Revisiting The Bouncer, A Great RPG Beat’em Up

The Bouncer was one of the first big games I remember for the PS2. I remember a friend of mine hyping the game up, and after I beat it a few times, I forgot about it. It was fun, but I was on to other things.

This is a beat’em up RPG, and it is very fun. It is a cinematic game that you might have to play through a few times to get the whole story. Depending on your character, you’ll get a different perspective on what is happening. It is an interesting way of doing things.

It has been a while since I played The Bouncer. Although it is more of an RPG, it has many similarities to arcade beat’em ups. Let’s take a closer look at this game and see if it matches my memory of it.

TLDR: A Great-looking Beat’em up with Good Controls. You’re biggest enemy is the Camera.

Narrative

The Bouncer starts with a very simple story that is very familiar to the genre. You have three characters and a girl who hangs around them. She is a love interest to our main character, Sion, and she gets abducted by ninjas or something like that.

The story gets more complicated as you play the game. This beat’em up is heavy on story and cutscenes. To get the whole story, it would be best to play through the game three times to get each character’s perspective.

There are three playable characters in The Bouncer:

• Sion
• Kou
• Volt

The game starts with the evil corporation launching a satellite. They also send their henchmen to kidnap our hero’s girlfriend. There is also some other stuff going on that may make sense later in the game.

Dominque is our damsel in distress here. I don’t have a problem with this trope. It is rather outdated, but it works well to motivate our heroes to go and fight the evil corporation. I feel like they could’ve called the police instead.

The evil corporation is called Mikado. It seems like everyone knows about them being evil, and some of our characters know more about the situation than Sion. It is an odd setup.

This all leads to an overly complicated plot in which you fight a big bad guy who happens to kill Sion’s master. The bad guy is trying to do something that relies on Dominque, who happens to be his sister. You beat him and win.

The player gets some backstory for each character. These are given as text on the loading screens. I don’t like this that much; it would’ve been nicer to get this in a cutscene. You could also read it in the manual or online.

Like all great stories, we end up in space. Dominique turns out to be an android, the bad guys die or escape depending on who you play as, and we get some ending scenes. The endings are nice.

The story isn’t remarkable, but having it spread out between the three characters makes it stand out. I like that you need to play through the game a few times to get everything. It is a wonderful idea, and I wish this had become a series.

Gameplay

I like the gameplay in The Bouncer. It is a solid beat’em up with an experience system, which makes defeating enemies mean something more than gaining points for some meaningless high score.

One of the first things that needs to be pointed out is the pressure attack system. Your character will do a different attack depending on how hard you push the face buttons. It is a very cool idea.

Before each fight, you select one of three characters. This controls the section of the story you get to see upon beating a stage. I usually play through with one character the whole game and switch when I start a new game.

The enemies are mostly stock security guards throughout most of the game. You do fight some guard dogs and ninjas in the later parts of the game. I wish there were more variety in the enemies.

There are robots and mutants in the game. They’re fine, but the robots are way more annoying than they need to be. Overall, the enemies are okay. The bosses have more character, which is to be expected.

You gain experience points from defeating enemies. These can increase a character’s power, defense, and life. Each character also has a selection of attacks you can unlock with enough experience points.

There are a few parts of the game that feel unnecessary. You have to run to some fights once you get into Mikado. This is where the camera becomes an obstacle. I wish these segments weren’t in the game.

There are three game modes. I focused on the story mode, but there are two others:

• Story Mode
• Versus Mode
• Survival Mode

I remember playing Versus Mone once with my friends. It wasn’t too memorable since I couldn’t tell you anything about it. I mostly played the Story Mode and enjoyed the game.

The gameplay is very good, even if the game is short. I like the pressure attack system; the special moves are easy to perform. There are issues with the camera and tracking enemies, but it isn’t too hard to get used to them.

Visuals

The graphics are very good! The PS2 was a considerable jump in graphics over the PS1. The early games on this system look very good and still hold up well today.

For whatever reason, I immediately thought Sion looked like a prototype for a Kingdom Hearts main character. Both games were published by Square, now known as SquareEnix, and The Bouncer was released close to two years before Kingdom Hearts. It could be a coincidence; I just thought Sion looked like he could’ve been a prototype of Sora.

The camera is a bit of an issue. It can be hard to see where the enemies are, and it becomes an issue when you get the action scenes. Thankfully, the battle screens aren’t too big, and you can get around the bad tracking.

This is a very cinematic game. Instead of using QTEs as transitions, you get a little cutscene. They look great!

I love the graphics. There is something wonderful about them, and while they aren’t as good as modern consoles, they still look great. I’ve seen some people say PS2 graphics like it was an insult, and it just makes me laugh.

8/10. While you need to beat the game thrice to get the full story, The Bouncer is short. The controls and graphics are great, but I wish the developer had been able to make this a longer experience. It is about as long as an arcade beat’em up.

Pros

• Great Graphics
• Good Story
• Excellent Controls

Cons

• Camera
• Targeting Enemies
• Short Game

Conclusion

I remember playing this game all the time when it was released. There weren’t too many games for the PS2 then, and I beat this one many times. One of my friends was a little surprised that I beat the game as many times as I did.

The game’s length wasn’t a problem for me when I was young. Now, playing it, I wish it was longer. It also seems to require a lot of memory from the memory card, which I don’t remember from when I was a kid.

The Bouncer is a wonderful beat’em up. The RPG elements are good, but I wish this were a longer game. It is too close to the length of an arcade game for the PS2. I would also rather play Dynamite Cop than this game.

If you’re looking for more beat’em ups, check out my lists of the best SNES and Genesis beat’em ups.