River City Girls

one of my favorites in the genre

For as far as I've played it, I can only praise the art and presentation, which is kind of hard to do. So many games nowadays come out that look interesting, stylish and unique, and with so many of them it feels more like a gimmick. I assume that ways and means of creating the passive aspects of the game art (look, sound, style, etc. - not gameplay) are becoming more accessible and the number of skilled, talented artists is growing, but we're somehow stuck with more or less the same gameplay ideas and keep making the same design mistakes, while there are so many examples of games that have perfected those same ideas. This game is a similar case. I looked at the cover and screenshots, watched a few positive reviews (couldn't find any negative ones), and thought, "There's just no way I will dislike this game." I turned it off after trying several times to take on the first boss. And, this is probably the smallest complaint I have, so I'll start with it: 1) Why, if I fail in the boss fight, do I have to go back and watch two cutscenes all over again (or hold the button to skip them, which isn't any less annoying)? This type of issue in action games is decades old. Just start over at the boss fight. 2) Delayed controls. I'm not asking to be able to perform an attack as fast as I can press the button, but maybe a tiny bit faster? Again, Streets of Rage and similar games have already perfected it. Why not learn from them? 3) Who thought it was a good idea to bind the attack and picking up weapons to the same button? The issue is that whenever I try to hit an enemy and there's a weapon within reach, I pick up the weapon instead of attacking and get hit by an enemy. If the enemies gang up on me, they never waste a chance to attack me when I pick it up. As a result, I end up in a loop of picking up a weapon and getting hit. Sound design is nothing special. The opening theme is okay. I can't say much else about music because I didn't make past the first boss.

Such a fun and nostalgic beat em up!!! If you're looking for a fun open world beat em up then you've come to the right place

This is somehow inferior to games released decades ago in the same genre because positioning, the most important factor in this genre, does not matter at all. You can easily beat the game by spamming 1 or 2 moves and just fly past nearly every everything, the only difficulty is memorizing when a boss will randomly get hyper armor. I also don't know why they kept the effects of items and moves unknown before purchasing them. Something literally every game past River City Ransom does is a problem now. Don't know why the devs are so clueless or just want you to waste time. Mods are also required for basic things.

Combos are fun to discver and story does its job.