Aces Wild is a fantastic brawler. It plays like the bastard lovechild of God Hand and Zone of the Enders 2 with just a touch of Bangai-O. You've not had crowd control challenges in a brawler like this game dishes them out. Like in God Hand, enemies semi-randomly transform when you KO them, only in this game instead of turning into demons, they become a massive CLOUD of low-HP ninjas. I have zero complaints about this game! Even my usual complaint about having to unlock content has been addressed as you start the game with the full level select, boss rush, and both secret characters already unlocked.

You have 4 basic forms of attack: a rapid combo, a chargeable heavy attack, and counter-based versions of both attacks. You have 2 types of dashes: a long range positional dash and a short ranged dodge dash with invulnerability frames. Every attack can be chained. The game has a rage bar that affects the damage and launching distance of all your attacks. Instead of lives, you can hit the "panic" button to repel all enemies in your vicinity with 1 HP damage and refill your life bar at the cost of burning through your entire rage meter and setting the scoring rank back to one, and the more you use it, the higher the rage threshold required. Difficulty levels increase enemy aggressiveness instead of damage numbers, which is always a plus in my book.

Ace Wilder is the protagonist. He has the fastest attacks, but his attacks are very short ranged so his only crowd-control option is to launch an enemy into a group. Fortunately if you launch an enemy with a charged up heavy attack, every other enemy they hit receives the same damage. He has a 6-hit basic combo that ends with a flurry of auto punches ending with an omnidirectional launcher. His heavy attack is a chargable launcher. His light counter is a long ranged jump kick that can be used offensively or defensively like a positional dash that costs no rage. His heavy counter is a very short ranged launcher that shoots enemies the farthest and leaves them stunned and vulnerable for several seconds.

Gene Drift is the 6th level boss. He's the Mike Haggar of this game, with slow attacks that cover a wide area, making him the best in the game at crowd control. His rapid combo is 6-moves long and ends with a giant circular launcher attack that hits enemies in all directions. His heavy attack is either a standard launcher, or with vertical inputs turns into a crowd-obliterating sword swipe. His light counter attack is a single-enemy attack in which he throws up the devil horns while surfing his sword into their face, and his heavy counter is a screen-spanning horizontal slash that can wipe out the entire room if your position and rage meter are just right.

Eagle Morris is one of the cannon fodder ninja enemies who decided to switch sides and take advantage of The Inverse Ninja Law to win the tournament prize for himself. He is the most technical character, but potentially the most powerful. His rapid combo is a 5-piece moderate range attack that ends with a crowd-control DMC3 Vergil slash. His heavy attack is a standard launcher. His light counter attack is an analog-aimable Revenge of Shinobi shuriken volley that does horrific damage if all of them connect. His heavy counter attack is a short ranged but omnidirectional explosive smokebomb. Needless to say, you'll want to choose one of his palette swaps to be able to tell him apart from all of the other ninjas.

I gained an increased appreciation for this game when I realized positional dashing eats just as much rage bar as tapping heavy (launcher) attack, (and tapping launcher attack only eats as much rage bar as dashing), so the wall jump mechanics weren't just for show. A great thing about this is that you have a gameplay incentive to crank up your rank (arcade speak for "adaptive difficulty"), because rank controls how quickly your rage bar refills. Higher rank means the enemies do more damage, but it also means you hit harder, can dash into optimum position for a launching more often, break through mid-boss shield bars immediately, and can tear through the levels faster (on top of scoring more points).

You do have unlimited lives, but you start the current room over again with zero rage and zero rank (plus a permanent and cumulative scoring penalty) so it takes a long time to regain your momentum.

It's fast, it's chaotic, it never takes itself seriously, it's a fantastic game. While DMC4 has prettier graphics, I also have several issues with that game. Punch ninjas! Punch robots! Punch dudes who wear baseball caps with trenchcoats! Aces Wild is pure goodness and highly recommended!