Welcome to the Strategy Guide for Streets of Rage 4!

Streets of Rage 4 is the wonderful and unexpected sequel to the Streets of Rage trilogy from the 90's that expands on its lore, characters, and most especially, its brawling mechanics.

Like a good brawler, SOR4 can be as deep or as shallow as you want it to be. For easier difficulties, you can get by with button mashing and not much thinking if you'd like, but for Hard, Hardest, and Mania it will require some actual strategizing and Streets Smarts to survive the raging within the streets.

In this guide we will explore several strategies that will help you achieve high scores and complete the harder difficulties, or at the least make easier modes even easier as you pummel your enemies to a pulp with flash and style.

• Basic Brawler Theory
  
• Basic Staggering and Comboing
  
• Useful Attacks
  
• Special Attacks
  
• Life and Health Management

The Heat of Battle

• Start Up, Active, and Recovery Frames
  
• Knowing Your Enemies
  
• Status Effects
  
• Kiting and Clustering
  
• Screen Scumming

Afterword

• Thoughts and Conclusions: an Unintentinded PSA
  
• Final Words: In Defense of Dotemu

For those who are new to the 2D sidescrolling brawler genre, here is a basic rundown on how these games function. Each screen allows for Horizontal Movement as marked by the X axis, and Vertical Movement (marked by the Y axis). The goal is to move along each axis as safely as possible while defeating all enemies on the screen.

In order to start landing successful hits, you will need to know when to approach them Horizontally or Vertically. Likewise with defending from their attacks, moving away Horizontally or Vertically will make the difference between domination or being dominated.

In the screenshot above, Diva is using her long range attack which you cannot counter if you were standing on the same lane as her in the X axis. What you can do is maybe go in for a jump attack, but the attack has several active frames that will damage you and prevent you from getting a proper drop on her.

Instead, you'll want to curve around Diva from above or below her by sliding up or down the Y axis, and getting in close enough to start landing any of your standard attacks on her to initiate a stagger and combo.

So you've managed to punch your enemy in the face and initiate a possible combo set up. Each character has a basic 4 or 5 hit combo that can be done by simply standing still and pressing the attack button that many times. Some enemies can be defeated with these basic combo strings, but for the tougher ones, you'll want to take advantage of the Staggering System.

For every character, the first two hits of their standard combo stagger the enemy and you'll want to take a moment to pause restart the combo while the enemy is staggered so that you can dish out the maximal amount of damage in the end.

You'll typically want to take enemies out within a combo as opposed to knocking them down, only to let them get back up and continue to pose a threat to you, especially enemies who have more threatening attacks than others. While it's not always possible to take out high health enemies in one go, always do your best to damage them as much as you can so that they do not disrupt your ability to take out the weaker goons.

Two useful attacks each character has is their Air Stagger, which is done by pressing Down+Attack when you are airborne, and their Blitz Attack, which is done by pressing Forward, Forward, Attack.

Air Staggers are incredibly useful for dropping in on enemies from a distance and staggering them to set up a combo. They have been a series staple since the beginning and every good Streets of Rage player utilizes this attack to bridge the gap between theirselves and enemies that are out of reach from their current position. 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.

Blitz Attacks are a lot like Special Attacks in that they do more damage, have more range, and more priority than Regular Attacks. 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. But at the least, unlike Special Attacks, they do not cost you any health.

Every character is equipped with various special attacks:

• Neutral/Defensive Special
  
• Forward Special
  
• Air Special
  
• Star Specials

Specials are higher damaging and higher priority attacks that help finish, and sometimes extend, your combos with devastating impact. They often have better range, better damage, and more priority than your regular attacks, but they temporarily drain your health, so use them wisely.

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.

UPDATE: As of the big balance patch, you can now use your Defensive Specials to get out of enemy stun lock like you could in past titles. If you ever find yourself being combo'd a little to hard by the enemy, simply perform a Defensive Special and you'll shake them all off and take a Green Health penalty you'll need to regain by using normal attacks.

There are also devastating Star Specials that have very limited use per level as the amount you can have per level varies. 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.

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. 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. Some levels only allow you to have two in total. It's a very rare commodity to be used much more sparingly than a Regular Special.

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.

The best policy, of course, is to avoid damage as much as possible, even if you do have extra lives and have health pick ups every few screens in a level. But if you do happen to take damage it is best to re-asses every situation and re-position yourself so that you can safely take on foes without the threat of having one of your lives taken away.

In Story Mode you start each level with only 1 life and whatever extra lives you gain are tied for that level only. 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. Here you can save your progress and continue where you left off later.

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. There are no assists here and once you lose all your lives, you lose all of your progress. You only get one shot to beat the entire campaign so this is where life and health management becomes even more important.

Though, I would argue that no matter what mode you play, not to mention difficulty, that you treat your first life as your one and only life. I say this at the risk of sounding philosophical or new agey, but even starting at Normal Story or Arcade mode the game gets noticeably more difficult with each progressing level to the point where mere button mashing will no longer work.

If you're looking to survive a Mania run, it's important to build the good habit of treating your first life as if it's your only life so that you can mitigate the reliance on continues and slaving over points to get new lives, though collecting sweet combo points to go toward new lives wouldn't hurt either--just for contingency sake.

Either way, conserve your health and don't take too many huge risks with Special Attacks and crazy combos that leave you in vulnerable positions unless you are more sure than unsure of whether it will help you clear the screen of enemies and get you safely to the next screen.

There are generally three phases that occur when you perform an attack. Every attack has its own speed and power, and knowing the difference between all of them will determine the pace of your fights, as well as your ability to effectively survive each encounter.

Pressing the Attack Button with any character at least once will initiate a quick and concise jab. The entire animation is very short for each character as it is meant for setting up combos and poking to check if you're in range to even hit an enemy. Because it is so quick it is entirely safe to use most of the time as you can easily recover from the animation and then move along to another spot on the screen if you must.

To really understand how Start Up, Active, and Recovery Frames affect your capacity for safety and aggression, we'll take a look at Axel's Blitz Attack aka Grand Upper as an example.


During the Start Up Phase of an attack you are vulnerable to being hit out of it from either direction, most especially from behind you. Being disrupted from the front is possible if an enemy initiates an attack that is quicker and has longer range than your initial Active Frame, let alone your actual Start Up phase assuming that the particular attack does not provide any Invincibility Frames.* Thankfully though, Axel's Grand Upper Start Up comes out pretty quick before it starts hitting enemies within the Active phase.

*More on Invicibility Frames later...


As you can see there are three hits during the Active Phase of Grand Upper. Enemies walking into any of the hitboxes of this attack will join in the party and boogy down in Hurt Town as well, but you are still vulnerable to attacks from behind. Since there's nothing but a wrecked up car behind Axel in this shot, he is safe to layeth the smackdown on this Donovan.


And finally there is the Recovery Phase of an attack where you are completely vulnerable from attacks on all directions and are not causing any damage on enemies. Axel is just standing there with his fist in the air like "yeah, eat fist, you hooligan!" while the flames around his fist dissipate. The Recovery time varies per character, but the underlying principle is that the stronger the move is the more Recovery Frames it has, meaning you need to time them when you know an enemy will take their dear sweet time before making their way to you, or if you can help it, when there are no enemies around to ruin your flow.

Just like the playable characters, enemies have their own set of attacks of varying speeds. The quicker the attack, the weaker it is as usual, but when it comes to their stronger attacks, they have obvious "tells" you can telegraph a mile away. The best policy is to be as aggressive as possible to not let them stun lock you even with weak attacks, because even one second of stun lock can catch you in an enemy gang combo, and that ain't a good time to say the least. So typically you want to...beat them to the punch, basically.

However, not every enemy is susceptible to a quick and concise beat down due to higher health pools and Invincibility Frames. Let's take a look at Commissioner as he exemplifies as a well designed boss character that gives you an idea what kind of defensive tomfoolery the rest of the enemies will have moving forward in the campaign.

Here, the Commissioner poses no threat as of yet. He is not yet in range to start trying to punch or grab you.


When you see him pull his fist back like this, it's a clear sign to step away as you'll see what Axel does in the upcoming photos. You're technically safe during the Start Up frame in the first picture and the Active frame in the second picture, but what's coming next is a downward punch that'll knock you to the ground. Depending on the range of other attacks you can either walk away horizontally to dodge it by a few inches, else you'd have to walk away vertically altogether if the range is incredibly long.


This is where the Commissioner's punch could have landed on me had I not telegraphed his attack and stepped away to safety, just mere inches away from the hitbox. Furthermore, he is flashing white. When an enemy is flashing white it means they have an Invincibility Frame active, making them immune to being staggered by your attacks. You can still damage them, but tread carefully as iFrames usually indicate that they'll have some kind of immediate attack to counter with if you stay in their range. For the Commissioner in particular he often does his punch two times in a row before becoming vulnerable or doing the next attack.

(He may be in his Recovery Frames here, but he's likely to go for yet another punch as there are still active iFrames during this animation)

When an enemy flashes red, it indicates that they are about to perform a Grab Throw on you. Your best bet is to hit them into a stagger before they can get to you. Otherwise throw another enemy or a weapon at them to stop them in their tracks. In the current build of the game, please note that there are some enemies in later stages that have seemingly unavoidable grabs you can only stop by jump kicking them from long range. However, I believe some of these enemies will be given more Start Up frames so you can better telegraph their grab attempts. Until then, learn to avoid getting Grab Thrown as much as possible for later stages.

If an enemy does happen to perform a Grab Throw on you, you can recover and get on your feet by tapping A right before you land. You will receive a few iFrames as well as 0 damage if you happen to land on your feet.

Enemies usually don't have quick attacks or iFrames after failed grab attempts, so in this case the Commissioner becomes vulnerable for a stagger so you can combo him. When he returns in a later stage as a henchman boss to another boss, he does become a little overpowered with no cooldown between grab attempts, and his screen spanning grabs can't be ignored by Defensive Special like it can in his initial Stage 2 incarnation, so be careful in Stage 7 as the strategy around him changes a little bit.

• Watch out for the Start Up frames of enemies to telegraph their upcoming attacks.
  
• When enemies flash white, it makes them immune to being staggered. You can still damage them, but proceed with caution.
  
• When enemies flash red, it means they're about to attempt a Grab Throw. Hit them out of it or move out of the way in the case of unstoppable grabs.
  
• If you ever get grabbed be sure to tap the Jump Button right before you hit the ground to land on your feet and receive iFrames and 0 damage.
  

There are several status effects you should be aware in planning your screen clearing glory. Knowing these will help you plan and anticipate your next few moves so you can take enemies out in one fell swoop.

The various status effects in the game are:

• Stagger
  
• Knock Down
  
• Off the Ground
  
• Knock Back
  
• Wall Bounce
  
• Airborne

A Stagger occurs when you strike an enemy with a Light Attack. This is when you have a short window to follow up with more strikes, a grab, or even a special to create a combo. Additionally some characters have Medium Attacks where the impact is slightly more powerful and staggers an enemy for an even longer amount of time in order for you to perform attacks that have a longer start up and recovery than Light and Medium Attacks. Blitz Attacks would be considered Heavy Attacks and cause the next status.




Heavy Attacks such as Blitz Attacks and Specials cause the enemy to Knock Down. They fall to the ground and are temporarily taken out of the fight, unless you want to take them out permanently with the following Status Effect.




Technically the photo above showing the result of Axel's 5th bread and butter combo kick could be considered a Knock Back. But a TRUE Knock Back would be his and Adam's Charge Kicks that also let the Airborne enemy to slam into other ones in the way, thus causing a Domino effect. This is extremely useful for Knocking Down several enemies at once if you need a moment to reassess the situation.

Mm Sweet Chin Music
Those Donovans were JUST getting back up too.
Yeah, how about fricken NO?!


You can lift Knocked Down enemies Off the Ground with certain moves in order to continue dishing out damage and potentially finish them off. Some noticeable OTG attacks are Axel's Air Special, Blaze's Blitz Attack, and Cherry's Offensive Special. Some OTG's like Blaze's Blitz Attack allow you to continue laying down the hurt as she has quick recovery from her Blitz Attack. Whereas in certain situations, Axel's Air Special can either Knock Back and Knock Down enemies, and he just stands there waiting for recovery to end. However, if you've Air Special'd as Axel at least from the mid point of the screen, you can cause a Knock Back that leads into our next Status Effect.




A fun and new mechanic added to Streets of Rage 4 is the Wall Bounce. In previous titles, performing a Knock Back would knock enemies out of the screen and then you'd have to wait for them to come back in for you to slap 'em silly some more. The Wall Bounce puts an end to that tedium and instead allows you to do just that; bounce them off the wall just like the end of Axel's Air Special. Since there's a few frames of delay from an enemy being wall bounced, Axel can recover from the Air Special and continue a combo as the enemy comes flying at him for even more pummelling.




Additionally, Wall Bounces cause enemies to be Airborne where you can juggle them in the air by punching them in their butts on their way back down to the ground. Whether they are finished or off before that happens is completely up to you and how much of a devastating combo you'd like to pull off.


We'll cover in more detail how you can use these Status Effects to your advantage in order to build long running combos in the Advanced Combo and Staggering section later. For now let's move on to...

The most efficient way to clear a screen of enemies is by kiting them into a certain location and piling them up into a cluster. Depending on your character's walk speed this may be incredibly easy or incredibly difficult, so you might not always be able to Cluster every last enemy into one spot. Once they have stacked up in a pile, it's time to lay the multi-baddie hurt on all of them with some staggering strikes and combo finishers.

Depending on the overall health of the enemies combined, along with the stray enemies left on screen, you may want to finish combos sooner rather than later so you don't get knocked out of your combo by a stray enemy, or worse; an enemy that you got stun locked earlier in the combo that has fallen down--because some of them have quick enough attacks to hit you in between your strikes.

Case in point, say you start jabbing at a Donovan, and then several other enemies walk into your fist. Because the first Donovan was in your first few hits, combo drop off will cause him to simply knock down. You might not even see him within the cluster, especially if you have a big one going on, but he can rabbit punch or uppercut your score goodbye, so be careful.

Ideally, you want to walk around the screen a bit and trick your enemies into piling up into one huge cluster where you can conveniently hit them all at the same time within the same combo. This way you can clear the screen easily without having too much to worry about in covering your flank.

Knowing your enemy helps in this tactic if you've paid attention to their movement behaviour. For instance, Signals and Dylans tend to walk toward you faster if you have your back turned on them, and even faster if you're walking away from them, so you use that to your advantage. Dylans are pretty annoying in that they tend to walk away from you as you approach them, but then saunter over to you whenever you're facing away from them and/or performing an attack that has long active and recovery frames.

An even more advanced Kiting and Clustering tactic is to time your heavy attacks so that enemies approach you fast enough for you to trap them into a new Combo Cluster, and in a way where you are guaranteed not to be hit during your Recovery Frames. It's really tricky to pull off since it's dependent on your character's attacks, along with the enemy's movement behaviour and the difficulty you're playing on.

But master this tried and true beat 'em up skill and you'll be cleaning up the streets of Oak City in no time!

Screen Scumming is an old school beat 'em up tactic you can employ to make your life a little easier. Basically, for every screen you enter in a level, there is a set number of enemies and enemy types that will spawn when you either reach a certain point of the screen--and/or depending on what enemies you defeat.

While you can go all the way to the right and get a peek at all the enemies you'll have to face in a given screen, for harder difficulties it might be a good idea to stop walking past a certain point so that you can tackle tough to deal with enemies first before moving on.

This is extremely useful in Mania as the number of enemies per screen intensifies to sometimes unbearable numbers. And with all of them having their own attack patterns going off at once, you may want to limit the amount of enemies you have to deal with on the screen.

But you're a roided up Rambo who thinks he can take on a legion of thugs all at once, by all means, go to town with them.

Screen Scumming is more of a safe way to play, especially when you've memorized the enemy spawn patterns of each screen. It could make Arcade Mania runs a bit smoother whether you're playing alone or with a friend. With the varying enemy types in the game, you might want to give your brain a break from having to think about how to effectively counteract all of their tactics, let alone having the reaction time to do so.

Move through levels slowly and let enemies spawn little by little, you will be saving yourself a ton of stress as well as precious health and lives you will need.

First off I want to thank EVERYBODY who has commented on this guide and EVERYBODY who has made this one of their favourite guides. It means a lot to me to know that the work I put into this guide has gotten some recognition and I hope it has had its intended effect in improving your skills and overall experience with this wonderful game.

I originally intended this guide to also have character specific strategies, along with stage specific strategies, as these elements are all unique to each other within and of themselves--but in actually doing as much as I have, it's clear that I set out to do way more than I can manage. Maybe down the line I'll create separate guides for characters and stages, but for now I hate to admit I am all tapped out on this game.

It was definitely a blast trying to beat Arcade on Mania difficulty with the retail build of Axel, who was arguably the weakest character in the cast, but still held his own when played properly. In all that time I spent slaving over memorizing the spawn patterns in levels and formulating the right combo choreography to beat the game, I was desperately waiting for the balance patch to buff up Axel.

And while I respect that it must have taken a lot of work on the side of the developers and play testers to make this game as balanced as they see fit, I hate to admit that I've gotten a little too burnt out on this game to write any more for this guide.

I put my all into beating the retail build and I am proud of being able to beat it long before the balance patch came out. That was a way better experience than relying on a huge Axel buff to improve my experience and help me beat Arcade Mania. It's nice that he finally plays the way he should have, but instead of equally contending with the enemies, it does seem like he's a little too OP against the significantly nerfed enemies. Which brings me to what also burnt me out on this game.


The difficulty of this game has always been a contentious topic since its release. At first it was seen as too hard, especially for casual players wanting to beat Mania difficulty with a little more ease, all despite the game being blatant about how unfair the difficulty was supposed to be. And so Dotemu listened to the fan feedback and scaled back some of the OP elements of enemies while also buffing and nerfing the characters to balance out the game.

Whether you agree with the changes or not, you do have to commend Dotemu for caring enough about the longevity of the game, and caring for its fans, enough to have put all this work into the balance patch. They are a business and they want to satisfy customers in order to gain more future sales on the game, and in my humble opinion, if this balance patch satisfies even more newcomers to the game, and the series as a whole, then it's a necessary evil to have made the game significantly easier than it once was.

My personal stance on this difficulty issue was this at the beginning: everyone complaining about it being too hard needed to just "git gud" and adapt. Any character can be viable in any situation against any enemy if you were smart enough. Yes, some enemies have 0 start up and can wreck you, but you need to be careful as to not get caught by their attacks. You can stick to easier difficulties and stop complaining because Mania is MEANT to be unfair.

However, over time, I did start to see how unfair the game COULD be and how it did hurt the experience, which is why I was excited to get buffs for the cast, especially for Axel who arguably needed it the most. The iFrames on Grand Upper's start up, as well as the increased distance and damage on Grand Upper, his improved walk speed, and his quicker recovery on pipe swings and Air Specials--all this is how I felt like Axel should have played in the first place. I don't think you can be honest with yourself and say that you PREFERRED this slower and weaker Axel, but at best think he was just fine as he was, and now he's fortunate enough to have gotten some improvements. It feels like the Axel we have now should be able to contend with the original version of Mania difficulty.

Now at the same time, though, yes, a lot of the enemies HAVE been significantly nerfed, and that does kind of suck. To those who find it too easy now, I totally understand where you're coming from as it is much more rewarding to beat a difficult game than it is to breeze through one. It was definitely more rewarding for me to beat this truly unfair version of Mania with the inferior build of Axel because it gives me a sense of accomplishment to have been a David to this Goliath.


After several months and 200+ hours into this game, I would like to believe I sit somewhere near the middle between the sentiments of the hardcore gamers and the casual gamers who have played this game.


To those who complained about it being too hard, yes I empathize with you, too. Some enemies did have incredibly fast start ups, ridiculously accurate vertical tracking, and seemingly random Armour Frames that made no sense. Like how could simply walking around normally or just standing still allow an enemy to be immune to getting staggered? It would make more sense if those Armour Frames were active for certain attacks and more visually logical animations than just standing or walking around doing nothing. At least those were my gripes, I'm sure you have your own grocery lists of your own gripes with it.

But at the same time, I do think you should learn to adapt and learn the game as best as you can, even if you still find the game to be too difficulty despite the balance patch nerfing the enemies significantly. It was my hope that with this guide I can help the average player improve their skill at this game and ultimately improve their experience with it.

After all, I wrote this guide with you guys in mind. Initially it was out frustration that some people just "didn't get it," but as time went on and I faced my own challenges with Arcade Mania, I started to see how arrogant and elitist I was being with simply telling people to just "git gud," and stop complaining. Talking down on others is not a good way to help them when you could easily be providing suggestions on how to improve, which is why over time I tried to really read what the complaints were, and see if I could find specific tips to rectify some people's problems, and thus this guide was born!

It's not a be all or end all guide that will turn you into a god at this game, but I sure hope it helps you get somewhere close to such status as I trust you could tap into your own capacity for strategy with just a little boost from me.

Before this balance patch came out my philosophy was this:

"it would be nice to get that patch soon so the game would be a little more manageable to play, but it's fine as it is. Back in the old days, you couldn't rely on a balance patch to make a game more fair and easy to play, what you got was what you got and you had to accept it as is.

"I will try my best to get as good as possible and take ownership for as many mistakes as I can, even though it feels like a lot of my deaths were due to broken enemy AI than my own lack of skill.

Who knows if this patch will even come out? The best I can do with this situation is improve as much as I can as if the balance patch may never come out and just enjoy the game as it is."

But I digress, the patch has come out and still the flamewars rage on. For those who enjoy the game way more now, all the power to you! I'm happy for you. And glad to know there's a select few of people who feel 50/50 with me on it being better in some ways, but worse than other ways now. Though for the very special group who absolutely abhor this game now, well...


https://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2223074675

Once again, Dotemu should be commended for not only making such a wonderful sequel that has been long overdue, but also because of showing that they care about the player experience enough to have worked long and hard on the balance patch. Whether you agree with the changes or not, at least give them the respect for caring about its fanbase enough to do what they've done.

Time can only tell if we'll get another balance patch, but I know a lot of us have been hungry for some delicious DLC, and I think it's high time that Dotemu gets the chance to create some. After this long project of EDITING their product, I think they should be free to rejuvinate their juices and CREATE now.

If they can balance the game once, they can balance it again in the future. Just let them create more instead of editing what they've already made.