SCOTT PILGRIM IS BACK!!!
I’m just gonna be fully upfront here, I’m a major Scott Pilgrim fan. I adore the comics, the show, the movie, the game, I just love Scott Pilgrim, so of course I was extremely excited when a new game was announced! I had to wait a week for the proper funds, but now it’s finally here, finally in my library, and I ended up binging this game hard. For the past two days I locked in immensely, doing nothing but binging it until I had full completion. I wanted to experience every aspect, every detail, everything, because of how much I love this universe. The fun I had with this game was incredible, and I don’t regret my time spent with it, Scott Pilgrim is finally back.
Taking place after the comics, Scott and friends are enjoying their life, playing music in their band, hanging out, just having a good time, until that peace is interrupted when a mysterious being known as Metal Scott shows up, disrupting their peaceful way of life to cause some chaos, taking away all of Scott’s friends and banishing them to parts unknown. It’s a standard plot full of the same stuff you’d expect from Scott Pilgrim, but the game makes up for this simplicity with how detailed it is. The sprite art here is incredible, it’s such a step up from the 1st game, and everyone looks great here seriously, every level is just gorgeous. There’s so much detail packed into every area, so many references to not just gaming as a whole and Scott Pilgrim, but even some of Mallary’s other works like Seconds, it was extremely cool catching each one and realizing where they were from, there's a lot of cameos here form characters who barely show up in Scott Pilgrim like Lisa Miller and Jason, it really feels like a celebration of the franchise as a whole. The soundtrack is also phenomenal, Anamaguchi returned again for this one and it’s even better then the 1st games soundtrack. From the title screen, to the final boss, and to my personal favorite One More Summer, there is not a single miss here music wise, and I even find myself jamming to the OST on spotify as I type this up.
Gameplay is just as important here, and I’m happy to say that EX is mostly pretty fun! It controls a lot more smoothly here, moves flow into each other a lot more, it’s easier to juggle enemies and deal massive damage, combat just feels great here, it made every single encounter a blast to go through, as I chained together my moves and dealt those killing blows. The selection of characters here is pretty great too, you got Scott, Ramona, Gideon, Roxy, Lucas Lee, Matthew Patel, and Robot 1! Unfortunately though, these are the only characters you can play as which, for a Scott Pilgrim game, confuses me? The rest are regulated to just summons or side characters, and I just found it strange you couldn’t unlock more. In the 1st game you could play as Knives, Kim, Wallace, even Stephen, so not having them here at all just feels like a strange exclusion, especially with Robot 01 being a character, which while cute, sticks out for just how minor their role is in the series (besides the show I guess). In terms of structure, EX handles things a little differently, going for a more open world approach then level to level. You’ll be granted various quests that you have to go fulfill, with combat encounters and bosses to defeat along the way. It seems like it could get repetitive quick, but thankfully the map here is rather small, so it doesn't take too long to explore everything, and quests usually take 15 minutes at most, so the pace stays quick and quests go by fast, meaning any quest that you don’t enjoy usually ends before it gets too much. Despite the small size of the map, it’s packed with a lot of secrets to find, usually in the form of some fun sidequests known as events here that can net you some level ups and cash, it’s pretty fun trying to find them all! The stat system returns here as well, and this time it’s not as annoying to grind up. Encounters feel a lot more balanced around it, and shop items feel a lot cheaper, letting you more easily raise your stats up while not really needing to go out the way to grind too much. It helps so much with the difficulty and pacing the first game had, they really refined a lot of the issues with the first game. Bosses are also really fun here, each one has pretty easy to learn attack patterns, and can all be managed pretty well, so it’s always fun facing them. The only one I really disliked was the train fight and the 1st phase of the final boss as they feel like a pace killer that takes forever especially with how many enemies each one throws at you, it’s kinda just unfun.
It’s so great to have a new Scott Pilgrim game again, the first one is a good time, but this one really improves upon everything that one did great. Better soundtrack, better combat, better pacing, better structure, it’s just an upgrade across the board, and it’s so easily replayable I find myself craving another run right now. I love Scott Pilgrim, the comics were such a formulative part of my high school experience, and the show was such a breath of fresh air. This game makes me so happy, and I hope we get more from this, the game could benefit so well from some DLC. For now though, I’m pretty happy with what we got, and I can’t wait to drag my friends along to play it with me!
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