Platforms: Playstation 4, Switch, Windows, Xbox One (reviewed)
The River City (otherwise known as Kunio-kun) franchise is one that’s been around for over 30 years and has never really had that breakout hit that gets it to stick in the heads of the masses. Its lineage has been a bit confusing. My entry point was Super Dodgeball Advance on the Game Boy Advance. Although technically not a Kunio-kun game, it plays very similarly to Super Dodgeball (an arcade game released in 1987 which is an official Kunio-kun game) and was also made by the company that inherited the brand, so its heritage is a little grey there. Others might have jumped in early with the original River City Ransom on the NES or the remake for the Game Boy Advance (which was where I finally put the pieces together that this and Super Dodgeball are the same series). My point is that the series has had a long and complicated history (much like this paragraph) involving as many spin-off games as games in the side-scrolling brawler-RPG genre that it’s best known for.
River City Girls takes the side-scrolling brawler-RPG genre of the series and gives it a modern touch. You play Misako and Kyoko, the girlfriends of Kunio and Rikki (the main protagonist of the series and his best friend, respectively), as they set off to save them after Kunio and Rikki are kidnapped. It’s a cute, if a bit of a throwaway, subversion in the guys-going-off-to-save-their-girlfriends shtick. You can play as either Misako or Kyoko, who play similarly, but there’s a feeling that Misako is a bit more of the bruiser and Kyoko is a bit more agile. I didn’t really notice any sort actual difference in the damage they dealt, but Misako’s attacks definitely look like they hit harder and are more brutal. Kyoko feels a bit more fluid and seems to be having more fun with the whole thing, but again, this all seems superficial, so just pick who you like and go to town.
The game is sectioned off into a fair amount of areas in each level. Once you get through an area, you can always go back to it if you want to crack some skulls to gain more money or experience points. There’s really nothing stopping you from going backward if you need to, but going forward, you’re blocked off until certain conditions are met. Sometimes that’s triggering a quick conversation with another character, but most of the time it’s knocking the crap out of everyone who appears until the literal lock and chains on the screen are broken.
Misako and Kyoko will have conversations with characters they meet as well as with each other. If you’re playing by yourself, as I did through most of it, Misako and Kyoko will talk to each other through their portraits on their status bars on the top screen. It’s a nice way to keep the girls talking to one another without it feeling weird that the other is suddenly there or by stopping the action for a cutscene. This also helps with the pacing, keeping you moving forward, really only stopping for cutscenes when you run into another character. The writing for some of the interactions isn’t great, but just about every actor here does their absolute best selling the lines. So, while the content might not be that great at times, the delivery largely compensates for those instances.
Since you’re going to be beating the snot out of a ton of people over the course of your time with it, it’s good that River City Girls just feels good to play. There being no real difference how much damage Misako or Kyoko dole out, that I found a preference in either (sign me up for Kyoko’s fan club) shows just how well put together this aspect is. It really boils down to the character movement in between each hit, but the animation, in typical WayForward fashion, is smooth as butter. WayForward’s pixel work is regularly top notch, but this feels like them just showing off. It’s just so good with not a frame of wasted movement.
Once you get down to one enemy on the screen, after taking a bit of a beating from you, the enemy will occasionally plead with you to not finish them off. You can choose to be merciful and doing so will have you gain them as an ally. You don’t get them following you around all the time though. Instead, you’ll summon your new pal, and they’ll do an attack and pop back offscreen. There’s a cooldown meter limiting how frequently you can summon them, but it refills fairly quickly. They can also take a limited amount of damage before you lose them, so if you summon them and another enemy lands a hit on them, they’ll go away again minus one bit of health without launching their attack. Some of these foes-turned-friends are more useful than others. One in particular looks and sounds a lot like a slightly exaggerated early-80’s Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Terminator, complete with grunts and noises with his distinct accent. I’m usually not a fan of this gag, but even his grunts having that accent struck me as funny no matter how many times I heard them. Get him on your side and he throws out his gigantic metal arm, clearing a huge row of enemies out of your path. He’s not one to frequently beg for his life, but you’d be a fool to pass up having this guy on your side.
Just when you feel like busting heads is getting a little repetitive, you’ll gain a level and be able to buy new moves from either Billy or Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon at either of dojos. You don’t just purchase moves with the money you earn. You can buy healing items to keep in your inventory or new accessories to give the girls some stat bonuses. Most of the better accessories are found through natural progression, but there were a few worth trying out. Eventually, you learn all the moves for the girls and have your inventory full of healing items, so you’ll have some extra cash that you need to do something with.
My only real complaint with River City Girls is your progression of power. You gain experience points for finishing sidequests and beating up anyone in your path. Hit a certain number of experience points, you level up and your stats increase. Simple enough, but there was something bothering there that I just couldn’t quite put my finger on until I went back to some of the early areas of the game. You never really gain much in the way of extra power. I would find myself hammering away nearly as long on the enemies that I found early on as I would the ones later in the game. When you finally reach the final area, you’ll find some enemies that are trickier to take down with an increased moveset. By then, you’ve likely purchased enough new attacks of your own to help take them down. That part does a good job of making you feel like your character has gotten stronger as you’ve progressed. But go back to early areas and you’ll find you’re taking nearly the same amount of time beating the early mooks as you do the later ones. If it weren’t for the increase in stats you see happen as you level up, I wouldn’t mind this. Hang that carrot in front of me though and I want to feel like I’m an absolute wrecking ball when I take on enemies that I was fighting hours ago. Instead, have a few of them surround me and I’m nearly as likely to have a swarm of them take me out as I am any of the enemies in the later areas.
It’s the one thing I got hung up on during my time playing River City Girls. The lack of feeling like your characters have grown stronger is an annoyance only because there’s an experience bar that fills up, I gain a level, and I see my stats increase. If gaining levels was something that only allowed me to unlock new moves and restored my health, I wouldn’t have been bothered by this. I’m lingering on this so much because it feels like a weird thing to be there in an otherwise incredibly well-designed game.
I mentioned earlier that the character animations are great, but that goes for the whole of the game as well. WayForward is one of the best when it comes to pixel art, and this game further cements that place at the top of the pile. There’s so much detail in certain parts that it’s almost astounding how much work they put into something that people might potentially just completely gloss over. The sound effects are top-notch, really adding to the feeling of the impacts of any hits landed (including the ones where you use a gigantic dead fish, just trust me on that one). I really like the soundtrack as well, most of it being something I’d be happy to listen to on its own over and over again.
If you couldn’t tell, I really enjoyed River City Girls. It wasn’t something taking front and center on my list of games I was interested in, but now having played it, it’s definitely a contender for one of my favorite games this year. It’s fun, the music is great, it does a great job of doling out new moves to keep combat from feeling too repetitive, it’s a visual treat, and even has replay value in new characters to use once you finish the game. It has some small hang-ups, but knowing that they’re there makes it easier to get over them. Go grab your pink, heart-shaped backpack and bust some heads open. River City Girls is an absolute delight.
