When is saw pictures and videos of River City Girls, I thought the game was only Final fight/Street of rage/Double dragon spirited game. After doing some research, i realized that the game is part of Kunio-kun series. I played Renegade aka Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun and Target: Renegade on commodre 64, long time ago. Let talk about River City girls! The game have beautiful indie-style pixel-art graphics and excellent music tracks. Story is OK and it have some plot twists. I love Misakos and Kyokos dialogue, attitude and charisma. I sometimes laughed at their funny dialogue. Misako and Kyoko have different movelist and fight style, which encourages you to try both characters. Game have problems: One is control issue. It is 2019 and some game developers doesn´t allow players to customize keybindings. I can not play this game with default keybindings. Game supports Xbox one controller but i don´t use that controller. I am used to using a DualShock game controllers. Only way to get PS3 (with Brook) controller to work with game, i have to use Xpadder emulator. Playing game with dualshock, movements and actions are smooth and easy. Another problem is blocking. You can not break enemy combo moves and block middle of enemy combo move. Also boss specialmoves are unblockable. Players have to anticipate and evade some enemy moves. Players, who like classic beat 'em ups, I recommend playing this game.
Shovel knight is excellent adventure, platformer game with 8 bit graphic style. This game is combination of Mega Man (nes), Castlevania (nes) and Super Mario Bros 3 (nes). If you have played those games, you know how to play this game. The game can cause some furstration, thanks to some jump puzzles. Some jump puzzles requires precision and timing. You need gamepad to play this game smoothly. Also game music tracks are familiar 8 bit style game music.
My overall feeling is that the game is unfinished beta version, not official version. This game have multiple issues! Let me tell some of those: a) Ai broken, Ai constantly abandons sieges or runs in circles. b) AI cheats attrition. AI can stack 24 troops on the province, which have 9 supply limit and suffers no attrition. This feature must be taken from Europa Universalis IV. c) Overall Ai is stupid. AI is more stupider than Europa Universalis IV or Crusader kings 2 AI. d) Game stutters! Stuttering becomes more stronger, when here are lot of military units on the map, making gameplay to challenge. e) Republic goverment senate is broken: Making senate support your wars is frustrating. You need to friend and bribe senate faction leaders, in order to get support for warmongering. Bribing and making friends increases country tyranny and player lost lot of gold. f) UI is messy: For example, events refer to persons by their first name but the tooltip to the right portraying them has their surname below it. This is not informative, (hard to figure is he a tribal leader or somebody important?). This forces often to check around other tabs to compare characters. g) Manpower recovery speed is broken. h) Manpower pool is glitchy. Somehow reasons manpower value per mounth changes and it has nothing to do, if you have build barracks already. Example, in january you get 310 manpower , in february you get 297 manpower, in march you get 288 manpower, in april you get 301 manpower and so on. i) Tooltips that are so overstuffed, they take up almost half the screen. Tooltips are unintentional! j) No family events! Ruler have family but it is meaningless and lifeless. Game doesn´t inform l you if ruler children are unmarried. In Crusader kings 2 game informs, if ruler children are unmarried. k) Events too generic and lifeless! l)Tutorial is not informative. Tutorial does not tell basic mechanics of the game. Youtube is only way to learn basic and advanced mechanis of the game.
