I don't like feeling cynical towards games when I could invest time in more positive things, but River City Girls is twitterbait. I don't mean that out of pessimism or a weird anti-SJW way. It is a game orchestrated to cater to the in-crowds and hype circles of social media. It has nutty combo strings for DMC and FGC meatheads to share; callouts to Double Dragon, RCR and lolrandom gamer humor to get retro crowds in; pastel-neon 80's cityscapes filled with quirky shopkeeps and boba tea-adjacent wares for fashionistas and 'wow-so-aesthetic'-heads; celebrity Youtuber and VA cameos; smooth-chibi pixel art for artists and sakuga addicts to squeal over; really questionable ephebophilic touches that are synonymous with WayForward's transparently sexploitative side.

It's a game meant to appeal to several terminally online crowds - some good, some bad. With exception to a few scenarios, I can't find fault in developers and creative leads building a project that min/maxes appeal while staying true to a consistent vibe and vision. Devs gotta eat: You can't let your comrades starve because making a desirable project is 'cringe' or 'weak' in the eyes of a nebulous, journalistic ego.

But it's bad and I don't like the ways it's bad so I get total dibs on being mean to it, tee hee!

RCG is a Scott Pilgrim clone. Scott Pilgrim - by way of beat-em-ups, - is reeeeally bad (mandatory reading). RCG is thankfully a better-feeling game than SP, and its RPG structure carried over from the main Kunio-kun games makes more sense for this style of combat and player growth. Except that RCG is still bad on a scenario and encounter design standpoint - and oddly, it blows as an RPG, too. Stats gained from leveling up are mostly worthless because enemies scale with your level, too. You have to invest money in food items (as tradition from kunio and scott) to get buffs that will actually improve your odds above enemies. But shit is expensive in this game; you get hardly any money for how long it takes to beat guys. Instead, large cash sums are doled out after major events and bosses. You can't grind at your own pace; you have to wait until the game lets you empower yourself, undermining the point. Even Scott Pilgrim - a game that put grinding in a linear gameloop, - understood that leveling up in quantifiable chunks feels satisfying. And the money you get from these objectives is overkill too: Once you get a little past halfway, you have enough money to buy basically everything. Combat does become more fun with progression as your speed and movepool grows, but enemies also gain insane HP boosts as you go. The thrill of pulling off successful combo strings feels sorely diminished when end-game enemies tank 4 full volleys before dying, only to drop 3 bucks and negligible EXP.

And even though RCG is a better feeling game than Scott, it still has that ball-and-chain sense of weight dragging it down. Everyone stays knocked down for so long, enemies basically always beat out your priority on clashing attacks, while blocking out most incoming threats. At a certain point, I was mostly spamming dashing and jumping Heavies just so I could clear waves without risk of randomly getting pummeled - but it's not like there's much threat for dying anyway, since you spawn in the same area you left off with a little less money. It's just a matter of wasting time so you can avoid wasting marginally more time.

Bosses are a total embarrassment. Nintendo bosses don't belong in beat-em-ups. Even Scott had good bosses. End paragraph.

The one part that most of the internet dislikes - the normal ending, - felt lukewarm to me, because it's not like the plot leading up to its twist has anything going for it worth tarnishing. I was floored how much of the overarching conflict goes 'kyoko/misako look for kunio/riki -> kyoko/misako meets sex pest -> kyoko/misako demand info from sex pest -> sex pest demands task/fight before info -> sex pest admits they have no info'. There's no weight to this gamble, and none of the flavor text or dialogue spruces it up: It's 'lolawkward' quips and whedonisms for days. Honestly? I think the funniest bit this game's story has is that you spend the whole game beating up dumb incels, only to realize kyoko and Misako are equally dumb incels. (Guess more of this was scott pilgrim influenced than gameplay lmao). I think they should've kept that angle instead of retconning it through the secret ending and sequel.

I gotta be somewhat nice to RCG so I will say that the spritework here might be a top 10 for me, it's really fucking smooth. It's a flat, cel-shaded, blocky style of animation with cubical body frames and chunky appendages that feels totally perfect for belt-scroll knuckledusting. It's definitely too good to a fault tho, as all the expensive animation means the enemy roster is pitifully small and starts repeating as early as the main town areas. Alternate palette enemies don't even have many differences from each other, so it can't even fake variety the way footclan soldiers and yellow signals of old can. I'm stunned you could draw 500 whole frames for this one enemy type, but... did you need to? Do you see what a design inconvenience that can be?

Even though I got some fleeting dope highs from RCG, I felt totally exasperated by it in a way I hadn't felt in years. Where SP at least feels like a well-intentioned project that got caught up in unusual ambitions and clashing systems, RCG feels unambiguously corporate and petty: A surface-level understanding of beatemups and action titles, hidden by videogameisms and trend-chasing. SP was excusable in 2010 amidst a total drought of meaningfully-stylish projects, but RCG in 2019 released too close to SoR4 and several other action gigs; it feels like limp bait. It has passionate work put into it, but was clearly assembled and marketed with visions of golden geese.