One of the biggest highlights in Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons is the robust character count. However, nine of these characters need to be unlocked through tokens. With totals hitting as high as 50 for a single character, it can seem like an intimidating task, but it’s actually not that bad with the right tactic.
How to Quickly Unlock Every Character in Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons
Set the Right Difficulty
This is probably the easiest and most accessible option set there is. This setting will double your health, while also making it so most enemies die in a single special attack. It makes things incredibly easy to survive and maximize your overall point totals.
Permadeath mode it’s somewhat misleading. It doesn’t stop you from paying for revives, only ends your run if you opt out of paying that fee. As a result you can save $200 on tokens, which really adds up in the end.
Finally, only purchase tokens from venders if it’s a better overall deal than simply taking cash. Unfortunately, I did not make a list of prices, but I do believe most, if not all, of these are a better overall deal. I’d just verify before puling the trigger. The same is true for any upgrade that adds more potential cash long term.
Character Selection
At the start the best combo is Marian and Jimmy Lee. Marian’s rocket (forward plus special) does enough damage to one hit most enemies. This makes it incredibly easy to perform combos for cash, or just stay alive. Jimmy is not the overall best option, but of the initial four he is easily second best, and even among the full cast he is among the top like four due to Dragon’s Rage (forward plus special). It’s also really easy to get multiple special knockouts.
Playing Through a Level
The best advice I can give is to play as optimally as possible. This doesn’t need to be cheesy stuff like swapping characters to ensure you receive cash instead of health from generated food, just things like breaking every item and saving larger heal items for later to maximize cash.
One thing to keep in mine is Marina has the unique ability to break objects with a single gunshot. This, combined with her aforementioned special attack, makes her the best at efficient point generation.
If done correctly it should only take two or three matches to unlock every character. Best of all, after the first run you should be able to afford literally any character you’ll want. Depending on performance and who you want, two or even three are entirely possible.
