Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues

Looking for something light but challenging? This game is basically a classic beat 'em up like Final Fight or Streets of Rage, just wrapped in a Cobra Kai skin. You get plenty of skills to master and levels to conquer, all following a story that of the show would expect. The developers also took a few noticeable liberties from other iconic fighting games. See if you can spot them! Couple glitches noticed in challenge requirements but nothing game breaking.

[i][b]TL;DR:[/b] Decent beat-em-up with cool powers. Playstyle doesn't change drastically depending upon which dojo you choose. A whole plethora of bugs and optimisation issues. Story is practically padding between start and end. Not a lot of replay value even with the New Game+ mode and the true ending.[/i] [hr][/hr] To be entirely honest, Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga continues is the first side-scrolling beat-em-up that I've played for any significant amount of time apart from certain titles back on the NES and in arcades. And given that, I could not find it particularly impressive. The game does propose quite a few things that I personally found innovative in comparison to Double Dragon. But the execution of said proposals fell quite flat. It can still be a fun game as long as you don't expect too much from it. To begin with the story, well, there is none. Depending on the Dojo you choose, someone either invites Miguel or Samantha to the Mini Golf and Arcade and ambushes them there. While retreating from their failed ambush, they drop a map highlighting various spots all across Reseda, nudging your dojo towards figuring out what's going on there. The rest of the game …

Pain! Does not exist in this Dojo! Fear! Does not exist in this Dojo! Mercy! Does not exist in this Dojo! Strike First! Strike Hard! No Mercy! "You wanna be Cobra Kai?"

Very solid beat 'em up. It has great tutorial. Gameplay is very combo oriented, but it's easy to learn! You have 4 different characters at your disposal and you can switch between them at any time. You start some moves with one fighter and call the other to perform some different ones. It works so good, that it feels like a spectacle if you press the right moves and skills at the right time. Combat is great. Every single character has 4 skills that only belongs to them, and 4 skills that are the same across every character. You can have a total of 8 skills per character. Punching, kicking, grabbing has no cooldowns, but those 8 skills get on cooldown after every use. Cooldowns are not that long, especially if you pick the right upgrades from the skill tree(s). There are various items you can pick-up during a level and skill trees to invest coins into. Every single character has their own skill tree for various buff to their skills. Once you have unlocked everything on every single skill tree... man, the amount of moves you have at your disposal is awesome. The only downside of this game is that levels are very basic. You walk a bit, defeat several enemies, walk a bit, defea…

Feels slow and stiff. Kinda like my sex life, but the game has more action. I wouldn't buy it on its own, but if it's in a bundle, it's serviceable.

It's not bad, it's well-made with fluid gameplay. However, it's just incredibly repetitive and very "meh", overall - especially for a classic style beat-em up. While I love the Karate Kid franchise, this just feels more like a cash grab at the height of Cobra Kai's popularity more than anything else. As far as gameplay, it's well-crafted but enemy health is overly abundant, levels are too long, and this is all made worse by the fact that it doesn't feel fast enough - it's a bit of a slog to get through. When I stopped to look and see how long the game was, I decided that I really didn't want to put 12+ hours into this. If you're inclined to try it, wait for a sale and don't expect anything on the level of the beat'em up greats.