Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra Remix Review

In Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra Remix, the president of the United States, Blake Orama, has been kidnapped by Ninja Dragon Terrorists group. It’s up to our trio of heroes, Lisa Santiago, Bruce Maxwell and Brad Steele to go at his rescue and by way of taking down the evil group of terrorist enemies. Are our protagonists strong enough to take the group down and save the president?

Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra Remix is a new entry in the beat’em up genre, although it has a twist: turn-based combat. While inanimate object can be punched in real time, enemies are a completely different story. Akin to Persona games such as Persona 3 Portable, players need to walk towards an enemy and “punch” them in order to trigger the battle. Thankfully, you can attack with A without the turn based stuff, but it still drains your attack meter.

You’ll have a list of moves to choose from. Once you’ve selected the number of moves that maxes out your SP meter, you’ll able to press X to end your turn and beat up the baddie in front of you. Your offensive includes an array of attacks but also grabs. And akin to RPGs, you can get and dish out buffs/debuffs such as slow, bleeding or blind for example; either giving you a temporary advantage or disadvantage in combat.

The defensive approach offers a few different options. While you can either brace or block, with the former not costing anything and the latter costing 8FP from your attack meter, you can also turn around if an enemy attacks you from behind. If you come across a grappler enemy type, you can counter but it require a full block of your action meter.

And the more you fight and level up, you’ll unlock new skills and combos. Instead of the traditional way of going about things in beat’em ups, Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra Remix has a linear overworld map where you move from dot to dot and when an enemy is in your way, the game switches to the battle view. In this view, you’re free to move around the available area running after the enemy to engage them in combat. You’ll also come across garbage bins containing helpful resources such as health items.

Given that I’m a sucker for old school visual style, I truly appreciate Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra Remix’s classic visuals reminiscent to the good old NES era. The world map is a nice touch although it would’ve been nice to have a non-linear approach to it. The soundtrack is also another chiptune banger; while other try to capture the essence of 8-bit gaming era, Inverse Phase captures it wonderfully. You can’t be more chiptune than this; unless an original NES game.

The game’s biggest hurdle is definitely its combat. Beat’em ups are made for quick, fast punching and kicking to take out enemies as quick as possible. Turning this into a turn-based system makes it feel like a completely chore. The flow of the game drops to a crawl and feels even slower than turn-based RPGs. Even using the A button to take is problematic because while you’ll do quick attacks, it drains your attack meter but you’re still interrupted by annoying X enemy is attacking. And whether turn-based or not, barely doing any damage makes every battle feel like an annoying chore.

I’m a big fan of developers taking chances, but Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra Remix doesn’t feel right. Combining a fast paced genre like beat’em up with a slower turn based combat just doesn’t work as it breaks the naturally flow of the beat’em up genre. While they did include a real time attack button, it drains your meter and limits your offensive. You’re also at a disadvantage when you’re forced to do the turn based mode. If you’re looking for a beat’em up or turn-based experience, there are so many better option than this chore of a game.