The game took me about 4 hours to beat. Everything about it was instantly forgettable. The writing wasn't very good, the characters were all flat and somewhat annoying, there were only a couple of locations, the plot was wafer thin and went nowhere, the choices and RPG elements were almost non-existent, and when they did appear it was hard to tell what they did. I gave it an extra star because some of the art was pretty decent and apparently the game wasn't bad enough to make be stop playing before the end, though it was a bit of a struggle to make it even those couple hours. There are many better game of this sort out there. I don't mean to be harsh, but if I'm being perfectly honest I'd have a hard time recommending this game even if it was free.
I really like this game a lot. I grew up on c64 games so I've been around. This game reminds me of the Baldurs Gate games, obviously, but in my opinion it's the greatest of those sort since BG1+2, icewind dale, etc. I enjoyed Pillars of Eternity and others, but this game is far different, and better in my opinion. Honestly nothing else since has captivated me or drawn me in as much in the past 10 years. It creates it's own world. The setting is new, the character types are new, the way magic works are new. . . You'll have to learn the workings of this entirely new world and background. I think it's wonderful. You can't, and shouldn't, click through every dialog option presented. It's an actual Role Playing Game. What you say or do matters, you play a character. Gods and mediators and supplicants and beastfolk abound. It's a new, and very welcome take. The choices you make are HUGELY influential. I can see playing this game through 3 or more times, and I've never played more than a few games multiple times through. (FinalFant 3/6, Vampire: bloodlines. . . thats about it, honestly). It's really magnificent, looks great, and runs very well even on a mediocre system. I also lets you pause real-time (ala Baldurs gate) while issuing commands, BUT ALSO lets you slow or speed up time while doing so. Hit keyboard "-" in combat, and you'll slow to ~1/2 speed (still with active pause) and have more time to plan and realize what's going on and adjust accordingly. Sneak mode in "+" My only slight negatives are that I'd really like a 1/4 or even 1/8 combat speed in some battle instances. I'd like to be able to press "-" multiple times to further slow and plan. even at 1/2 speed, with active pause, combat sometimes goes too quickly. The AI sometimes does stupid stuff too, if you have it in their skill set. A non-healer with healing will use it way too often. . The gog word limit is killing me. I think you get the jist. It's great. really really good
[I got this through a humble bundle, with others, for $1] Granted, I'm not much of a point-and-click adventure guy, primarily for the same reasons I wasn't horribly impressed with this one. The graphics update is great, it looks good (I switched to the original graphics many times to compare. Yes, that's an on-the-fly option, and a big thumbs up there). I honestly did have fun for the first hour. But then it started slogging down, pretty hard. I'm a 40 year old engineer, pretty bright, and I've been gaming since c64 days so there's not many games I have problems with. As I said, I don't play a lot of these types of games, mostly because of the same problem this one had. After a mere hour of playing, I ended up spending 2 more hours trying to figure out a single puzzle on my own. I ended up looking it up because it was too frustrating and it was down to "look it up, or quit." Anyway, I found the solution to be incredibly non-intuitive, and something I would have never honestly guessed at doing. The next 3 "puzzles," which occurred instantly thereafter, were just as maddening and non-intuitive. I also experienced multiple crashes (perhaps the GOG version avoids this problem? I doubt it, but that's no fault of anyone but the makers). I can see where old-school fans who played the game 30 years ago find it fun, it really does seem like a good title, and if it worked. . . and had puzzle solutions that made sense, I'd like to love it too. As a newcomer to this one (and again, not a big point-and-click adventure guy), I'm kind of sad this wasn't what I'd hoped for. There are multiple "hidden areas" (you have to click random locations, where there's no indication, or reason, that it's a valid place to click), the puzzles (at least at times) are completely non-intuitive, sometimes also hard to see, and I've had multiple crashes. I can't give this 4 or 5 stars, and I suspect those who did played it long ago or relied on walkthroughs the whole way through.
As someone who still plays River City Ransom all the way through a few times a year, I can safely tell you this game looks a lot like RCR, but plays nothing like it. The beauty of RCR was in its simplicity. There were 2 buttons, and it worked fine. . until you accidentally kicked that box at your friend instead of picking it up, then it was funny. RCR:Underground tries to meld the new with the old, and the result doesn't feel at all like RCR. Now there's a button to pick up items, a button to punch, a button to kick, a button to jump, a button to block, a button to use special moves, a button to eat snacks, etc.. They changed the game from a fun, and funny, casual street brawler into a grindfest with nearly impossible-to-pull-off combos and much less heart. As stated in other reviews, the moves list is often incorrect on top of everything else, meaning that even if you did manage to pull of the combo it wants you to, that may not result in a move at all. The feel of the game is also drastically different. There was some humor and some nods to the old game that I enjoyed, but they changed a lot. Instead of bad guys dying after a single well-placed Dragon Kick like in the old game (except for a few of the tougher guys that took 3 or 4), bad guys now take up to 10 special moves a piece to defeat. You'll sometimes end up fighting a single lackey or two for 5 minutes or more. It makes the game artificially longer, and just kind of frustrating. I miss the old gangs too, the packs of enemies that had a specific gang name, and a theme, and dressed similar and said particular things. Some were tougher, some were sneakier, etc. Now you just get a random mish-mash of bad guys thrown at you in every screen. Throw in a map system that doesn't seem to relate to the game world at all, and it's just a mess. As a side-scrolling fighting game, this one is mediocre. As a River City Ransom sequel (finally, after all these years) it's a pretty big disappointment.
