't like the fact that team attacks are hilariously difficult to pull off unless you're *extremely* coordinated. Some kind of "Team Attack stance" would be great, at least for something like the Canonball move? Finding time to do a team attack feels like most of the time it's not worth it, and something like that batter launch team attack other characters do generally only happen when the enemy is already dead, making its combat benefit near pointless.

Though maybe that's just me...

Worst thing is, that during online play not only you can do that cannonball by accident, but it can also glitch due to latency where your character will be frozen in place and open to all kind of damage even for few seconds, so yes - separate input would be good idea

[Rydog]

Publicado originalmente por KillScreen:

Publicado originalmente por Rydog:

No, I've definitely beaten the game on all difficulties including the hardest one.

Pick mikey without using taunts and let me know how it felt.

OK I'll come back after I set up some arbitrary rules and can then be deserving of the privilege of offering feedback.

[DanySD]

Publicado originalmente por Rydog:

Publicado originalmente por KillScreen:

Pick mikey without using taunts and let me know how it felt.

OK I'll come back after I set up some arbitrary rules and can then be deserving of the privilege of offering feedback.

Honestly splinter or don without taunts sounds a lot more challenging lol.
Mikey''s attack speed is so high that you'll be building the super meter naturally very quickly.

[Portwills]

The grabs are fine as they are. You can either
-Crowd control by throwing a guy in a direction and pushing all the other enemies at the same time (or throw them in a hole)
-Crowd control by using the arm slam on both sides
-One shot kill by throwing the guy in the screen
I don't see any reason to change anything about grabs.

I agree the taunt system is ridiculous though.

[Rydog]

Publicado originalmente por Portwills:

The grabs are fine as they are. You can either
-Crowd control by throwing a guy in a direction and pushing all the other enemies at the same time (or throw them in a hole)
-Crowd control by using the arm slam on both sides
-One shot kill by throwing the guy in the screen
I don't see any reason to change anything about grabs.

I agree the taunt system is ridiculous though.

You can do all those things, but the slams do not do significant damage, and grabbing is very unsafe. The point I made initially is that in many games you either have substantial iframes to make it an appealing defensive option (SoR4), or the grab is instant and you can start throwing guys around immediately (Turtles in Time). In this game it's usually a false choice because neither of these things are true, and it does not deal significant damage to enemies. Simply existing doesn't make them fine.

[Portwills]

I see but... a lot of foot ninjas are pretty easy to grab, and some are easy to grab after punching them once. I think the grabs are there for what they are: side grabs and up grabs are for crowd control and down grab is for insta kill. If they were easy to pull they would be really easy to abuse and insta killing things is not something to scoff at. Casey and Raphael's side throws are different they do slightly more dmg but have no crowd control (a nerfed version imo). Honestly given the right occasion I really don't mind shoving a bunch of foot ninjas across the screen while I deal with the other side of the screen. It's something I do when I play.

[Rydog]

Publicado originalmente por Portwills:

I see but... a lot of foot ninjas are pretty easy to grab, and some are easy to grab after punching them once. I think the grabs are there for what they are: side grabs and up grabs are for crowd control and down grab is for insta kill. If they were easy to pull they would be really easy to abuse and insta killing things is not something to scoff at. Casey and Raphael's side throws are different they do slightly more dmg but have no crowd control (a nerfed version imo). Honestly given the right occasion I really don't mind shoving a bunch of foot ninjas across the screen while I deal with the other side of the screen. It's something I do when I play.

Half the time an enemy either breaks your grab, or you just stand there unresponsive for a second or two no matter what you try to do. And there are no iframes, an unsafe move is bad for crowd control (which has been my position this whole time). I dunno what else to tell you, this system is objectively worse than the grab systems in many other beat-'em-ups when you compare the implementation side-by-side.

[Topo]

Great feedback and great thread! I hope the developer recognizes it.

[khaosklub]

grabs are pretty bad because they do pitiful damage. the fling slam does 2 damage to the thrown foot, and 1 damage per hit. shoulder toss does 2 damage and 1 damage per enemy hit. fling toss is an insta kill.

every character's slide attack does 2 damage, can hit multiple enemies, and it dodges projectiles. this attack is better than throws for every 2 hp foot
(yellow foot, light blue foot unless they have a naginata, purple foot carrying objects, orange bomb foot, lime green spear foot)

the blue foot with swords have 3 hp. they're pretty rare and not really worth throwing anyway.

foot with 4 health are worth throwing, but only fling toss, as it basically does 4 damage at once. you can easily throw purple and pink foot(the ones that throw kunai and the whip ones), red plunger foot, blue ball and chain foot. but you cannot easily throw any other foot beyond the ones listed so far.

the ax foot have 8 HP, and the other weapon bearing foot have 4 hp. I believe the white sword foot and black sai foot need to be brought down to 1 hp before you can throw them. kinda makes throwing them utterly worthless. throwing these foot is kinda more effort than it's worth. you're not gonna be counting hits while fighting them and risking grabbing them only to be unable to do anything.

throws should really do more damage. to the thrown foot and to foot that are hit by thrown foot. 3 damage for fling slam with 2 damage per hit would make it good for crowd control of weak 2 hp foot. shoulder toss should be double damage of what it is now, with 2 damage per foot hit after throw. so 4 damage for normal throws, and 6 damage for raph/casey's throw (good for ax foot). raph and casey should always be able to toss ax foot. fling toss should be insta-kill with no meter build. it wouldn't be better than shoulder toss in most scenarios, and can one shot a ax foot if you're raph or casey.

[Radical Rat]

Fling slam is probably first one that should be changed, because in current state it's pretty much useless, unless you just want to finish enemy in a cool looking way. I almost totally forgot it even exist in this game
Giving it same damage as shoulder throw logically doesn't make sense, because you basically slam single enemy multiple times. It supposed to be used for crowd control, but i can't find good reason because of how risky it is compared to other options - not only you are totally stucked in throw animation for a very long time without any iframes, but also those knocked enemies can get up and have enough time to still surround you - or even hit if it's close to the wall - before animation is over. Not to mention it'll also burn unfilled special bar in the process

[khaosklub]

Publicado originalmente por Radical Rat:

Fling slam is probably first one that should be changed, because in current state it's pretty much useless, unless you just want to finish enemy in a cool looking way. I almost totally forgot it even exist in this game
Giving it same damage as shoulder throw logically doesn't make sense, because you basically slam single enemy multiple times. It supposed to be used for crowd control, but i can't find good reason because of how risky it is compared to other options - not only you are totally stucked in throw animation for a very long time without any iframes, but also those knocked enemies can get up and have enough time to still surround you - or even hit if it's close to the wall - before animation is over. Not to mention it'll also burn unfilled special bar in the process

yeah, even worse about fling slam, it leaves you vulnerable to projectiles. you'd think that maybe you could hit the projectiles as part of the slam, maybe have the enemy you're holding take the damage instead, but no.

[KillScreen]

Publicado originalmente por Radical Rat:

Fling slam is probably first one that should be changed, because in current state it's pretty much useless, unless you just want to finish enemy in a cool looking way. I almost totally forgot it even exist in this game
Giving it same damage as shoulder throw logically doesn't make sense, because you basically slam single enemy multiple times. It supposed to be used for crowd control, but i can't find good reason because of how risky it is compared to other options - not only you are totally stucked in throw animation for a very long time without any iframes, but also those knocked enemies can get up and have enough time to still surround you - or even hit if it's close to the wall - before animation is over. Not to mention it'll also burn unfilled special bar in the process

Amen!

The thing is that damage is what matters the most in this game. Maybe increase the damage (or better said, give it some lol) and remove the juggle property. Mikey haves the most punishable moves in the game also. He's not fast enough. He doesn't "feel" like a 3 star speed character like April.

[chollirem]

Hmmm Taunts can be a new form of attack instead of a power meter charger.

April breaks out a camera and flashs the enemy who rubs eyes and ^#%@*^ appear over their head as they reach out for anyone to grab and punch for about 5 seconds. (could also do a selfy if she has already grabbed them but her eyes are closed and she says "cheeese")

Splinter would give a speed boost to the team - 1 star. "slow is smooth, smooth is fast my children"

Leo ups team damage - 1 star. "Get in and get out guys"

Rap ups HIS damage - 2 stars. "laughs"

Mikes makes revives take 2 less seconds "welcome to the after party!"

Don has metal head pop out and just agro/throw a few punches then bounce.

Casey trolls the enemy who all agro on him.

All last 5 seconds so you gotta know when to use them.
They use a power bar so you cannot spam them.

In most cases (save april) we don't even need to change the taunt animation, just maybe add some audio. We have the sprite art for metal head so again no added assets for art there. Only sprite art for aprils flash photo stun


I would be more interested however in adding to the move lists for all the characters, xxxx is very repetitive and great to start with, but adding in up down left and right as you attack would give more options for both changing up the feel of the games fighting (you have more control over your strike box) but also vary the visuals so it is not so boring (I could hit for their face, then their feet, then their core)

This will naturally add to the enemy also having like strikes and now

Head shots can stun 10% chance (stars around head and woozy)
feet shots can also stun 10% chance (hopping holding foot)

And this also adds to the fun of the series as it is a fighter/comedy