YMMV / Streets of Rage Saga

• Anticlimax Boss: Barbon in Project Y, built up to be Electra's right-hand man, kicks down the door to his bar to confront the heroes...and gets defeated by one Grand Upper attack from Axel. Also the titular villains in Sons of Darkness.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Blaze has a dream in Project Y where she has rough sex with Shiva at a bus stop in the rain, following which she gets consumed by her growing powers and proceeds to lay waste to everything in sight. Upon waking up, she concedes that it was a really messed-up dream, and it never gets referenced again for the rest of the saga (although it was partially influenced by her legitimate worry about whether she'd be able to control her developing Ki Manipulation). This infamous scene was eventually removed in the March 20th 2014 Updated Re-release of the saga.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Joe Musashi is quite popular with fans of the saga, which in turn influenced his many recurring appearances and his being one of two major characters to survive to the end of Behind the World.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The very end of the saga reveals that Adam fathered a son with Jodie Kelly. This fanfic was written before Streets Of Rage 4 introduced Adam's daughter Cherry, but unlike the fanfic Adam, who died before he could meet little Curtis, game-universe Adam is still alive to help Cherry out.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Shiva has three moments that arguably qualify him as having crossed this line:
    • In Project Y, he engineers a plane crash in an attempt to kill Axel and Blaze, who are passengers on board. Both of them survive; many of the other passengers and crew don't.
    • In The New Syndicate, he unleashes a nuclear warhead that completely obliterates the city of London, killing at least several million in the process.
    • The aforementioned gang-rape scenario in Duality.
  • Enigma is already established as being a crazed murderer, but he most arguably crosses the point of no return when he psychically compels Axel's sister Tina to commit suicide.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Although based on the popular Beat 'em Up game series (which itself got various kid-friendly ratings from being for all ages to being for ages 12 and up), this entire saga is decidedly not child-friendly, what with its raw adult language, explicit sexual activity (consensual and not), graphic descriptions of death, blood and gore, Nightmare Fuel-inducing mutilations...yeah. There's even an advisory at the Streets of Rage Online website, where the story can be downloaded, expressedly warning visitors under age 18 not to download or read the story.