Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game – Complete Edition (Switch)

For many years, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game was the poster child for one of the biggest problems with digital only releases. Released to coincide with the comic book series Scott Pilgrim vs. the World getting a major motion picture, this game was an adaptation of a media franchise that appealed heavily to the gaming crowd with its many video game references and the game itself was a throwback to old co-op beat ’em ups in a time when the genre wasn’t getting too many new titles. However, around 4 years after release the game was removed from digital storefronts, meaning there was no legitimate means of obtaining the game for almost six years. Luckily, once all the rights issues that had kept it locked away were sorted out, the game was rereleased with all its DLC packed in and, more importantly, physical editions were made so the game could always circulate no matter what happened to its digital versions.

One odd thing about the game though is it appears to expect some level of familiarity with the source material. It does introduce the main concepts like the fact that Scott Pilgrim is fighting the seven evil exes of a girl named Ramona Flowers he’s interested in, but the only text used to further this plot are things like level intros or the very small profiles given for the boss characters you’re about to fight. If you haven’t recently read the comic or seen the film it can feel like you’re moving from one setting to the next without a good bit of context, but it feels less like you’re missing out on a plot and more like you might not get a specific reference or pick up on some of the meaning behind certain wordless interactions.

One thing that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game – Complete Edition definitely does superbly is bring the comic book’s art style alive while also slipping in easily to the pixel art style. The characters look very similar to how they did in the source material, their faces large and expressive despite their simplicity. Without breaking too far from that style, the game manages to slip those designs into squat pixel art forms that can feel like homages to older games like River City Ransom while still having the intricate details that can be achieved on more powerful modern consoles. The chiptune background music is catchy and unafraid to sound retro with its flagrantly digital style. Even the characters standing off to the side of levels as set decoration are bouncy and energetic animated sprites, and considering the game has one foot in a realistic version of Toronto and another in a world heavily tinted by flagrant video game accoutrements, it’s nice to see people loitering around the city streets or hanging out in the back of parties as you fight potentially absurd opponents.

The game has seven major stages even though many of them have midpoints you can access from the world map and some can vary in size and settings despite their labeling. For the most part, the stages all have the goal of beating one of Ramona’s evil exes, many stages informed by the current focus’s major interest or line of work. For example, Lucas Lee is a movie star, so the path to fighting him involves you crossing movie sets and even fighting actors in costume as they film scenes. Dressed as aliens and dinosaurs, they bend reality to be more interesting enemies, and when you head to Roxie’s level, her ninja training actually manifests as you heading into a dojo and facing off with katana wielding ninjas. Sometimes you will find yourself just beating up regular guys on the street or fighting your way through guys at a party, but the willingness to relax those realistic leanings to chase fun fictional ideas helps the game overcome its early problem with reusing a few too many of the same basic enemies again and again.

Once the game starts cooking up and dishing out some of its more unique battle ideas and gives its bosses incredible powers for difficult but fun fights, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game – Complete Edition starts to find its creative edge. However, alongside those repeated basic enemies near the beginning, this brawler also doesn’t give off the best first impression with how its early fights feel. When you’re just starting out, your basic combat options are just a quick combo and a heavy attack, your characters run slowly and take a long time to get up, and overall you feel like you’re controlling a very stiff and limited fighter. If the game had continued on like this it would be an absurdly dull beat ’em up, but after fighting for a bit you’ll start to level up and unlock new abilities. You’ll learn jump attacks, slides, grabs, and combo mix-ups that give you more freedom and options in a fight. You do always have things like a power move from the start and a support character to call in that might be helpful in the right situations, but it’s when you start to get this expanded move set that the fights start to feel more fluid and your character becomes enjoyable to control as they can tackle situations with different approaches.

Each of the game’s playable characters all feel similar enough that you’re never going to feel like you’re missing out for picking one of them, but they all have unique attacks as well and different benefits. Ramona Flowers may get to swing a hammer around for her heavy attack, but Scott Pilgrim feels like a zippier combo character. Stephen Stills certainly packs a punch, but Kim brings a projectile to her move set to stand out. Knives and Wallace were DLC characters in the original game but come included in this version, although they feel like they have some overlap in their utility with the main four from the base game so it’s more about how you like the mixture they bring to the table. There is one hitch to the character selection though, and that is that leveling up is done per character, meaning that if you get far in the game you can’t switch in someone new unless you want to go train them by replaying earlier levels.

It becomes even more important to pick one character and stick with them the whole game once you realize how vital the game’s shops are to building your character up. When you defeat enemies they’ll drop coins that are important for buying stat upgrades. Shops won’t tell you how much they’ll boost your permanent stats with the items on sale, and while the price and small clues will help you have a decent idea which of your stats might get boosted, it’s still key you upgrade often to stay competitive. The game’s stats all can be incredibly vital to your success, some like Strength, Defense, and HP providing the expected benefits when increased but Speed and Willpower are a bit more complex. Speed will not only make you move faster but help you attack more quickly and get up after you’re knocked down sooner, this helping to overcome some of that early game slowness when you’re still a weakling. Willpower ties into your GP, this energy used for special attacks, calling in an assist, but perhaps most importantly: bringing you back to life without spending a life. If you run out of health but have GP left, it will be swapped for some health to keep you in the fight. Once you’re fully out of GP and HP though you can end up down for the count, and while co-op partners can get you back on your feet, there is a lives system on top of everything you need to be concerned about.

Luckily, for most of the game, lives aren’t too important. If you lose all of them in a level, you can choose to continue after and have all your lives back for a another go at the level. Only during the final level of the game does it really feel like lives are a precious commodity, mainly because there is a big difficulty spike in you needing to beat multiple tough bosses and long level sections without any checkpoints to complete the game. This is almost a bit of a check to see if you’ve been spending your money well and you’ll likely hit a character’s max level as you play this final stage, but going back to buy extra lives or bringing some food to the stage can help mitigate some of the difficulty and a small bit of money grinding isn’t too painful to do to finally beat an enjoyable albeit very challenging final gauntlet.

While it does take a bit to get its ball rolling, soon Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game – Complete Edition finds its footing and provides an enjoyable brawler setup and interesting character progression with meaningful choices as you consider how to spend your money. Despite the legitimately funny moments and action-packed gameplay though, there are still little issues to be found that don’t go away even after the game has found its footing. There are items that can be picked up and either thrown or swung, and while it can be fun to smash someone over the head with a turkey or turn a baseball bat against the guy who brought it into the fight, the items feel almost too bouncy. Ricocheting with ease off screen borders, enemies, and objects and getting launched around by attacks, the battlefield can become annoyingly chaotic if the right item is getting knocked around. The game’s extra modes seem like a fine idea to get more out of the game once you’ve completed the fun buy challenging story, but the zombie mode is slow and tedious since the foes are shambling weaklings and the dodgeball is tainted by how weak the ball is when it hits despite you bringing your full health bar and GP revivals from the main story to the event. The character fights at least feel like an interesting side activity, but it definitely feels like the extras weren’t well thought out compared to a main game that pulls off the action well once it hits its stride.

THE VERDICT: The energetic world of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game – Complete Edition exudes style, slips in some comedy, and is backed by some catchy retro-styled music to really work to endear you to it even if you’re not a big fan of the franchise. Some design decisions like starting you off with barely any moves really hurt the early action, but soon you’ll level up and be fighting plenty of creative enemies and diverse bosses that help this beat ’em up fights find its footing. Between the exciting battles you’ll get to up your stats at stores to play into your strengths or cover weaknesses, and while things like the extra modes don’t provide much, the main adventure still provides hit after hit to keep you wanting to play more.

And so, I give Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game – Complete Edition for Nintendo Switch…

A GOOD rating. There are a little problems surrounding an enjoyable beat ’em up core, and while it can make the start unfortunately rough and hinder some potential avenues for fun like switching up the character you’re playing as, these issues are worth pushing through to get to the excellent action. By the time you’re already after the second evil ex you’ll have started to expand your move set enough to put up a fight, you’ll have had chances to shop to raise your stats, and the game starts to whip out its more eccentric ideas that help push the game away from fighting regular dudes on the street. The GP perhaps shouldn’t have been tied to revivals so you could feel incentivized to whip out your special move options more and items would be a nicer part of the experience if they didn’t bounce around like rubber balls, but the attack options you can call upon and the way new enemy types challenge them means the gameplay manages to remain interesting. Add on top of that layers of style, cute homages, and some stellar chiptunes and it’s a game that becomes easy to like once you’ve shaken off some of its initial issues.

For a long time, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game represented the fear of a good game disappearing entirely, and as someone incredibly invested in media preservation, it bugged me greatly that something so many people had fond memories of or wanted to experience was made so inaccessible. Now that it’s come back and has a physical release to ensure it won’t be so easily wiped away a second time, it’s nice to finally see the game I missed out on all those years ago. It’s not some monumental piece of gaming history that would have been devastating to lose nor was it something obscure or poorly made that many wouldn’t mind forgetting, it’s just a case of a good beat ’em up with a lot of heart put into it that was kept out of fan’s hands by business decisions and legal problems. Hopefully more games of any quality can pull off the comeback we saw here, but for now, I’m happy to celebrate a chance to easily experience a stylish and enjoyable brawler that can now be defined more by its enjoyable action and stylish aesthetics rather than the fact it can’t be easily obtained.