River City Ransom: Underground

The Technos beat'em up genre has been a hard one to do(see Double Dragon 4...barf!). But, River CIty Ransom: Underground got it right! It recreates the popular beat'em up with good graphics, sound, controls and great animation. It really feels like it's a River City Ransom game. Even the cheezy dialog is back. What's better is that you can choose from a selection of characters with different fighting styles who you recruit along the way. No button mashing here, you'll have to time your combos right if you want to progress. The stat building is also back(Merv Burger, yeah!) and you can purchase different moves from a master. You'll have a map that shows your objectives, but you will have to search that area to find the exact spot. I have only encountered one bug; one time my gamepad was unresponsive and I had to do a restart. I wish my gamepad buttons would show on the control list as XYAB instead of PKJS for (p)unch, (k)ick, (j)ump and (s)pecial. The control list is vague on combos and only listed the name of the new chain to a combo instead of a full list on how to use that chain; I suppose the developers want the player to figure the combos out. One wish I would like is to see this game in 16bit graphics. I know this was born in the 8bit era, but it's time for some great 16bit graphics to make it look like a real upgrade to the series. So, with some small complaints it is still a solid beat'em up that any fan of the genre will enjoy. It is definately worth buying.

This game was pretty fun at first, playing with friends is also fun, but frustrating if you are not careful with moves. The character improvement system is novel and interesting. You have to buy food to increase your stats and you have to buy moves to increase your combat repetoire. Game has plenty of easter eggs towards the genre and plenty of characters and moves to try and test. This is fun at first! Then comes the bad... Wow, I have a friend that loves these types of games and we were excited to play at first but wow... did these guys miss the mark after time went by. Some characters are clearly loved on by the devs while others are hated to the point they are useless. Some characters are slow, move slow, hit slow and they do are not compensated for it with increased damage. Brawlers and Wrestlers mostly suck and are useless compared to Ryan and Glen for example. In fact the Devs hate wrestling entirely and makes you pay heavily if you miss grabing characters by stunning you. Seriously? Near the end the ememies all play keep away so it is nothing but a jockey for position to keep from getting back/pincer attacked because that is about the only think the AI tries to do to you. It is beyond annoying requiring you to use only fast move/attack characters. Enemies can move backwards almost as fast you can run. Spamming the same move in an ultra boring pattern is the key to wining... almost too easy in fact. You can mow down enemies on mass with certain moves while other moves jsut do not work or will never land due to how they execute. You are going to spend a lot of time running enemies down and it's annoying! Would like to see more games like this so I think it is still worth buying and playing, but play with friends and avoid the wrestler brawlers because the devs nerfed them hard. It is clear that more than 50% of the moves and Characters in this game were just padding without any useful purpose.

Wore my thumbs out. Tons of fun. RCR:U sucked hard for me until I figured out how to stay alive long enough to level up. A walkthrough helped. Wish there were more games like this. Love the 8-bit style. Lots of good character animations. There is a lot of grinding to buy new moves. The game increases in difficulty as you advance the story. I recommend you get all the characters you want to play leveled prior to advancing the game. Otherwise you might find your low-level guys incapable of hanging. Grinding for one character is alright. But there are several playable characters. Grinding them all up is tedious. Without a walkthrough I would have never figured out the item I needed to buy to stay in the fight long enough to afford to health restoration at the spa. A tutorially that actively showed players this step could reduce a lot of misery. Made much use of Google Sheets full of food benefit stats. Got good at running equations on the point values. Enjoy.

I have very much enjoyed playing this game. It is a very accurate representation of the original and truly feels like a sequel. I've read other reviews and have seen videos on YouTube where people have complained about the difficulty curve. While I can see their point of view and understand the possible confusion of some people, I have to disagree. Particularly if you read up on the original RCR (River City Ransom). The concept of having to eat food to raise your stats is in the original and isn't that confusing to me. The only real change is that the stat cap is raised by leveling where in the original the stat cap was just set at 63 for most stats and couldn't be altered. The game is extremely satisfying once you get a basic feel for the combat system. The combos you can do and the move sets you can purchase make for a lot of variety. When you factor in the many characters you can use and/or unlock it's that much better. There is quite a difference in many of the fighter's styles and it lends itself to learning different ways to approach combat. It's probably pretty apparent that I don't often write reviews. But I wanted this game to get it's due. I love it, I loved the original, and this team has done a phenomenal job recreating the feel of the first RCR while adding enough depth and variety to make the new one much more exciting. The tutorial taking place in the last level of the original game was the cherry on top. Nostalgia abounds for anyone who's ever played the first.

RCR is a classic for a reason, but runs a little short. You could beat it between getting out of school and dinnertime. How do you lengthen that experience out to a modern 'full game' where 20+ hours is the standard? In RCRU, they - - Added leveling that caps how much benefit you can get from food. You know, RCR's whole thing. Just overcomplicate the primary gameplay loop by introducing a pointless additional layer that is advanced in the same way as an already existing layer (ie punching dudes). - Have enemy AI that escalates with plot advancement. Could have worked, if the late game AI didn't have instant-reaction insurmountable blocking skills, couldn't backstep at full running speed as soon as the player starting a swing or a grapple attempt, didn't launch combo-breaking counters, and didn't start flanking and using specials like a real human was playing them. - Have a bunch of characters to choose from, including unlockables. Great idea! Not at all balanced! And you're pretty well locked into who you blindly chose at the start because of how worthless a level 1 PC is by midgame. It's "difficulty by roulette spin" design. - A day-night cycle that affects whether shops are open and whether certain mandatory boss fights are possible. This just results in thumb twiddling while waiting for the clock to advance. - Have the enemies stop dropping money in the late game. And introduce a guy with perfect block, massive health, who duplicates himself if hurt but not rapidly defeated, a firearm (that the player can't take), a maybe two frame wind up for his half-the-screen special attack. Make him a standard respawning enemy that spawns everywhere, including inside shops. - Forced elevator sequences, with waiting between enemy waves. A final boss that involves a half hour of slowly grinding through most of the map, with no chance to heal. It's pretty, and the creators clearly love RCR, but having plowed through it I'd rather have just replayed the original.