Streets of Rage 4 is excellent. That’s what we think, and that’s what most reviewers think. If you’re into beat-’em-ups, then SOR4 is going to give you that classic beat-’em-up action with fresh new graphics and styling.
But nothing is ever perfect straight out of the gate. Dotemu has been pretty good about making sure that whatever bugs have cropped up during the course of release were squashed in due course, and now the development team is taking aim at something that hasn’t received a lot of attention since Streets of Rage 4 came out.
We’re talking about gameplay balance, baby.
Dotemu recently tweeted out that there is a patch coming this month (although they did ask us to keep it to ourselves, we were like "nah"). Co-developer LizardCube later chimed in to add, "Looks like the big gameplay balancing patch is coming soon."
Sadly, gameplay and balancing probably doesn't mean new content or a new DLC that was promised way back in May during an AMA with all three developers. But balancing could mean some big changes for Streets of Rage 4's existing cast of characters.
The consensus among players is that vanilla Axel is the character who most needs a buff, either to his overall movement speed or a reduction in overall vulnerability after performing his more impressive moves. Adam could also use a bit of a hand, and SOR3 Shiva still can't pick up weapons giving him a significant disadvantage during certain sections of Streets of Rage 4.
Blaze is great, though. You leave her alone, Dotemu.
There's some speculation that the devs might surprise us with a new playable character, such as the updated version of Shiva. With all of Shiva's animations and abilities already present from his boss fight, it wouldn't be too hard to convert him into a playable character.
Expect this balance patch to come later in September. There’s still no timeframe on a larger DLC, but we do know that Dotemu is working on three new games, one of which was just recently revealed as Pharaoh: A New Era.
Source: Twitter