Legacy Edition has pretty much solved everything but the game's glaring lack of originality. For some, that may not be a particularly significant issue, if all you're looking for is a functional platform fighter on PC. It's not the prettiest game in the world, but it's only $5 and has better netcode than most AAA titles (rollback reigns supreme). All microtransactions are gone, everything is unlocked from the start, so have fun customizing.

All in all, it's solid. Nothing groundbreaking, but undeniably satisfactory. I'm looking forward to seeing where Vortex goes.

You made an early access game with microtransactions and lootboxes.

You made a fighting game where more than half the roster is locked behind a paywall, and you only have 3 characters to start with.

You made a knockoff of a popular fighting series expecting to lure people who play those games in while doing literally everything the people who buy those kinds of games hate about the modern gaming industry.

The question is, why?

EDIT: I've been informed that they've given all players 1100 free spectra to buy a single character. I'm still not impressed. All you've given people is the tool to buy the most OP character in the game so they can ignore all the others. Real impressive. At least the top tier character isn't EXACTLY behind a paywall anymore. Unless you buy one of the other ones with your free spectra. Then you're still screwed.

"Early Access is the exact time where we can take all this feedback and work it into a better monetization model." Is the comment included within the developer response. This pretty much confirms they only care about how much money they're making. Here's a monetization model for you: How about asking a flat price for the game instead of making it "free" and stuffing it with microtransactions? Oh but then you couldn't make additional lootbox money, I see how it is.

Don't play this game. Go buy Rivals of Aether. Hell, go download Super Smash Flash 2 for free. Even Super Smash Bros Crusade is more worth your time than Icons, and that game isn't even that good. But at least it gives you a variety of characters to choose from, instead of handing you three and demanding you pay for the rest. Don't waste your time with Icons, and more importantly, don't waste your money.

It's unfortunate but as it stands I simply can't recommend the game. I've been an avid "Platform Fighter" player for the last 4~ years. I primarily play Smash Bros. Melee and Project M, but I've dabbled in all of them including the likes of Brawlhalla (oof) and Slap City (actually really good go check it out), and to top it off I was a playtester for Rivals of Aether (find me in the credits as "Cirby".) Outside of that genre I've played a decent bit of Street Fighter and Guilty Gear.

So all signs point to me liking this game, I mean surely I'm part of their target audience, so what is my problem?

Lack Of Originality

Wow the artstyle is generic. It might come off as harsh, but I'm very disappointed in this especially. It looks like a mix of Overwatch and League of Legends, to the point where it almost seems like they just peeked over and said "those games are pretty popular, let's do what they do", which in itself would be fine if the character designs were even half as good as what you find in those games. I don't want to call anyone out specifically, but they have a very talented and seasoned Character Designer on their team, and I honestly expect better from them. Kidd is ugly as ♥♥♥♥, and the rest are generic humanoids with very basic sci fi attire, save for Afi and Galu. None of them stand out really (the spear guy is actually ridicioulus with how uninspired he is.).

And the music. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the music. There's not a lot to go off, but it's just not great. In Rivals of Aether, I can say with 100% confidence that every track is great and fits with both the aesthetic of the stage it's placed on, and the game itself. Like seriously every track is great, but then there's a few that are standouts that are just amazing. It keeps its identity with every track, yet they're all nicely distinct from one another. I'm not blaming the composer(s?) here but rather whoever's in charge of directing, because they themselves clearly have no idea what direction they want to take the game's aesthetic in.

You might be thinking "who cares about the aesthetic, I just care about the gameplay." Congratulations, you are in the minority. Most people expect a certain degree of quality from games they're meant to spend money on. Not to mention, with it's contemporary literally being Super Smash Bros., it's looking pretty grim. The game doesn't feel nearly as tight as the game its based on and it just leaves me scratching my head at this point. In terms of unique mechanics they got... Shield Gust? Its lazy and doesn't feel very realized at all. Nothing about it makes you happy its there. Like I would never recommend the game to someone because of Shield Gust being such a cool mechanic. You know what's a sick and unique mechanic in a video game that actually justifies playing it? Guilty Gear Xrd's roman cancelling. There's nothing special to see here.

Slap City solves this by being more of a joke game. Like Icons, it lacks unique mechanics. Unlike Icons, it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and isn't meant to be taken seriously. Icons is clearly trying to go full esports so they're taking themselves very seriously and should be judged as such.

Rivals of Aether solves this by having a very unique artstyle, and lots of unique and different gameplay elements. I play Rivals of Aether because I want to play Rivals of Aether, not because I want to play Smash. Icons is clearly trying to get Smash players invested, but the problem is that there's absolutely nothing in Icons that you don't get from playing Smash... Except one thing...

Developer Support

This is what makes this game intriguing, and the only reason why I'm still invested in it. Nintendo has historically given 0 ♥♥♥♥♥ about the Smash community, and has even gone as far as halting Project M development (not necessarily true, but someone was definitely threatening heavy legal action to the point where they had to cease development.) This is the only positive I can see at the moment.

The fact that they're ready to throw the game into Early Access does not bode well with me. It's in no state to be collecting revenue. Them doing this shows me that they're probably lacking the funds they need to properly continue development and are going for a last ditch attempt at making the game.

TL;DR - I want this game to succeed, but it's got a long way to go before I can recommend it with good conscious. Everything about it is forgettable, and just makes me want to play a better Platform Fighter (which there are plenty of.) It is free at least. So if you disagree or want to just try it yourself rather than listening to some nobody on the internet, by all means try it out, I can't stop you. But unlocking characters is a terrible process currently. I'm assuming they'll fix it but as it stands unless you pay you're basically SoL if you want to play any of the characters that aren't unlocked from the start. Probably should have given everyone a single pass to unlock any character of their choice.

If you like the game - that's great. I'm jealous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEcgeLA6mq0

I'd like to preface this review by saying I really have given this game my full benefit of the doubt ever since I saw it over a year ago, and during my tenure in the closed beta. Additionally, the purpose of this review is not to degrade the game; I think that it has so much potential based on my knowledge of the people actually working on it. I just want to voice my concerns in a location where I feel they might be heard.

==General Gameplay==
I've been a member of the competitive smash scene since (late 2012?...) and have attended Melee, Project M versions 2.7 - 3.6, and smash 4 tournaments on a regular basis during that time.
Out of every platform fighter I have played, the inputs in this game feel the worst by far. I don't know if the netcode is to blame or if it's a limitation of your engine or what, but I consistently feel inputs being either dropped or misqueued to the point where I don't even feel like I can reliably control my character.
On the rare occasion where the stars align and my character does do what I'm requesting of them, the game can be fun unless I'm playing against characters with some disproportionately strong / annoying options (I don't care whether it's a fox or a goat, getting waveshined across the stage by one isn't fun. But of course that's just my personal taste).

==Visuals==
I'm going to keep this one short and sweet because this is the subject most people like to harp on. The models and animations in this game need to be reviewed. Beyond the surface issues of "haha this animation looks bad", and "Lol green zarya", the actual models of different characters don't mesh. They don't really feel like they're part of the same game. Compare Raymer, Afi/Galu, and Weishan side-by-side and you'll see what I'm saying.

==Store system==
You guys messed up big time as far as an initial public beta launch goes. If you had done on release what you had done when you first implemented the shop system in closed beta (namely, giving players 5000 units of in-game currency so they were actually able to buy characters and some customization options), or even just made all characters unlocked, new players coming into the game would have been far more incentivized to stick around and keep playing.

If characters are going to cost in-game currency to be unlocked ala League of Legends or Heroes of the Storm, players have to be able to reliably obtain currency. Either give players currency upon leveling up a character/their account, or even better, give them some currency after every match. Leaving large chunks of gameplay to a roll of the dice discourages players from even trying (myself included, despite the fact that I mostly play a character that's unlocked by default).

Whether you intended it or not, putting half the characters behind a paywall, ESPECIALLY all of the characters that have more unique concepts (Raymer, Weishan, Afi/Galu), with no way to access them beyond grinding with three relatively flat characters, looks like a blatant cash grab. And that's really a shame, because I know you're better than that.

==TLDR==
In its current state, I wouldn't suggest playing the game beyond satisfying your curiosity if you're a big fan of the platform fighter genre or if you really love one of the characters that brings something new to the table.
I would love to see this game succeed, and I feel it has the capacity to, but the team keeps making questionable decisions that steer the game further away from success.

If you want a fun smash bros clone without paywalls, just buy Slap City or Rivals of Aether or ♥♥♥♥ it, Brawlout.


I really love super smash bros and I've been taking a look at some super smash bros clone games to see what other developers had in mind or what interesting gameplay they that makes them exceptional to what smash bros. had. When I took a look at Icons: Combat Arena, I was in for a treat.... or that's what I thought I was in for. This game is what happens when Super Smash Bros: Melee and Overwatch have a bastard baby, let's delve in...

I'll start off by saying that the character roster is weak and even the characters themselves are not great. They're mostly just carbon copies of what melee fans main as, but with fan made overwatch skins thrown onto them. For example zhurong (or as I like to call her "sword girl #1), is just marth but with some of the special moves changed. Or what about Kidd who is just a fox clone and his voice sounds like as if he's Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank... in fact, he almost kinda does reminds me so much of Ratchet. For those other characters that aren't carbon melee clones, They're alright, mediocre good. The only character (well actually characters) that I find interesting is Afi and Galu, it's two characters in one sorta like how zelda and sheik were two playable characters in one, I also love their character design and the fact that one of them controls fire and the other controls water, their moveset isn't interesting though. Unfortunately that's the only character out of them all that I think is unique. Every other character is an unoriginal melee clones or mediocre. The animation is sometimes either good or clunky.

When I say overwatch and super smash bros: melee had a baby, I should mention that this game also has lootboxes.... yeah, freakin' lootboxes. Remember when Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) came out and people were angry over the fact that most of this stuff had to be unlocked by lootboxes? Yeah, I sure do. You thought that developers and publishers would learn that lootboxes are NOT good. Well apparently not for some of the developers that gave us the mod, Super Smash Bros: Brawl: Project M. It's not just lootboxes, there's also stuff you can unlock through in-game currency. This includes: taunts, victory poses, avatars and most importantly... characters. I remembered how obsessed I was in unlocking characters in super smash bros. melee and how I did was just playing the game... not spending my hard earn case. If you're going to make a proper smash clone, make sure the characters you can unlock are not through money but through an actually sense of pride and accomplishment. I really hope they make this game pay to play and get rid of all these in game purchase ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. If you want to put lootboxes in a game, put them on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ iphone clone game, not on a smash bros clone.

The controls are sometimes finicky. When I'm trying to do a sidestep, it doesn't do it but instead it gives me a shield. When I want to use a forward attack move it sometimes gives me neutral attack move. It really doesn't feel like smash bros at most times when I play with these controls.

The sound design is really bad, every time I hear the hit sound effects (and I may not be the only one) I feel like I'm hearing legos falling like in one of those lego games i would play when I was a kid. Some of the sounds are fine but most of them are bad. The voice acting doesn't help either sometimes. Every time I execute a special smash move, they sometimes make the same sound over and over. Why not just get at least 3 different voice clips for these attacks? The soundtrack also feels like overwatch, just like what this game feels like

Every time I load up a game, there's all this lore in the loading screen. It sounds interesting, but only problem is that there isn't that much detail on who these characters are, what this combat arena is and that sort of stuff. I'm kinda interested in this stuff.


This game had so much potential, I gave this game a shot, I gave it chances but in the end it's yet another game filled with paywalls. I don't know what went wrong with the development and why they chose to put paywalls even though people are fed up with this crap. Although this is in early access, there's probably going to be more added into the game and hopefully they'll get rid of this paywall garbage, fix up the controls, make the voice acting better, fix up the ugly sound design, add more details on the world build of this game, add more original characters (NOT melee clones) and hopefully this game will have my attention more and I'll probably change the review. For now, I wish the best of luck to the developers, Wave Dash Studios and what they have created, I hope that they're listening to not just my review but other reviewers.

TLDR: Just play Slap City instead
Lemme review this game by comparing it to another platform fighter in early access, Slap city. Here's the breakdown:

Icons: Combat Arena
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"Free To Play" with only 3 characters available
25$ to unlock the rest of the characters (cosmetics not included)
lootboxes range from 3$ for 2 all the way to 50$ for 55

2 game modes (1v1 and team battle)
No dedicated Training Mode options (only 1 single bot difficulty & nothing to show hitboxes)
No single player mode.
No options for online matchmaking (Cant send invites in online lobbies either)

5 flat uninspired stages (with no creativity)

7 Characters heavily based/ripped off from melee
(Kidd is Fox, Zhurong is Marth, Ashani is Captain Falcon, etc...)

New tech consists of Shield Gusting (Which almost always does nothing)
Shield Grabbing is overpowered and promotes campy slow gameplay
No offstage game for any character (Way too unsafe to be rewarding)


Slap City
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Currently 7$ for the full game
No lootboxes

6 game modes (Arcade Mode, Free For All, Team Battle, Slap Ball, Destroy The Crystals, Solo Battle)
Training Mode icludes Damage Reset, Show Hitboxes, Frame By Frame, Bot Lvl
Bots can be set from Lvl 1 to Lvl 9 (and even higher)
Arcade Mode along with all local play can be played Solo
Custom Lobbies with invite system and different game rules

19 stages, each made with creativity a unique layout (Some also include stage hazards)

7 characters with a unique moveset and aesthetic

New Tech consists of Clutch (Very useful when used)
Has Shield Dropping and Moonwalking

Gameplay consists of combos and having good neutral game
Lots of mobility options provides fast paced, exciting play
Offstage play exists for all characters and allows for early kills



Basically, Icons is 25$ (for access to all of the characters) and every other platform fighter is cheaper and has more content. Just play a different game.

Fun to play, some cool character concepts (Ashani is my favorite). Costume designs/animations are a bit meh, but that can be fixed. Netcode/matchmatching is pretty solid too so I give credit on that.

F*cking absolute trash F2P model. Unlocking characters in a F2P? Sure. Unlocking 4 of 7 characters with no consistent means to earn in-game currency other than RNG loot drops that give you 5 pts each when each character costs 1000 pts? Yeah, no

I had incredible hopes for this game, but I can't recommend it for a number of reasons.

On a technical level, it is not fluid to play. There is added input lag (3 frames on top of roughly 3 frames of hardware lag, aka ~6 frames) that makes the game incredibly frustrating at a high level. Many people will say that it feels good, but I haven't heard a single person from a competitive background not complain about the input lag. The lag trivializes microspacing and fast ledge options, among just overall reactions. THIS IS THE #1 GAMEKILLER IN MY OPINION.

On a creativity level, I welcome familiar movesets, but most characters feel unsatisfying to play as. There also seems to have been a conscious decision to remove "fast" aerials, or ones that come out faster than frame 7. This makes out-of-shield options much weaker, and reactionary aerials not existent.

This is also a good time to bring up my issues with how movesets are designed. Jabs are WAY TOO STRONG and are neutral-winners. If you are close to a character and you think they aren't going to shield, and you want to be safe, you can always jab combo for good damage and get stage position. This combined with slow out-of-shield options and slower reactions due to the 6 frames of input lag, it becomes a very frustrating rock-paper-scissors against players that just use very basic options.

Recoveries are also very poor and offstage play often results in suicides due to how bad airplay feels.

Monetization is monetization, I can't really fault them for that. It is a bit frustrating that the two most toxic characters (given the games current flaws) are the only free characters, though. I can't imagine many new players will enjoy doing ditto matches against Xanas that are able to abuse input lag and command grabs to screw up tech timings for very long.

I'D LIKE TO REITERATE THE LARGEST GLARING FLAW WITH ICONS: INPUT LAG
And yes, that input lag also applies to OFFLINE PLAY as well.
Have you ever wanted your offline competitive tournament to feel like online matchmaking? No? No other game has ever done such a blunder? I wonder why EVO isn't just done with online matchmaking then...

I can't recommend this, especially when there are quality alternatives, albeit they are not free.

I wish Icons the best of luck, although I cannot fathom how this game has $6 million in funding but is missing techniques that much smaller indie games can implement, along with much worse fluidity and netcode than said indie games.

GAME IS DED. GG


Gameplay review:
If you are a fan of Super Smash Bros Melee you will feel at home here for the most part. While this game isn't quite as technical as melee (no L canceling or crouch canceling...etc) this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Taking L canceling out makes it alot more accesible for new players who haven't played Melee for years on end. It is also very easy to wavedash/land in this game and dash dancing feels very fluid. If you are looking for a good alternative to Smash for pc and not a big fan of the few other platform fighters on steam give this a try. Overall the combat in this game is very fun and competitive and I can't wait to see how this game turns out in the years to come.


[update] 7/19/18
The devs seem to be very responsive and active in listening to community feedback. They are already making changes to resolve some of the issues with the free to play model they have started with.

TL;DR at the bottom

To contextualize this review, allow me to give a little bit of a personal history on myself: I'm a platform fighter player of nearly 4 years, starting with Smash 4, dropping it for Melee, and then becoming a Rivals of Aether beta tester (a title which I still retain after roughly 3 years).

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Icons: Combat Arena is the latest competitor to step into the platform fighter genre, headed up by Jason and crafted by fragments of the Project:M development team. Project:M ultimately got a C&D order from Nintendo, leading to the dissolution of the mod team, despite its popularity among the community. The game was known for bringing Melee mechanics to Brawl, while also working to make a larger portion of the cast competitively viable. Unfortunately, there were many times in which that viability was achieved through jank/gimmicks being added to kits in lieu of any real reworks.

Icons feels like it's retreading that same ground at times. A large chunk of the characters are near-carbon copies of Melee characters with some odd (not necessarily welcome) twists.

• Ashani is Captain Falcon with meter and AoE poking moves.
  
• Zhurong is Marth with a projectile and spacie side-b (which also has a killing hitbox at the end)
  
• Xana is the child of Ganon and Zangief.
  
• Kidd is pretty much lifted out of MagicScrumpy's The Ultimate Spacie video, but instead given a janky side-b and having grounded moves gutted.

This is done in order to provide a good stepping-in point for players familiar with Melee, but largely serves to highlight any bad decisions in changes made to the character, such as both changes I listed to Zhurong (projectile adds a huge unnecessary buff to her neutral that serves to cover one of the intentional flaws in the base kit, the killing aspect of the side-b is frequently used by even higher level players to try to cheese kills despite Zhu having no issue in that area).

The characters that are wholly originally designed or who take an existing archetype and attempt to inject new ideas into it are an even weaker point for the game.

• Raymer is a character that was designed top-down, with the art and character design being completed first and the kit being created around that. He is an attempt to bring a traditional zoner to the genre, but largely serves to detract from what makes the genre interesting in the first place, which largely hinges on movement. Raymer's kit is at its strongest when he plants himself and fires his gun, going so far as to make it to where he can edgeguard a large majority of the cast by standing in one place and angling shots to hit them while they're offstage without ever having to take the risk of going offstage. Moreover, he has safe burst movement options with good hitboxes that also deny large areas of the stage with more hitboxes, and still a solid grab game and kit for up-close combat (which serves to undermine the weaknesses his kit should have). He's universally regarded as one of, if not the, least fun character to play against in the entire game.
  
• Weishan is a character that uses a halberd, giving him one of the longest ranges in the game. Despite this, he also has amazing combos and great kill potential. His biggest theoretical weakness, the close-range game, is covered by an annoyingly large grab, which is further backed up by a very good grab game including a kill-throw.
  
• Afi & Galu are a twist on the classic Duo Character, where instead of both being active at the same time, you switch back and forth between the two. This leads to a largely degenerate playstyle of projectile spamming and switching between your two characters in order to camp out your opponent, the kit misses the potential cool factor of setups and combo game being shared between the two characters (which would admittedly be difficult to pull off well without being OP).

By and large, the designs of the original characters serve to either discourage what makes the genre good by restricting what movement you want to do while forcing your opponent to play at a very slow pace, or go too far in the other direction and abuse the movement aspect to the point of degenerate gameplay.

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Boring, unoriginal, uninspired. You have an orc, a genetic experiment, a woman in a power suit, a space cowboy, a chinese princess, Genghis Khan, and totem spirits fighting in the same Future Bloodsportz arena you've seen in Monday Night Combat and Thor Ragnarok, painted in a slightly more blue-based color palette than its spiritual predecessor. The music isn't anything particularly special, and many of the sounds as of this writing lack punch or just sound messy (this is an aspect they're supposedly working on so it's not extremely damning in-and-of itself).

Menus aren't anything particularly special, and in the most diverse menu subsection are just a rip from Overwatch.

The animations are pretty rough even when considering the current state of the rest of the graphics, and make the game look clunky and unrefined.

Nothing particularly stands out on its own merits on any front, and largely lead to a gameplay-dependent experience, which isn't helped by the current state of the core gameplay loop.

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Created in Unity, Icons suffers from the same issue a lot of Unity games tend to suffer of poor performance due to lack of proper optimization. Even on decent rigs, the game can easily get fairly choppy even while Steam is saying it's running at 60fps. Even ignoring the crashes that frequently happen right now (which the devs say are being worked on) this is not a good look for a free to play game which will ultimately want to be accessible to a wide audience. If the game won't run on very much, then many people will drop it in favor of more well optimized experiences, and tournaments won't have enough rigs to run events on.

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In its current state, the free to play model is toxic, anti-consumer, and will single-handedly push people away alone. It gives you 2 starting characters in Ashani and Xana (if you signed up for closed beta, you also receive Kidd and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, a $100 value!), and from there you can either purchase the $25 "Pro" (lmao) account, or you can grind to unlock the other characters individually for 1000 Spectra (in-game currency).

You earn Spectra by receiving duplicates or drops from lootboxes (you earn one every level, and each contains only 3 items, a model less generous than Hearthstone or Overwatch) Many people have played ~100 games since Early Access has begun, and haven't even earned 5 Spectra yet. That is, you can play 100 games and get only 1/5 the amount of Spectra you need for a COMMON quality item.

This essentially forces you into purchasing the Pro account if you ever want to receive all of the characters, especially considering that they will continue to add common and uncommon items to crates to further dilute the Spectra you'll be receiving from your lootboxes. At best, this is abusive towards its own playerbase, and if they don't want everyone to walk away from this game, they need to add MULTIPLE new avenues of Spectra and item earning to the game in order to provide a more generous and rewarding system.

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• Bad original character and balance designs, game doesn't feel like a worthy successor to Melee despite potential at its core.
  
• Uninspired art and mediocre sound design.
  
• Unoptimized engine serves to hurt the intended open nature of the game.
  
• Free to play model is abusive to players, this must change.

As of now: Melee > Rivals of Aether = Slap City > Icons