River City Girls

I don't understand why they didn't stick to the River City Ransom formula. Like why is the game-play constantly interrupted with annoying tutorial pop-ups or over-the-top long boss intro scenes. I just want to play the beat-em-up you can trust me to figure out the controls. Trying to run(by pressing twice left or right) in this game is super annoying. It seems like everytime I try to switch directions while running it will just not register my button input and I'll be left standing in one spot defenseless. How is the game that set the template for this game, River City Ransom, so superior game-play wise and it was created over thirty years ago? It's not a horrible game and I think it could be better if I could turn off the pop-ups and if the running controls were responsive.

The game has fantastic art and great music, so it kills me that the game itself is so disappointing. Combat is about as basic as it gets in a beat 'em up, even with RPG style upgrades and special moves. I was hoping that this would fill the void that Scott Pilgrim vs the World left but this was missing a lot of the polish that game had (and unfortunately is nowhere near Castle Crashers even if the art is much better). + Art is amazing + Music is great + Available on PC - Lose 25% of your hard earned money on each death - There's a lot of waiting around for enemies to stand up every 3 hits - Special moves are awkward and unrewarding - Can be lots of travel to spend money and train - Outdated and irritatingly slow vertical movement speed - Lacks polish (minor but noticeable UI and enemy bugs, clumsy UI, waiting for animations to finish after button presses) This is the type of game where the first boss fight was a lot harder than it should have been because I thought different abilities should be effective (and found out they didn't by losing a lot of money). Then I just waited out the pattern and I won easily. It wasn't rewarding, just tedious. If this is your first beat 'em up and you like the art or if there's a great sale it might be worth picking up but for those who have played other games, you'll be reminded early on and often that this doesn't measure up.

It is a weird mixture of good and bad. First the good: You have a good anime art style, great music, and lots of unlockables. The bad: Overly reliant on grinding, Overly reliant on Items, game gets tedious; especially boss battles. Otherwise this game I would recommend to you get this on a sale if you want a brawler RPG.

Face it folks... Publishers are allowed to say they have "Controller Support" without having to prove that they have it. This game does NOT support controllers. Sure a controller "might" work on the game but there is no support. Support means that controllers can be at least configured... this game does not have that. Support means that you can choose which controller you wish to use for each player... this game does not have that. Support means that you do not have to use a mod or wrapper or other 3rd party tool to make controllers work for your game... this game requires these for controllers to function and to make matters worse the game does not respect your ID order either. I plug in one controller it "might" be working then I plug in a second one... guess what it either does not work or becomes the ONLY working one. Maybe there should be a class action lawsuit against businesses that falsely advertise that there is "controller support" when there clearly is no such thing happening! I am sick of controller support being a constant joke on the PC platform!

The game is fighting you every step of the way. First you have to deal with a death penalty system that sucks away the grind-currency. Second you have a parry system that gets introduced, but the only attacks you have to practice on are unpredictably timed, with unreactable startups. The block also only works in one direction so you won't usually be able to block anyway. Third, the controls are unresponsive. The first boss is a "Did you read the run tutorial message" gate. Except somehow the idea of 'double-tap a direction' got screwed up and only actually works about 1/3rd of the time. There are a lot of better brawlers on GOG, you can let this one just float on by.