Review: Scott Pilgrim EX Feels Even More Like River City Ransom

Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game was a very River City Ransom-coded game that also felt strongly inspired by arcade beat’em ups like Streets of Rage. Pick a character. Fight through side-scrolling stages alone or with up to three friends. Scott Pilgrim EX ended up a similar sort of experience, only now the structure feels even more like Kunio and Riki could pop up at any minute. 

This sort of similarity comes up immediately as Scott Pilgrim EX begins. Like many entries in the Kunio-kun line, it begins with members of Sex Bob-omb and friends of Scott and Ramona abducted. Three gangs moved into Toronto, with their members being Demons, Robots, and Vegans. By facing bosses and reclaiming key items around town, as well as dealing with GCorp, we’ll come closer to freeing the city and discovering who’s behind these kidnappings and turf wars.

I must admit, I found myself a bit disappointed in the story. Bryan Lee O’Malley, the original creator of the graphic novels, is involved. The concept does offer a solid excuse for everyone to be running around on a new quest. However, the characterizations didn’t feel true to their established personalities in either that comic or the Scott Pilgrim Takes Off anime series. This isn’t to say that there aren’t some funny moments, but sometimes I felt like it was a more general action game that happened to feature folks who looked like characters from Scott Pilgrim, rather than it being a true Scott Pilgrim story. But then, that could also partially be because it is a rather short game that you could perhaps finish in a single day with friends.

Now, essentially, some elements of Scott Pilgrim EX gameplay feel very similar to what we encountered in Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game. This is a side-scrolling, 2D beat’em up. We pick a character from the initially available roster and use their standard attacks, special moves, and items picked up off the ground to defeat enemies. After clearing out a space, there’ll typically be a clearly telegraphed “go” sign encouraging us to move on in a certain direction. These controls feel really tight, with easy to pull off combos that are fantastic for felling foes. 

Now, I will note that I’m also a little disappointed with the playable characters we can choose from as Scott Pilgrim EX, but it’s mainly a personal preference. While Ramona was someone I’d use in Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game, I liked fighting as Knives, Kim, and Wallace most, and none of them are ready to rumble. Instead, we got folks like Scott, Ramona, Roxie, Lucas, Matthew, and Robot-01. The roster that’s there is okay, but they aren’t the folks I expected or hoped to go fighting around the city with on this adventure. 

When you’re not in the midst of clear the area or objective-related fights, you actually move around places in Toronto inspired by the series. This means entering and exiting stores to purchase healing supplies, stat power-ups, and equipment, popping in at the apartment to swap your playable character, or going to locations to advance the story. In some cases, these are locked away and require you to obtain a key item and a certain sort of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time style short playable riff to advance. These aren’t actually well-explained in-game, so you’ll pass at least two before even being able to interact with one, but they’re very easy to figure out once you are able to go into them.

While things generally worked well, even when playing online, I will note that I experienced both major and minor issues in Scott Pilgrim EX ahead of launch. The smaller ones involved the person I was playing with and I not being able to see when the other was holding things. It wasn’t the biggest issue, but it was odd when I brought up how psyched I was to be holding and fighting with a yo-yo, only for him to say my character wasn’t using one on his end. Or that when we gained access to bombs we could use, he said he was carrying one with us to our next objectives and on my end his character was holding nothing. It’s not the biggest issue, but it was odd.

Worse was the game-breaking bug. I’m going to be vague in order to avoid spoilers, but at a certain point in the PC version of the game we found ourselves needing to follow Goth Neil. He went through to the next area, so we did as well. Things then crashed on my end, resulting in a black screen and no way to get back to even the title menu. The person I was playing with, who was hosting the session, said it looked like I dropped. We tried a number of combinations of things, which included things like restarting, and each time I’d rejoin with the party code, it would load up to a black screen for me and him being on the character select with it showing as me “being” there, but not choosing a character. This issue happened on Windows-based devices that were up-to-date with the most up-to-date build of the game at the time, but it hopefully is the sort of thing that will be patched.  

While there are a few things in need of patching, one thing that is perfect at launch in Scott Pilgrim EX is the design direction. It is on-point. Tribute Games did a fantastic job of bringing the characters and their city to life. Everyone looks as they did in the comic and anime adaptation, and there are a lot of references to the series. Also, Anamanaguchi’s soundtrack is a treat, as always. 

I admire the fact that Tribute Games embraced the River City style with Scott Pilgrim EX, as it really makes this beat’em up more of an adventure. The artistic direction and soundtrack are perfect too, and the combat flows well. I do wish the story were stronger and some of my favorite characters from the previous game had been playable, and the presence of launch bugs that can affect multiplayer is a downer. But at the very least, after a patch or two, those gameplay issues should be fixed. 

Scott Pilgrim EX is available for the Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.