“Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising” alluded to: No mercy for fans

I personally liked the game “Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues” from Flux Game Studio: I picked up the beat ’em up in a sale for 10 euros. As a fan of the series, I was entertained for a while. The new title “Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising” also comes from the same development studio, but clearly takes on too much.

The premise sounds good: Essentially, the game takes Season 4 of the series as the basis for the story. So the three dojos, Cobra Kai, Miyagi Do and Eagle Fang, have to train for the big All Valley Karate Tournament. As a player, you pick your favorite dojos and can then recruit additional characters for your team as the game progresses. Some of the characters from the series will be voiced again by the original actors.

While the game “Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues” is a simple but effective brawling game, the sequel makes it much more complicated. In a kind of management simulation, you have to find fighters for your dojo, hire employees who keep the recruits and your dojo in good shape, and fight your way through levels. The latter is one of the key steps to expanding your dojo ranks. Because in the sections like the school or the shopping center you will come across potential new students for whom you must first complete a small task in order for them to join your dojo.

In addition, the levels mentioned also serve to level up existing characters in the battles and to carry out a few collections. Unfortunately, this gets tiring quickly, because you play through the same sections over and over again – just grinding. The first game was still a 2.5D brawl game, so now you go full 3D and try your hand at skirmishes that are on the older entries of the “Yakuza” series recall. Unfortunately, this reference is too much of a praise, because the fights in “Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising” feel very wooden and are also badly bugged.

It would be amusing to see this in the series as well: Enemies marching rigidly against walls, at a loss as to how to act, or not appearing at all, leaving you stuck. Because after the fights you can only progress further if you have flattened the current wave. That’s pretty annoying and gives the impression that the developers had to give in to deadline pressure from the publisher. From time to time, the frame rate drops significantly for incomprehensible reasons, as if the Xbox Series X, on which I tested the title, was completely overwhelmed.

But that is unlikely in view of the graphics that can be seen: those are “ok”, but would not have been an eye-catcher even in the days of PS4 and Xbox One. The camera is often your biggest nemesis, which reminds you of the games problems of the past. In addition to the main story, there is also a survival mode, which is not very enjoyable due to the meager combat system. Alternatively, you can simply watch the karate tournament – ​​also in multiplayer. You also have the chance to reenact two important scenes from the series – the fight at school and a fight between Johnny, Daniel and some bikers.

Special attacks, which you can also upgrade with coins or expand with new moves, are intended to loosen up the gameplay, and a Chi meter is used for particularly effective attacks. Even if there are over 25 characters, it turns out that they all play very similar in some way. So the differences are mostly cosmetic. I can primarily praise the soundtrack, which also comes from the composers of the series.

In the end, “Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising” gives the impression that the developers at Flux Game Studio simply got carried away with the sequel after the successful debut and neither the budget nor the time frame matched their own ambitions. The result is a game that has good beginnings but is hard to swallow even for fans of the series. And I myself count myself among the hardcore fans, because “Cobra Kai” has been my absolute favorite series since season 1.

Should “Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising” still receive a few patches and be available for less than 10 euros, die-hard fans of the series can risk a look due to the involvement of some actors and the series composers. I think it’s a pity: Otherwise, it’s better to ignore this title and give yourself z. B. “Lost Judgment”there you have more of.

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