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Starting with the core gameplay it’s clearly inspired by Smash from a concept and controls standpoint but there’s no doubt it targeted a more competitive play experience than a casual one. The first thing any Smash fan will notice about Brawlout is the lack of game-changing items during matches, which will either heighten or dampen spirits depending on where you are on the spectrum of opinion on those. If there’s a criticism to be had with excluding items it’s that without them the multi-tiered and more complex level layouts don’t make as much sense without them. The various looks in Smash stages are geared towards people moving around and often chasing pickups, and typically if people choose to treat it as a straight fighter the dispense with all of that in favor of a standard battleground. I think the flow of play in Brawlout, with the unusual layouts but missing the enticing items, ends up occupying an unusual space and may potentially encourage cheap strategies. As a single-player experience I think the addition of the Trials mode is a good one, as playing through the old-school MK-style Arcade mode towers tended to get pretty stale. Trials instead throws you through a gauntlet of varying challenges, whether fighting in teams, facing off against multiple opponents, trying to complete skill challenges, or facing off against bosses who’ll knock you out hard if you’re not on top of your dodge game. To add some flavor and incentive to the skill challenges if you complete them you’ll have a choice of 3 one-use perks to help you out in a specific match. In particular against the bosses you’ll need the help but if you fall before you use them they’ll be lost. If there’s a complaint with Trials mode it’s that I think it’s missing an opportunity by being seemingly being locked in for its progression. As a roguelike fan I’d love to see it be a bit different every time, but I think it would be smart to go with a daily, or at least a weekly or monthly, switch-up of how it plays out. That could at least give people an incentive to return, resetting leaderboards and perhaps dangling something new and fun to entice people further. In terms of multiplayer and online play it’s hard to speak to whether stability has improved, since I can’t contrast it directly with how it was at launch, but in a post-Smash world I think it has a different problem. Hitting up the online lobbies in the evening and at some other times of day availability was extremely limited, especially for the newly-supported unranked play, which made the dodgy experience when I played hard to quantify since I wasn’t even always to find a match-up within my own region. Consider, Smash itself has been criticized for its online play inconsistencies with lag, but a lack of a large enough pool of people to play with can be even more crippling. Local multiplayer is thus a much better option if you have people around, and for the most part the performance stays on top of the action, though when it’s crowded there would on occasion be some struggles to keep up, though they weren’t terrible. So, all things considered, where does this admitted Smash clone stand up now that the series that inspired it is readily available as well? As is the case with kart racing titles trying to compete on the same system as Mario Kart it’s a tough business to compete with a game that’s clearly at the top of the food chain… though also at a much more premium price. If your heart is set on online multiplayer match-ups, I’d say that given availability even on the heels of a new patch the long-term prospects aren’t good, even if you can consistently get stable performance. Perhaps seeing this and simply wanting to address single-player concerns the patch adding Trials mode was a smart move and definitely helps shore up value, giving you more variety as you try to earn new fighters, skins, and other cosmetic goodies. Brawlout is by no means a bad game, but there’s no denying that it sits squarely in the shadow of its inspiration that’s now also its competitor.
Justin Nation, Score:Fair [6.5]