Picked this up on steam and completed 3 playthroughs so far (max difficulty+permadeath option). The art style is off-putting for sure and just doesn’t fit the series grittiness and gang-ridden setting like the mainline entries it is paying homage to. The music remixes are fine though. With that aside, the core combat of the series has been reduced to a 1-button beat em up like Final Fight/SoR with the addition of super moves (managed with meter similar to FF3/SoR3), and character tagging.
Movement feels slowly and clunky at first, but many would say that about most entries in the DD series. Normal attacks can be jump/dash cancelled, but the rogue-lite style powerup choices between stages doesn’t add a ton of depth in my humble opinion.
You can choose stage order which dynamically increases the difficulty of the remaining stages. However, the game campaign is still surprisingly easy, though you can adjust difficulty option sliders before starting a run to scale the difficulty up or down to your preference. Marian is busted by design and once you unlock the bosses as playable characters, what challenge there is, goes out the window (constantly being rewarded with health every time you kill 3+ enemies with your aoe supers makes things even easier).
It’s a polarizing game for sure, yet I’ve been enjoying my playthroughs since the game doesn’t really overstay it’s welcome.
Double Dragon is an uneven series as it is, with my favorite entry being Double Dragon Advance (which just got announced for rerelease on modern consoles and pc). Combat-wise, this game is nowhere near the high points of the series, yet I wouldn’t place it anywhere near the bottom with DDV either. It’s a fun game, just be sure to try it out on sale/via steam to see if you hate the core combat or not.