Scott Pilgrim EX Is a Beat 'Em Up Revival That Earns Its Nostalgia

Scott Pilgrim EX is a beat 'em up set in Toronto, 20XX. Metal Scott — a figure who looks lifted from Mega Man X — kidnaps Sex Bob-omb and their instruments, leaving only Scott free. The player's objective is to recover the band, recover the gear, reach the show, and hold the city together in the process. Three gangs stand between the player and that goal: the Vegans, the Robots, and the Demons, each controlling different sections of the city. A set of unnamed forces manipulates all three from behind the scenes.

A New Story Built on Familiar Ground

What elevates the scenario is the playable roster developer, Tribute Games, assembled around it. Scott and Ramona are present, but so are former antagonists: Robot-01, Roxie, Matthew, Lucas, and Gideon, all previously Evil Exes. Each character occupies a distinct role. Scott covers all bases. Ramona's hammer gives her mid-range control. Lucas is a heavy brawler. Gideon applies pressure and delivers high damage. Matthew operates as a puppet character — a category rarely seen in the beat 'em up genre. Robot zones with grenades. Roxie plays as a ninja. Players with any fighting game background will locate themselves quickly.

Combat Systems and What Separates EX From Its Predecessor

The combat goes deeper than the character archetypes suggest. Every fighter has light and heavy attack strings — light strings chain into combos, heavy strings stun enemies — plus both metered and unmetered special attacks that separate the roster further. Gideon uses a spinning sword parry. Ramona has a subspace sucker punch. Robot throws grenades. The game also allows players to block, which is uncommon for the genre. Advanced techniques include quick stepping, multiple wakeup options, and using a metered super to absorb an attack without losing Guts Points.

Assist attacks add another layer. Players can spend GP to call in a pair of musicians who restore health, deploy Ramona's cat Gideon to cause chaos on screen, or bring out Sex Bob-omb superfan Young Neil, who stampedes across the field. Young Neil has ended many boss fights.

The 2010 original was slower and simpler. Getting hit meant a brief pause where the player registered that they had been punched. EX runs faster and gives the player more options at every moment. The review positions it just below Tribute's own Shredder's Revenge — described as one of the best beat 'em ups of the last fifteen years — while placing it clearly ahead of the game it revives.

RPG Progression and an Interconnected World

Scott Pilgrim EX layers RPG mechanics over the combat. Defeated enemies drop coins, which players spend in shops on equipment that raises stats and badges with special effects. Two standout badges are Big Nickel, which increases coin pickup amounts, and the Wallace plushy, which generates GP on landed hits — a direct investment in Young Neil availability. Enemies also drop permanent stat upgrades, as do shops stocking food and video tapes.

The co-op economy requires attention. Buying equipment in co-op unlocks it for both players, but stat-boosting video tapes only apply to the buyer. Players who fall behind on funds can drop coins and health items for struggling partners, though doing so during active combat is difficult. Walking-around food provides on-the-go healing for players who want a buffer.

Toronto itself is not a stage-select screen. It is an interconnected world with distinct districts — a beach with a portal to the Ice Age, a distillery district, a shopping area — all navigable by foot. The game always marks the next objective, so players who want to progress can do so without confusion. Those who explore will find side missions: breaking barrels, collecting coins within time limits, and various other tasks distributed across the city.

The environmental references are dense. Checkpoints pull directly from Sonic. There are legally distinct versions of Scorpion and Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat, complete with spear and hat. A demon-heavy location is named Casa Vania. The nearby store is called Cold Topic. A rentable film at No-Account Video is titled Army of Bones, tagline: "Trapped in time. Surrounded by evil. Low on gas."

What the Game Understands About Time

Scott Pilgrim, as a series, began with its graphic novel in 2004. The original video game was released in 2010. EX arrives sixteen years after that. Mario, who was 19 years old when the graphic novel debuted, is now over 40. The Evil Exes who fought Scott and Ramona in the source material are now helping them. The arcade venues that shaped the genre Scott Pilgrim occupies are largely gone. Tribute Games, whose name is itself a signal of intent, is best known for making the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time sequel that fans had wanted for decades.

Several storylines inside EX reinforce this accumulation of time without announcing it directly. Kim gets kidnapped by Simon Lee because he could not have her in high school. Matty travels to a period when big band music dominated because he wants to live inside that moment. Young Neil's broken Game Goose needs fixing. These are small plots, but each one concerns someone trying to recover or inhabit a past that has moved on.

I think the most honest thing EX does is resist turning that observation into a speech. The game does not stop to explain what it is doing with time or nostalgia — it just builds a world where those themes run underneath everything, and leaves players to register them or not. The original Scott Pilgrim was new art that referenced older art. EX is older art being referenced in turn. That shift in position is not commented upon directly, but it is present in the structure of the game, in the roster of former villains now fighting alongside the hero, and in the genre itself, which only exists because beat 'em ups from the 1980s and 1990s were worth returning to.

Nostalgia drives a lot of what EX does, and the RPG systems, the roster depth, and the interconnected world all function well enough to justify the return visit. What's here is genuinely fun, and the game earns the time it asks players to spend with it.