I played the demo on Xbox 360 when I was in middle school before I knew what a Scott Pilgrim even was. I remember enjoying it but I never bought it before it got delisted. I watched the film and mini-series for the first time shortly before the announcement of the Steam release and all the memories of playing the demo came back and I was excited.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World just from presentation alone, is incredible. Any fan of the series will catch all the references and surely appreciate them. I'm not the biggest fan but I still enjoyed seeing elements from the movie translated into this retro beat-em-up. The pixel art is incredible; I think it beats games like Fight N' Rage, Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds, and River City Girls by a landslide. The soundtrack is chiptune-pop done by Anamanaguchi, and honestly, I would buy the game just for the soundtrack alone. The presentation overall is a good enough reason to buy the game. Scott Pilgrim fans probably bought this day 1. But how's the gameplay? Well middle school me clearly had a lot more patience...

TLDR : Just from gameplay alone, River City Girls is better than this game in every way possible. Play that instead.


Scott Pilgrim vs The World is heavily inspired by the game River City Ransom. Both games are beat-em-ups with RPG elements. You start off really weak, and I mean REALLY weak. But as you defeat enemies, you'll accumulate money allowing you to buy items from shops that increase your stats like health, defense, and speed. You'll also level up, which unlocks more moves and attacks. I have played the original River City Ransom, and I genuinely do not believe its aged well at all, and unfortunately Scott Pilgrim suffers the EXACT same problems as this game from 1989.

As I said before, you are really weak in the beginning. You barely do damage, but all the enemies have a crap ton of health. You don't have any moves that can deal with them quickly, you just have to suffer through repetitive mashing and stop and go combat. This seriously makes the first few hours such a slog and not fun. I went into my first play through blind which I do not recommend. The game doesn't tell you what items do in shops at all until AFTER you buy them, and it's only briefly. Use a guide to see what every item in the shops do because many of the items are just a waste of money, as the XP, stat, or health gain can be inferior to other items that barely cost more or less. If you don't, you can easily waste money barely increasing your stats and XP. Games like Phantom Breaker: BG and River City Girls start you out weak too, but those games were still fun from the start and only got more fun as you kept playing. This game is just awful from the beginning and only started getting kinda fun after I finally unlocked the ability to damage enemies that I knocked over. I HIGHLY recommend inputting the cheat code to gain $50 repeatedly and either buy items at Wallace's secret shop or pay off Scott's debt to make the early and mid game not nearly as horrible.

But even after you start leveling up and increasing your stats, the core beat-em-up elements are still just awful. When you get hit, there is a very high chance that you will get stunned and cannot do anything for about a second. Most likely, an enemy is just going to smack you again and make you fall over. When you fall over, you have to wait 3 seconds to get up again to regain control. I hate this so much. You can't do anything, the enemies don't do anything. Its just waiting. Occasionally the enemies will jump on you and you have to mash out, but its rare. You don't even have a "get off me" attack that you could maybe use to end the stupid hit stun at the cost of guts or some hp, instead its before you were to get hit at all. This problem exists only in River City Ransom style games and I don't know why they keep bringing it back. Annoying back then, still annoying now. You unlock the ability to air recover if you get knocked up, but you unlock it so late that I wanted to stop playing by then.

The control and hit detection is clunky. Simple inputs like down and X at the same time are way too precise. Often I wanted to beat a downed opponent, but then I just regular punch or I sidestep downward. That "get off me" attack is not reliable at all because sometimes enemies just...don't get hit up close. Just guard, and roll away assuming you unlocked it. I can forgive River City Ransom for its stiff controls because its old, this has no excuse.

Another shared problem are throwable objects. Every single time I threw an object or did a combo when the field had them scattered, there was always this paranoia of whether the object was going to bounce back right at me and hurt/stun me. I started throwing objects behind me frequently because of how often this kept happening. Again, why is this stupid prolonged period of stun in the game?

Let's talk about the enemies. Almost all the enemies in this game have the ability to block, just like you. The basic enemies can be thrown while they block, but you don't unlock the ability to throw enemies for a while. So the only thing you can do before then is stop attacking and wait 2-3 seconds. Yeah, you just stop attacking and wait. It's a freakin' beat-em-up! I want to beat people up, not be a gentleman about it! River City Girls also has blocking enemies too but at least they don't hold block for long. Phantom Breaker: BG has blocking enemies, but if you keep attacking, their guards will break eventually. This game just wants you to deal with things by just waiting. Even after unlocking throws, the stiff controls made it hard to do this consistently as you'll do heavy punches by accident A LOT. And even worse, there are some elite enemies that you can't throw at all, but they love to block! Yet another fun mechanic copied from River City Ransom.

The amount of waiting you have to do in this game is so irritating. You can't skip cutscenes at all even after repeat playthroughs, yet you can skip the credits? Buying items is extremely slow; you have to wait for the cashier to thank you, show the stats of the item you bought,ask you if you want anything else, and it goes by soooo slow. I bought 9 of a specific item because it gives you a 1-up, but you have to buy it one at a time. So I spent over a minute just slowly buying the same item when in any other game, it would let me at least mash through it so I could do it in less than 10 seconds. The enemies blocking all the damn time with the solution being to just stop and wait is just so unfun. Need I bring up the overly long stun period again? My patience wore thin that my enthusiasm to beat the game again with the other characters lowered significantly.

Let's not forget about needing the Ubisoft launcher to even play this game. There are bugs and glitches in the game offline, such as not being able to walk into shops, cutscenes not playing for a solid 5+ seconds, broken trophies, and falling through the floor over and over before the giant mech fight. Well, play the game online and those issues are even MORE likely to happen.
_

This game is such a frustrating beat-em-up. River City Ransom I'm sure was crazy at the time, but its seriously aged so poorly; likewise, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is no different. River City Girls is just a better River City Ransom game. Even though I don't like that nearly as much as Streets of Rage or Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds, that game didn't frustrate me nearly as much as this game.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World pleased me as a retro, chiptune, and casual Scott Pilgrim fan, but frustrated me as a beat-em-up fan. But hey for $5 on sale, you'll get a good soundtrack and eye candy. And should this game get delisted again, who knows how long you'll have to wait to get it again.

why is this game so hard lmao

it's a borderline death march

♥♥♥♥ Ubisoft connect. Can't even access achievements. Piece of ♥♥♥♥ company I hope they go bankrupt. Bloatware and lies is all they are. I hope Rayman finds a better parent company.