College Brawl is a 2D beat ’em up in where we play as a college delinquent named Ken. Arriving in class one day, a friend tells him that he has been jumped by a gang and they robbed his backpack. That’s more than enough motivation for Ken to spring into action and immediately start laying the smackdown on the all-female gang. And when I say immediately, I really mean it. Within a few seconds of the game starting, you will be rushed by the members of the Red Katz Gang. It would be wise to view the store page to learn the controls. In-game, there is nowhere to let you know them, so you’ll be beaten to a pulp as you fumble to learn how to fight back.
To save you the trouble, I’ll tell you the Key bindings here. D is used to attack, S to Jump, and A unleashes your special attack. Ken also starts off with 30 healing items that you can use at any time by pressing E. If you find yourself losing all of your health and still contain at least five healing items, pressing R will put you right back in the fight if you press it in time. Now V, V is a mystery. The store page calls it “HP Points”, but pressing this key does not seem to do anything. Finally, you have the F key. This allows you to sexually abuse any fallen foe and refills a portion of your KI meter that you use for the special attack.
You can have your way with a foe anytime and anywhere. Ken doesn’t care in the least if bystanders are watching him do the deed. In fact, there are quite a lot of unique background animations from otherwise easily ignored NPC characters. They can be in shock from what is happening, cheer you on, or even follow your lead if they are with their girlfriend. This touch adds a lot of life to the world. No one will attack you while the sex animation plays out, but as soon as it finishes, it is time to put your fists back up again. Your enemies never stop spawning, so by the time you finish, you will likely be surrounded.
That does make the act pretty hazardous to yourself. The gameplay reason you want to have sex is to refill some of your KI meter for that special ability. You can only attack in front of you, meaning that if you find yourself surrounded, you either take the damage or waste the KI you just gained. Enemies have a greater reach than you. Even in a one on one fight, there is no way to reliably avoid damage as they have a longer attack range than you and have no wind-ups to their lightning-fast strikes. Combat in this title simply does not have a good feel to it and has some critical flaws that keep it from being fun, including the ones I just mentioned. There is little reason not to walk by every enemy taking the damage you likely would have anyway, then heading straight towards the boss fight.
You have a single attack and there is no variation or strategy to it, you’ll just be mashing the D key and hoping for the best. Occasionally you will use the special ability to down any enemy near you to avoid being mobbed by the never-ending legion of foes. The jump button is only useful for a single boss. It is something you will otherwise never use as it is an extreme danger to yourself. Jumping does damage enemies you fling yourself at, but only a little, and the animation for it takes far too long without the ability to break out of it. That amounts to you slightly damaging an enemy, then getting your face beaten in until you are given control of your character again.
There are five stages overall, each containing a boss at the end of it. They can range from being fun to being a bit annoying to fight. It is mostly the former until late game, where it tries to up the challenge in not so great ways. Damaging a boss enough in a short time span may knock them down. You can then use this opportunity to have your way with them. It both damages their health and refills a bit of your SP meter, making it the only instance where the sex mechanic is used well. Every boss also has their own unique lewd animations, and even a CG after you defeat them. While these fights are a mixed bag, it definitely adds some much-needed variety to the rest of the bland gameplay on that stage.
Having sex additionally doubles as a high score system. It does not serve that purpose well. Not only are enemies infinitely respawning, your score doesn’t reset when you die. Since you restart again on the same screen with a full life-bar and 30 healing items, this scoring system is entirely about patience, not skill. The sexual pixel animation here isn’t half-bad. It is pretty decent actually, and there are a ton of them to see. How fast more enemies show up is what ruins actually wanting to do so, as you can not waste any time or you will lose even more resources from cheap hits, due to all foes have a longer attack range. Thankfully, you can see all the animations and CGs in the Extras mode from the main menu, after having finished the game.
Going into the Extras mode will allow you to change the background, speed of the sex animations, and the ability to ejaculate any time. With how many there are and their good quality, this is the biggest selling point for College Brawl. You may also notice that you still haven’t unlocked all of the scenes and animations while you’re in there. This is due to an entire four-stage alternate story unlocking as well after you defeat the base game. In it, no longer will you play as Ken, you will know be the female gym teacher Anko. Someone is paying good money for a sex video with her in it, causing every male in town to try to claim that prize by none consensual means. You have gone from the sex offender to the victim in this mode, which is a nice change of pace.
The developers really put quite a bit of effort into this mode. They changed up a ton of things from the base game, instead of just giving us more levels with a different character. For one, enemies no longer want to beat you senseless. Foes will now try to grapple you in close range, giving you the range advantage in a fight, unlike the base campaign. They also randomly drop healing items when defeated, making the infinite respawns less of a chore. In the original game, the only thing you got was a slight refill of your SP meter after wasting time with the sex animations. There was no way to get more healing items either. Now not only do you get a steady supply of resources, but you also get KI for picking them up without having to go through those animations Ken had to.
On the flip side of that, you do have a chance of being knocked down and sexually abused when attacked. You thought the number of enemies Ken had to deal with was grave, just wait until you see the hordes of horny men that Anko has to fend off. She doesn’t have a two-directional special ability like Ken has either. Anko uses a bat that only affects those in the direction she is facing. Despite that, the gameplay flows a lot better now thanks to the changes made. I still wouldn’t call it great, yet it is a night and day difference. It’s funny really, the things I liked and disliked about the game have been completely reversed. I actually enjoy going through a level now, but the bosses have been cranked way past 11 on the obnoxious scale.
After the first boss, near every one of them will cause you to get knocked down after a single attack. Remember how you get abused when knocked down? This means that you will now be spending more time mashing the movement keys to escape the sex animations than actually fighting. That is on top of how much cheaper they are overall compared to the base campaign. I could go on a paragraph’s long rant dissecting what is wrong with each one, yet I feel I’ve bashed on the gameplay enough in one review. The devs simply do not know how to increase the challenge in a fair manner, and only seem to try by playing off the game’s existing flaws like attack range or now being able to be knocked down. That last one wasn’t even a flaw until they made it into one. Holy heck, is my wrist killing me after having mashed on my keyboard so much in a single boss fight.
The low detail, MS Paint looking graphics is something you either love or hate. Personally, I really like it. It reminds me of the Flash games of yesteryear, and everything does look like they belong thematically among the background, something all too easy to get wrong. Nothing looks out of place and it does have a good amount of locales to fight in. I just wish there was some freedom of movement other than merely moving left or right. It plays more like a really bad version of Kung-Fu Master than Double Dragon styled beat em ups. The attack animations are not great, but the sexual acts are. Most of the story is told at the start and finish of a campaign, with some dialogue thrown in during boss fights. I did not spot any errors in the translation. It was well done and only possessed a few bizarre bits of wording or phrases.
Its music though.. oh man, the music. It has been a good minute since I’ve heard songs this terrible and repetitive. To give you an idea, imagine you go into FL Studios, randomize a sample, then set it to repeat. That is the soundtrack’s quality here. College Brawl is a title I really wanted to like. I love the whole delinquent vibe and there is a shocking amount of content here. That alternate mode is basically a second title packed in. Sadly, the game just isn’t fun to play. The star of the show will be the pixel animation hentai and the low price of the title. With some tweaking, this could actually be a decent title. In its current state, however, the gameplay drags it all down. There is to my knowledge no method of unlocking all of the lewd scenes and animations without playing through the entire thing. It is not an appealing proposal, to say the least.
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