(played as Kyoko)

I really, really wish this was better. The art and overall presentation is up there as some of my favorite, and it carries this game very, very far, but that's about all it has going for it. The plot, dialogue and humor are all not very good, and it doesn't even really do a successful job making both playable characters likable. I do like Kyoko for the most part, but Misako is fucking annoying. Maybe it's just me? I don't know.

Enemies of all sorts also take too many hits. Even in the first rooms of the game, they're not particularly fun to deal with at all. There is a leveling up system, but it's pretty much solely for show seeing as the enemies scale up alongside you. Never will you find the satisfaction of plowing through enemies effortlessly, not even a vehicle section like in Cadillacs and Dinosaurs or fucking NARC or something.

Perhaps my least favorite aspect of the game is how it handles bosses. Beatemup bosses are rarely particularly enjoyable, but in River City Girls' attempt to break that mold it quickly brings the realization that platformer bosses do not belong in this type of game, notably Hibari and Noize for example. Aside from maybe the first, every boss you encounter is overly gimmicky, awful, and takes forever. I decided to shelf the game for the time being at Noize, the fifth boss, upon coming to the conclusion that I was having zero fun by this point.

And even so, I can't bring myself to deride this. I can't exactly call it a bad game or anything. Underneath its trappings is potential for something truly great, but also it's just too damn cute and I don't want to hate it. The original Shantae is like this too, even though I can't even make a dent in it after multiple attempts. Fucking WayForward. I hope they burn.

Addendum : i was coping lol i lowered it to a four