You only get one shot to beat the entire campaign so this is where life and health management becomes even more important. There are no assists here and once you lose all your lives, you lose all of your progress. In Arcade Mode you only have one continue, and while it takes a lot more points to gain extra lives, they at least carry into each progressing level. Here you can save your progress and continue where you left off later. In return you get infinite continues, along with the options to choose from a variety of assists that lower your score in exchange for more lives and Star Specials. In Story Mode you start each level with only 1 life and whatever extra lives you gain are tied for that level only. While it is tempting to spam your Specials to pull off beautiful flashy combos, they are often better saved for situations where you know you can finish a huge cluster of enemies off and when you can recover your health safely, which brings us to our next topic. It’s a very rare commodity to be used much more sparingly than a Regular Special. Some levels only allow you to have two in total. Some levels grant you four stars if you can find them hidden across the levels in addition to the one star you are given at the beginning of the level. My rule of thumb for Star Specials is if you’re gonna use them for a combo, it’s a waste unless you get at least 500 points per star you’ve used within the combo, or if you were very low on health and had no other means of escape or recovery. You can either keep them to get 500 points each at the end of a level, to get out of a very tough situation like an overwhelmingly large crowd or difficult boss, and/or use them to get an offensive advantage of your enemies by chipping their health down considerably.
There are also devastating Star Specials that have very limited use per level as the amount you can have per level varies. Thankfully, a new mechanic introduced in Streets of Rage 4 is the ability to regain your health after a Special Attack, provided that you do not get hit and that you land enough regular attacks to regain it. They often have better range, better damage, and more priority than your regular attacks, but they temporarily drain your health, so use them wisely. Specials are higher damaging and higher priority attacks that help finish, and sometimes extend, your combos with devastating impact.
But at the least, unlike Special Attacks, they do not cost you any health. And just like Special Attacks they have a long recovery rate so you are vulnerable during the long animation and can easily be hit out of a combo so timing and positioning is always key when risking the use of Blitz Attacks. Assuming the enemy you jump on does not have an Anti-Air Attack or luckily just doesn’t use it when you decide to drop an Air Stagger on them, this attack is not only great for combo set ups, but also jumping over an enemy’s attack so you can regain priority in the altercation.īlitz Attacks are a lot like Special Attacks in that they do more damage, have more range, and more priority than Regular Attacks.
They have been a series staple since the beginning and every good Streets of Rage player utilizes this attack to bridge the gap between themselves and enemies that are out of reach from their current position. Air Staggers are incredibly useful for dropping in on enemies from a distance and staggering them to set up a combo.