Comprehensive Brawlhalla Review

My comprehensive review of Brawlhalla, because Steam is dumb and won't let me post my whole lengthy essay in a single review.

Hopefully this review both brings to light and brings about the fixing of significant flaws to the game I love!

INTRODUCTION/TLDR

Brawlhalla is likely the most unique fighting game you will ever play but suffers from fundamental flaws and a developer that lacks a comprehensive understanding of its own creation.

SUPER TLDR: Is the game good? Well yes, but actually no.

REASON FOR REVIEW: Brawlhalla has been my most-played game for about two years now and I have even dedicated a YouTube channel to making Brawlhalla content (kdoty). However, despite my obvious love for the game, I have found that I have had the same basic grievances with the game throughout the years that remain unfixed. These grievances never properly being addressed, paired with the ever-present “meta” I will discuss later, have led me to feel that this game has been a massive mis-investment of time that could have better spent elsewhere.

WHY PLAY BRAWLHALLA? (THE GOOD)

-The core concepts of Brawlhalla are incredible.
I daresay there is no other fighting game in the world that is so liberating in the sense of the freedom it allows players. Like Smash, it is a platform fighter but, although I do lack a complex understanding of Smash, I feel that is where the similarities end. In Brawlhalla a player has three jumps, can have one or two recoveries, and an air/ground dodge with its own specific cooldowns allowing for virtually complete freedom in how you wish to engage your opponent. These incredible movement options also allow for extensive in-air and off-stage play, which both play a tremendous role in the game and the latter often being extremely fun and exciting to both watch and play. Tactics, creativity, and the ability to “read” your opponent should be staples of any fighting game and the core concept of Brawlhalla excels in all three categories.
-The Visuals
The art style may take some getting used to, but I find it quite clean-looking and modern, and the artists consistently do a terrific job with the animations of attacks and in making every legend feel like a unique character.
-The Massive Roster
The freedom to choose from 50+ legends to find one that fits your playstyle and/or aesthetic preferences (I started playing my most played legend Ada in the first place simply because I thought she looked cool and had the most intriguing “lore”) is phenomenal.
-Complete Crossplay
One can play Brawlhalla on virtually any modern gaming device against one another. Although some definitely present better experiences than others and I feel the game is still best suited for the PC, this is an incredible aspect of Brawlhalla.
-The “Promise” of Brawlhalla
Brawlhalla presents a unique promise I feel few other games offer: you can download the game, play/work to get better at it, and be rewarded for being one of its top players all for free. In terms of the game itself, there is technically nothing stopping you aside from your own abilities and work ethic from becoming the best Brawlhalla player in the world. It’s an extremely cool concept and is brought about by a fairly healthy Brawlhalla e-sports community of professionals playing for significant cash prizes.

WHY I DON’T RECOMMEND BRAWLHALLA (THE BAD)

These glaring flaws were completely preventable and remain completely fixable, but it has become abundantly clear that they will not be anytime soon. These are flaws that totally disrupt the ability to physically play the game and/or enjoy the gameplay.
-Lag on 4-Bars/“Green” Connection
The game’s indicator of connection strength does not perform its proper function. Regardless of internet quality and/or clearly visible lag, the indicator will show a green “good” connection unless it is an extreme situation such as playing on a different region/server or a complete Wi-Fi drop. The indicator’s inaccuracy and leniency ranges from not reporting slight lag that is not noticeable to causal players but having a profound impact on gameplay for higher skill levels to players accidentally running off the stage and killing themselves because they cannot accurately see what is occurring on-screen despite having 4 bars/a green connection.
-Terrible Servers
Unless your internet is phenomenal, be wary that playing when lots of players are on can spell disaster in terms of your own connection to the game. Even so, the game inevitably will suffer from lag-spikes or lag for a few crucial seconds purely due to the poor servers. I have never had this experience of connection/server-based lag in any other game I have played be it console, mobile, or PC. This is absurd considering that in Brawlhalla playing between regions, even sometimes between US-W and US-E, is unideal and the game is not graphics-intensive.
-A Whole Stat is Near-Meaningless
One of the four stats that define a legend, “Dexterity”, is often meaningless and balance of the game’s roster completely falls apart as a result. In theory, this stat makes attacks have more recovery time on miss, allowing for opponents to better punish attacks from low-dex legends. However, for reasons I fail to understand, legends with low-dex are often purposefully given signature attacks with an extremely low amount of recovery frames. This means that the “weakness” of these legends does not truly exist, and that the legend simply has more stats in meaningful categories than their peers. Even when dexterity functions properly, it often results in a few frames gained or lost in recovery animations, something even pros have claimed is virtually imperceptible to the human brain on most weapons. To add insult to injury, there has yet to be a definitive stance from developers on whether true (undodgeable) combos granted by extra dexterity should exist, as there is a trend upon removing them once pros bring them to light. This all leads to dexterity completely uprooting the balance of Brawlhalla, with low dex legends being more favorable to play than high dex ones and low-dex legends lacking the flaws necessary to keep them fair and balanced.
-Poorly Construed Metas
Brawlhalla is heavily dictated by a meta driven by its balance changes and new additions effecting the professionals’ play and the main playerbase being affected by both. This should be completely fine and acceptable, however there are often game-altering weapon changes that are simply moronic and absurd, with such stupidity being easily identifiable and recognized by pro players players or even the causal above-average player. (I.e. cannon being able to 0-to-death off a single dodge read, blasters sair-dlight-slight-nair being a true combo, accidentally making spear double dlight jumpable without a dodge when trying to buff it, etc.) These mistakes heavily deteriorate the state of the game and thus one’s ability enjoy the game if it does not occur in their favor, but such mistakes continue to happen without logic or reason, while other balance-related issues remain unfixed.
-Passive Play Is Inherently Advantageous
Playing passively, or refusing to attack first/aggress, is an overpowered strategy against virtually any weapon due to the tremendous freedom of movement in Brawlhalla. When allowing your opponent to attack first, there is a chance your opponent will put themselves into a disadvantageous state upon whiff where an extremely safe punish option can be used. Due to it being frowned upon and typically easy to identify, extreme passiveness usually does not manifest in pro play. However, there is theoretically nothing stopping an average player to simply evade their opponent for the entire duration of a match’s (needlessly long) match timer limit aside that the community recognizes it as a toxic behavior. This gives the victim of this behavior two options: be the aggressor, putting themselves in a constant potentially disadvantageous state causing them to lose the match, or simply wait out the timer and remain vigilant for sudden timers. Neither is fun nor should be expected from by players. However, I believe this to be the only glaring flaw that nothing can be done about and is simply a consequence of Brawlhalla’s’ freedom of movement.
-No Enjoyable Go-To Game Mode
As a five-time diamond player and even when I was a hardstuck platinum, I found the lack of a true go-to game mode rather frustrating. Simply put, Ranked 1v1s is not an enjoyable experience as it reflects all of the beforementioned glaring shortcomings of the game but amplifies them due to it being a high-stress environment where losses have consequences. Also, Ranked 1v1s has its own unique set of flaws such as suffering from unnecessarily long queue times, a matchmaking system flawed in a multitude of aspects such as unnecessary queues with players of large elo discrepancies, and lack of incentive to play upon achieving Diamond rank. However, Free-For-All is customarily filled with newer players and is not a highly-competitive nor highly-skilled environment, Strike-Out is also filled with very new players, and the lack of friendly-fire in Friendly 2v2s is too exploitable and the skill level can drastically vary from each queue. I actually don’t believe that the developers intended this to happen, but Experimental 1v1s has become the makeshift go-to game mode for most players, allowing for semi-competitive play without the stress of 1s. However, the skill level of opponents matched with can still drastically vary, which detriments the newer player trying to get their bearings and the veteran seeking to refine their gameplay against those of similar experience. There needs to be a special queuing system a player can opt-in for where they can choose to fight players of their own rank and higher (i.e. a gold opting that they want to queue with platinum and diamonds or a platinum opting that they want to queue with only fellow platinums).

OTHER FLAWS

These flaws are not my main sources of discontent with the game but are still significant and need to be addressed.
-Hitboxes are lazily constructed of ovals-rectangles in the general vicinity of the animation instead of being the actual animation itself.
-(Most of?) the legend’s body should be a hurtbox. Not a random circle propagating from their center.
-Weapons should not both hit hard and be fast.
-Consistently very-high-playrate very-high-winrate legends/weapons need to be addressed regardless of how much tournament play they are seeing. The professionals are not the main playerbase, we are.
-“Line of sight”, (in theory, you can only hit your opponent if your character can “see” them, i.e. not through a ledge where line of sight is obscured), needs a complete rework as it often doesn’t make logical sense and is far too inconsistent.
-High-force, hard to react ground pounds that do not require a tech move should not exist.
-Common sense nerfs for obvious, consistent “cheese”/overpowered moves such as Teros axe nsig and Vraxx side sig need to be implemented, yet aren’t for reasons unknown despite the community being fully aware of how needlessly overpowered these moves are even at higher skill levels.
-Lack of account linking on devices/consoles, despite there being a store of which to spend real money right from when the flawed mobile version first released.
-Are clans on console finally a thing? Statements of actions need to be followed through in a timely manner. Blue Mammoth Games stated Crossplay was going to occur perhaps a year before any perceivable progress was even made towards it. Actions such as closing servers for maintenance rarely end as quickly as stated and have been known to generate even more bugs for a short period of time.
-A story mode for a Free-To-Play game would be absolutely incredible for the game, (Rivals of Aether has the most barren “story” ever despite its price tag), yet the developer chooses not to do so. Although it was never stated as a definitive, the idea was, to my knowledge, first theorized by Blue Mammoth Games in August 2018.

SUMMARY

Brawlhalla is an extremely unique and visually appealing platform fighting game. No other fighting game in my eyes has so artfully meshed such a liberating movement system to a game that looks so clean and modern while also featuring a rich cast of both aesthetically and fundamentally distinctive cast of characters. I absolutely love it. However, there are fundamental flaws that effect both the raw gameplay and one’s ability to play, (thus enjoy), the game as a whole that are ridiculously glaring. I would love to recommend Brawlhalla, but I cannot recommend a game with flaws so obtrusive to my ability to enjoy it that is also overseen by a game developer, although artistically and creatively talented, that is liable to make absurd decision after absurd decision in terms of gameplay and balance.