Welcome to our review of Brawlhalla, a free-to-play fighting game, which could still your hunger for Super Smash Bros in a snap (well, until the 7th of December 2018, probably).
Brawlhalla is developed by Blue Mammoth Games, and released back in October of 2017. The studio was, however, bought by Ubisoft in March – which led to the inclusion of Rayman as a playable character. The lovely guys at Ubisoft provided us with an early access code, so we had plenty of time to dig through the game and find out if we love it, or if it’s just a place holder till Smash lands on the Nintendo Switch. Let’s jump into this… Norse-inspired brawler!
For those unfamiliar with how Brawlhalla works, it’s a fighting game in which you have to knock your opponent off stage (like in Smash). The more you damage your opponent, the easier he/she/it gets knocked off stage. The game works with a color schematic to make this visible – ranging from white (zero-to low damage) to red (well, off you go). If you get knocked off stage, you will lose a life (or stock). You can win if you deplete the lives of your opponents, or if you have the most stocks left at the end of the timed match.
Game Modes of Brawlhalla
The game comes with a few game modes, which are kind off self-explanatory.
- Free for All
- 1v1 Strike Out
- Experimental 1v1
But hey – for those rushing towards a dictionary. Free-For-All is a chaotic mode where 4 players knock each other out to gain points. In 1v1 Strikeout, players pick 3 characters which they play for 1 stock each. Experimental 1v1 allows players to test out upcoming features against each other. Custom games can be hosted online and locally, and they support up to 8 players per match, experimental maps and region changing. You can join groups of your friends to create a clan, with multiple promotions within the clans. Clans gain experience from all members.
Overall Gameplay
I must applaud Brawhalla for the controls. They are simple, and that’s not a bad thing. All the special attacks are found under a certain button (so no Up + B, Down + Right + B or Up, Up, Down, Down..) and are easily performed. When a player falls off the stage, you can, if you time it right, wall jump back up. Oh and you start out with no weapons, just fisticuffs. During the battle weapons will fall down from the sky, which can be picked up by a single press of a button. Each character can use two weapons, which include Blasters, Katars, Rocket Lances, Swords, Spears, Cannons, Axes, Gauntlets, Hammers, Bows, and Scythes.
The game gives a quick summary of all their uses:
Blasters, Bows, and Spears perform well at a distance from the opponent, while Katars and Gauntlets are more effective up close. Rocket Lance allows for quick traversal of the stage. Axes, Cannons, and Hammers all do large amounts of damage. Swords and Scythes are fast and damaging. All characters have unarmed attacks, should they be disarmed. Gadgets like bombs, mines and spike balls are also used. Weapons can also be thrown to interrupt the enemy’s moves or to make it difficult for them to get back to the stage. Each character has 3 special or “signature” moves per weapon, for a total of 6 per character.
Coins!
The only thing I disliked about Brawhalla, but is featured in almost every game nowadays, is the pay-wall. Every week, Brawlhalla has a rotation of 6 selectable characters for newer players to use for free. Which is kind of nice to test out the characters that look cool, but are locked behind the ingame currency. This number of free rotation characters was increased to 8 in late-2018, likely as a result of how many new characters were added to the game by this time, over 40 in total, including Shovel Knight and Rayman.
To fully purchase characters, Brawlhalla offers an in-game shop, giving a chance for players to use the in-game currency earned through matches, daily missions, and level ups. But it’s a lot of ingame currency to unlock it all. Brawhalla of course made it possible to unlock all characters in one bit, for a nifty 19.99 (so far the free-to-play part). For the games content I would rather buy a Smash DLC package or DX-fighters pack, since they offer a different experience. It doesn’t make Brawhalla a bad game though, because it’s great in what it does. It offers a solid fighter experience on Nintendo Switch (and other platforms), with the chance to go Pro with Mammoht’s own tournaments.
