Last Beat Enhanced Review

Last Beat Enhanced is a typical beat’em up where an evil gang, the Mad Stroke gang, has taken over the city and it’s up to our protagonists, John, Noa, and Din to roll up their sleeves and punch and kick their way through Mad Stroke and restore peace to the city.

Last Beat Enhanced is a generic beat’em up where you can punch, jump, grab, and parry enemies. There’s also a special attack that can be used with a cool-down meter instead of the usual taking a chunk of your health bar trope. As with other games of the genre, the premise is simple: move from point A to point B by beating everyone on your path to progress to the level’s boss.

Out of the box, you can choose from 3 characters: John, Noa, and Din. All of them have different strengths and weaknesses; John is the balanced character, Noa is quick and Din (a dinosaur) is the tank. As you progress through each level, you’ll pick up money that you can use to unlock two more characters: Ares and Zari.

Money earned by punching enemies and picking up piles of cash on the ground has a few purposes. It is used in order to be revived where you died, unlock additional characters, and also to purchase improvements for your character. For example, you can unlock a bigger health bar and a faster cooldown for your special attack; among other perks. You can also pick up weapons, but aside from the knife, they are all useless as the wind up before attacking is so long that enemies will attack you before you land your hit.

So the way you earn money aside from picking it up is interesting. Each punch of a combo between 1 and 19 will yield 1$. If you manage to keep the combo going between 20 and 29, each punch will now be worth 2$. This mechanic will work up to 99 where each attack will be worth 9$. The longer you keep your combo alive, the more you’ll rack up.

The biggest nuisance here is that instead of having lives like most beat’em ups, you can be revived where you died by using your score; the higher the score, the more it’ll cost. It’s a puzzling and unnecessary change from the typical beat’em ups. While more often than not you’ll have enough to revive yourself, you’re almost limited to a single retry per level. Also, everything (unlockable characters, character improvements) which means a bit of grinding might be necessary. I reached level 5 (out of 8) and I still couldn’t afford the cheapest improvement item. Health doesn’t regenerate between levels and some hits on robots don’t always register damage; whether it’s a bug or on purpose is unknown.

The Last Beat Enhanced’s visuals are a throwback to the classic golden 8-bit era of gaming. It has a bit of Mighty Final Fight style to it and it looks great. Each area is colorful and unique from one another. Some levels might have a few similarities while having their own flair. The prehistoric style level reminds me of the same style level from TMNT IV: Turtles in Time. On the audio side of things, it’s fine. The score is generic and forgettable, although the sound when punching enemies is one of the most satisfying ones I’ve heard in a while.

The Last Beat Enhanced is a fun and addictive beat’em up. Being able to unlock new characters and character improvement is a great way to keep players playing. The lack of typical lives trope is definitely the game’s biggest nuisance as it will force players to restart a level that could be completed if we’d have like 2 lives at the start. Once you’ve gotten used to it, you’ll find that the Last Beat Enhanced is one of best beat’em up experiences; whether you’re a long-time fan of the genre or looking to finally take the plunge, this is definitely a must-play experience.