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i'll start this with a TLDR because most of this games audiance can pretty easily be sold on it with a few sentances, if it sounds appealing at all then this will be one of your next favourites. uppers is a mix of yakuza and the wii game madworld and has the best combat i have ever played with in a beatemup, its deep, dynamic and super fun and it makes for one of the best and most fun experiances you can have on the vita, as well as one of its best imports, or best steam purchases if thats more your speed, if this isn't enough to sell you then read on so i can go far more in depth about just why it's one of the best games in its genre and one of the most fun games i've ever played.

the basic idea of the gameplay is segmented levels with different themes, a red light district reminicant of kabuchiko, a train and its station, a gold casino full of fountains and cars that can run you and the enemy over, industrial parks, school hallways and classrooms, a tekken 4 versus 13 skyscraper and the streets of japan all with their own gimmicks and stage hazards, from fire hydrants, signs, basketball hoops and even helicopters you can punch people into and you go to these places to beat up punks and finish objectives so you can win girls phone numbers and, ughhh, panty shots and when you do this you get power ups and heals via a slot system kind of like crisis core, it has a very similar structure and appeal to madworld for the wii but with the fun beatemup gameplay similar to a yakuza game, or maybe kenka bancho (though sadly not kenka bancho otome) would be the better comparison considering it's made by many of the same people and you have a dozen playable characters which you play in pairs as a tag team all to play around with, now i don't think these characters quite have the individual uniqueness of like, a musou game roster like a senbas or a senran kagura, with most of them playing pretty similarly but they do have their little differences, like ranma being your allrounder, michiru using more kicks, max using wrestling moves, nicole using a more agile moveset or daidouji completely breaking the game in half over her knee because she basically can't be killed ever, i was mostly fond of nicole, daidouji, max and lei (an action star who used a lot of grapples and kung fu) and there are some very unique movesets in there, like ukyo who plays like this games version of majima, a more wild unpredictable moveset, hiroshi who has a more varied moveset inorporating both kicks and punches and even some sumo moves or the older kyoyanagi brother who incorporates headbuts into his moveset (he was another fav of mine), this isn't even everyone, the younger kyoyanagi brother plays like a mix of ranma and seiya kyoyanagi with a breakdancing move thrown in similar to nicole, shiraishi plays like a lighter ranma and tenmei feels very similarly to multiple other characters and the secret character just plays like a mix of the rest in one, they arent all super unique but everyone did feel fun to play and no one really feels like a wasted slot. when you're in levels you just punch and kick your way to the end with a counter telling you how many enemies are left to take out and your missions which can vary from using certain environmental kills (like say the helicoper or the manholes), certain takedowns or just dodging and countering or using your ultimate mode which sends enemies flying all around you and lead into contexttual button mashy attacks yakuza 6 style and its just a fun rush to get as many finished missions and end the level as fast as you can for the score at the end, the score can even be used for upgrades and extra outfits at the games small hub town (where you can also talk to npcs and use your appartment to save and go through stats). it's an amazing loop and it never really gets old because of how much combat variety there is and with how open and dynamic the levels feel, the interactions all vary a lot and some stuff is even destructable like walls, you can even swing off poles or vault over objects for extra damage, there's a lot of depth and it's the main draw of the game i think, if this doesn't sell you just watch a few mins of gameplay and i'm sure it'll all click. the only real issue i had with it was its over-reliance on the main duo, most missions have you playing as ranma and michiru and you really mostly play the others in one-off missions or during grind replays you have to do for enough score to get to the final boss of an area, the ability to change characters during a first time on a mission would have been super nice and gave everyone more time to shine for the games 10 hour runtime.

lets get this bit out of the way, is it sexist and crass, yeah, it is, but is it misogynistic, no i don't think it is, for a start there are two women playable in the game and it doesn't change much, its still the same objectives and the characters are even named in diagloue, though one is dlc and the characters are never talking down or looking down on the women, when one of the villains even attacks a member of the fem cast ranma gets pissed and kicks his ass. it's also just silly enough that i don't find myself that bothered by it in a way similar to oneechanbara, it's sexist but ultimately not hateful or mean about it in the way that things like konosuba or 25th ward can be, it's campy hype B-game shlock (in a good way) with bancho fighting ninjas and stuff, no one is really taking it too seriously but i also totally get if this would be enough to turn people off, it's ultimately up to you to decide that and for me it's not enough to damage the experiance in a major way, i wish it had a different theme but if this is the sacrifice we had to make to get a combat system this good then i think it's ultimately worth it, plus bancho guys are hot, so i get my fanservice out of this too.

it's a good looking game during all this too, sure it doesn't run the best on its native vita and can hit drakengard 3 frame rates, but this just ads to how cathartic the combat can be, the game cannot handle all the carnage you're causing, but the levels all look great and the characters are all well designed, i love how almost everyone is a different take on this bancho formula but that they still manage to keep up a good variety with it, steriotypical bancho guys like the kyoyanagis or the older former bancho types like kujo and hiroshi, with shiraishi and nicole being the only real exceptions, they all look great and the designs are very well detailed for vita with the models, even the support characters look great, there's some really good fashion designs in there with characters like nicoles support version or the girl that runs the store, it's super colourful too, the levels look amazing on an oled vita and they're varied to boot, it's honestly one of the best looking vita games. it sounds great too, the battle music is some of the hypest this side of falcom and there's some fun BGM during the dialogue scenes too, the town theme also stands out super well and i love one of the conversation BGMs titled "deep water" because some of the instrumentation sounds like something from the saya ost, this overall may be one of marvelous's best osts and it was composed by 4 super talented people, Tetsuya Shibata (former capcom collaborator who was involved in some of their best OSTs like power stone, auto modelista, resident evil outbreak, dmc2 and street fighter alpha 3 and he most recently did work on two of my favourite games of the past few years, ensamble stars and babylons fall as well as final fantasy 15, guy is one of the greats) Yoshino Aoki (another capcom alumni who worked on games like rockman battle and chase, breath of fire 3&4, rockman EXE as well as more recent titles with tetsuya like ensamble stars and babylons fall) Yuko Komiyama (of the best mega man x games, x7 and command mission as well as x8, monster hunter tri, kingdom hearts 3 and ensamble stars) and lastly Jun Okubo (a smaller composer who has worked with cave on things like dodonpachi arrange albums and again, ensamble stars, you people really need to jump on ensamble stars, it has some of the best music this gen, valkyrie's works especially)

the story is fun enough, if very silly with some super fun characters, rough yankee's, delinquent brothers, honorable biker leaders, sadistic moviestars and bloodthirsty twinks level out the main cast as well as a really fun set of villains and the hypest pro wrestler mentor around, even the fem cast is fun with a bancho loving secretary, a pro wrestler fan with a funny accent, gonzo journalists and fight-fangirls, it's a fun cast all around and they all get enough time to shine and when the story gets hype it really does get hype, you want to see the main guys succeed, even the token perv character has a fun arc where he starts to value things other than being a perv, it's just a fun story with fun people and it had me smiling up until the dumb, dumb end, it's more than enough for what this kind of game needed and its super charming in its execution. finding information on its credits has been difficult though, mobygames only lists staff from the 2020 pc port as done by bullets, though the degree they had much to do with the game beyond that i do not know, i do know the game had involvement by Kenichiro Takaki of senran kagura, valkyrie drive and my favourite rhythm game IA/VT and some info on the games composers as i talked about above and most places just list it as being developed by marvelous, i assume the same tean within that worked on those aformentioned kenichiro takaki games. the game's also a little weird with its ports, if you want to play the game physically then your only real option is the original ps vita release as the steam version is naturally digital only (thanks steam for killing off pc physicals, appreciate it /s) and the ps4 release ended up being cancelled, presumably due to sonys changes in what was allowed on the platform, which is a shame, i can at least attest that if you do want to import the vita version that it's fully beatable with very little japanese knowledge, if you at least know hiragana and katakana then you can get through the gameplay sections fine, though the story will still be a barrier, still this is the version i played because i picked up a physical copy many years ago while in japan and i know enough japanese that the language barrier doesn't matter to me, though the translation on the steam port does seem good enough for those that go through that route. sadly the game has had very little legacy beyond that, no followups or even cameos from the cast in future marvelous projects, it feels like a miracle it was even localised at all and it never seem to be a hit even then, i do recall the japaese version also sold poorly, which is a shame, still, marvelous are still doing well and regularly releasing cool games like loop8 and rune factory so things went well for them at least. handlers of the port bullets are also still getting work with things like romancing saga minstral song and saga frontier remastered, so it all worked out overall, but god i would love a followup to this, its so arcady and fun and there's a lot more that could be done here, but the odds of that are low, you owe it to yourself to at least check this out as a one of a kind beatemup with some of the best combat around, hell its even on sale on steam right now at the time of this articles publication, go do it!