Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons is a two-dimensional beat 'em up in which Billy and Jimmy Lee reclaim a city controlled by gangs. Instead of a fixed sequence of levels, the game combines street fights with a freely chosen mission order and unlockable upgrades.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons was released in July 2023 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. On PlayStation and Xbox, the store pages list Jul 26, while Steam and Nintendo list Jul 27.

The game is natively available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. On Xbox it supports Smart Delivery and is optimised for Xbox Series X|S. A standalone Switch 2 version is not part of this.

The action runs side-on across the screen. You put together a team of two fighters and switch between them during fights. Different reach, attacks and special moves make choosing your duo an important part of the tactics.

The free expansion Sacred Reunion was released on Apr 4, 2024 and added Ranzou, Sonny Lee and Chin Sei Mei, Survival, Versus and online co-op. Further free content brought, among others, Jeff, Abore, Evil Marian and Super Anubis as extra characters.

For the PC version, Steam lists Windows 10 or 11 64-bit, an Intel Core i5-9300H, 8 GB RAM, a GeForce GTX 1050 with 4 GB graphics memory, DirectX 11 and 3 GB of free storage as minimum requirements. Recommended are an Intel Core i5-8400, 16 GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.

In an alternate 1990s, a nuclear war has devastated New York. Rival gangs control the streets. The brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee take up the fight against the gangs and meet old rivals and new enemies along the way.

Billy and Jimmy Lee are part of the initial selection, as are Marian and Uncle Matin. More characters become available through the progression system. They have different attack patterns and special moves, so the same encounter plays out differently with another pair.

You decide yourself the order in which you attack the rival gangs. This order affects mission length, enemy count and the difficulty of later sections. As a result, a new run cannot simply be repeated with the same fixed level sequence.

After missions, you invest the money you earned in randomly offered upgrades. You can also hold it back for revives. The token shop unlocks, among other things, extra fighters, backgrounds and game modes.

Double Dragon Gaiden supports single players as well as co-op for two people on the same device or online. Online co-op came with the free expansion Sacred Reunion and allows shared runs regardless of location.

Alongside the regular fight against the gangs, Survival offers ever-stronger waves of enemies and upgrades between rounds. In Versus mode, two players face each other with chosen fighters and upgrades. Both modes came with Sacred Reunion.

The PC version offers German on-screen text. English, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean and other languages are also supported. The voice audio is not the same as a full German dub.