The two girls are sitting in detention when they get a message telling them their boyfriend's have been kidnapped. The girls attempt to leave detention and the Tannoy demands that they are stopped, prompting students to fight them. The fighting doesn't stop when they get outside - the whole world is out to get them! It's all self-aware and silly and presented with anime and manga style. The cutscenes are either presented in black and white manga comic style, or anime style like the game intro and boss introduction. In shops, you are presented with static art, but the character design is great.
The combat is more complex than the original beat-em-up games i.e. more combos ability to block, and can wall jump. Your block maybe is a little too harsh on the timing because I didn't seem to be able to counter very often. There's plenty of weapons to pick up which mostly can be used a few times before they break, and throw at enemies. There's the likes of crates, bins, yo-yos, rods, shovels and more.
You can recruit any enemy to call in for an attack, then they leave and can be called in again after a cooldown time. Using them seemed to miss more often than not. Some spawn in where you are then attack forward, but others seemed to have a slight delay so spawned in where you moved to, then if they have a ranged/agile attack, then this will hit even further away than you were positioned. I never felt like I could make sense of the mechanic.
I think the enemies stay on the floor for far too long, which breaks the pace of the action. You can stomp on downed enemies, but it can often be hard to line up attacks. I often "dabbed" over them instead of stomping. That move is "forward and Y" and even when I was releasing the stick, it often seemed to register as the dab. What makes this more annoying is that it leaves you open to attack as there's a long time before your character can be moved again. Most downed enemies attack as soon as they get up; so you are supposed to do a few stamps then back off. I saw gameplay videos of people way more skilled than me that were constantly running into the issue. Many reviews don't seem to be mentioning it though.
There's a good variety of enemy designs. You start off with standard students, guards, then more interesting enemies are introduced over the course of the game; some more robotic of fantastical. There are stronger variants of the enemies which look more Gothic.
The bosses have some interesting ideas. Some are simple one on one in an arena but they will have interesting attacks. Others change the gameplay somewhat, like the musician who sends Guitar Hero style notation your way and you have to jump over them. Another boss switches the battle to 2D and you sometimes have to do a wall-jump to knock her down to ground level. People often give the boss battles high praise, but they are the usual 3 phase affair where new attacks are introduced in each phase. In the final phase, they often had an attack that might have dealt 50% damage, so it will kill you the first time because you won't have a lot of health and won't know how to dodge it. The second time it will probably kill you because you still didn't learn how the move is telegraphed or how to dodge it. Given that you can get mugged off by unfortunate stun locks, the boss battles often just feel unfair. Given that the death penalty is (possibly) 20% cash, you need to predict when a boss is coming, then go and spend all your cash so the boss cannot steal it.
The final boss was annoying because she has the same 3 health bars, so I used all my health restoration thinking I was winning, then she restored 1 bar so she actually has 4 health. It looked tedious to backtrack out to the shop so I ended up retrying the boss several times without any health restorations. The annoying thing is, my experience seemed like one of those games where you watch Youtube playthroughs and the boss didn't seem to block or be as aggressive towards other players.
The menus are presented on a mobile phone, where you can view your map, change your equipped items, or use health restoration items.
Although the progress is linear, you sometimes have to backtrack slightly for objectives, or to go through a newly unlocked route. There are bus stops for quick travel between the main areas if you do need to backtrack, or return to the dojo to spend your cash. There’s a good variation of locales, and the environments are well detailed. Sometimes you are locked into an area and have to defeat a certain number of enemies to progress.
There are many statues to find and smash which can be slightly hidden.
If you linger in an area, enemies keep spawning in, although I think these enemies then don’t give experience. Experience levels you up which boosts some of your attributes, restores your health to full, and allows you to buy more moves at the dojo.
You need to make sure you spend your cash or you run the risk of wasting it due to death. The extra moves you purchase from the dojo helps you extend combos and add more variety to the gameplay. Food items not only act as restoration items, but the first time you consume one, you get a permanent attribute bonus, so it is also a way to upgrade your character.
There are equipable items to purchase and you can have 2 active at any time. They often had minor effects like an extra 5% damage against a specific type of enemy, or faster throw speed.
Since the enemies can take a lot of hits to defeat, and then you get the spawning enemies, it can feel a bit tedious and possibly designed for multiplayer. If you play single-player, your other character only levels up when beating bosses so will be way underleveled. So unless you constantly quit out and switch characters, then you just have to stick with one (I didn’t notice an easy way to switch).
The music is really good like many reviews comment on. The criticism I have is that it does tend to loop in certain areas and when it's an energetic song with vocals, it gets a bit old fast.
I really wanted to love the game. The combat is more comprehensive than the old school beat-em-ups, and the presentation is fantastic. I didn't mind how the two protagonists were cliché high school girls with a crush, and I actually liked the conclusion to the game. Many people seemed to hate the ending which I assume they may be fans of the franchise, but I am not familiar with the existing storyline. It took me 8.5 hours but I bet half the time was just stuck on the boss battles.