While Rivals of Aether absolutely and unashamedly borrows its base concept from Smash Bros. The robust practice mode also allows you to track frame data and displays hitbox visualisations in order for you to really get down into the nitty-gritty of it all. This depth is also hinted at in a tutorial mode that drills you in every aspect of the game, from the very basics right up to an individual's strengths and weaknesses.

In short, the relatively small roster, alongside the removal of a lot of the more overblown aspects of Super Smash Bros., the almost simplistically clean presentation here, belies a ton of depth more suited to dedicated fight fans than those who just want to party casually with pals. Shovel Knight can perform his signature shovel drop attack, knocks collectable gems out of opponents, sits down to fish mid-fight and even uses his taunt to open a shop in order to purchase relics and armour to help him in battle.

There are slow, powerful fighters here, zippy lightning-based ninja-types and everything else in-between to suit your preferred playstyle, and each and every one of them is a delight to invest time in.Įven those guest fighters, Ori and Shovel Knight, have very obviously had a ton of time and effort put into their design. Zetterburn, as an example, can set foes alight, place pools of flame around the arena and does extra damage to an enemy when they are burning, whereas Orcane places puddles of water on the ground which he can then teleport to or turn into pillars of bubbles that trap enemies in the air for an easy upper attack. Pulling their powers from four elements – earth, air, fire and water – your protagonists all work with the same base move-set of light combo attacks and chargeable strong attacks, all of which have variations depending on the direction you're holding, alongside rolls, dodges, parries and a double jump.Īdd to this each character's unique abilities and there's a surprising amount to get to grips with in order to master any one of them. There may not be a roster of several thousand instantly recognisable characters to choose from, then, but the fourteen furries on offer here are a well-designed and diverse bunch, each with their own unique elemental attacks and specials which can be used not only to punish opponents, but also to cleverly affect the arenas in which they are fighting. That six-strong cast has also now been expanded to a total of fourteen pugilists, twelve from across the land of Aether itself as well as two delightful cameos in the form of Ori and the legend that is Shovel Knight. Taking place over six stages – and one hidden final battle – which introduce the original core characters that were available to players back when the game first released in 2017, the story mode here is a short and simple affair which nevertheless does a decent job of setting the scene and providing a little background to the cast's motivations for kicking each other's pans in.

The land of Aether, in which Dan Fornace's game is set, is divided into warring civilizations of animal fighters who've been tricked into facing off against each other by a shadowy Lovecraftian fiend. Here is a carefully crafted, deep and addictive 16-bit platform fighter that takes the base influence of Nintendo's brawling behemoth and runs off in its own direction, resulting in a brawler that cuts away a lot of faff and theatre and gets down to some surprisingly hardcore and competitive business. However, Rivals of Aether is an experience that's just about as far removed from that mess as is perhaps possible within (or without) the confines of a genre.

After diving into the unmitigated disaster that is Bounty Battle just recently, we can't say we were particularly enamoured with the idea of slogging our way through yet another Smash Bros.-esque indie fighting effort quite so soon.

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