First things first, DO NOT play River City Girls single-player. The game is absolutely a co-op game, and like the main man Dunkey said, we gotta take every co-op game we can get today, because there just aren't that many.
The first thing you'll notice about River City Girls is its god-tier aesthetic. If you miss the tragedy-stricken Scott Pilgrim game, this is the next best thing. WayForward went all-out on the sprite work to the point where it made me love the look of a pixel indie game in 2019. Every animation is smooth as butter and backed up by the toasted bread that is the music: banger after banger after banger. On top of its bass-y chiptune beats, there's even a few lyrical songs, which are one of the three things that makes any game better.
Finally the presentation is wrapped up in some great manga-style artwork done by the artist of the Devil's Candy webcomic and animated (short) cutscenes by Studio Yotta. They're brief but go a long way in amping up the feel of the game.
The combat is surprisingly deep. While you won't be pulling off any high-flying double-digit combos, you will be smacking bitches across the screen and powerbombing their spines onto the concrete. You unlock more moves as you play, but some are very much better than others. I'd say Kyoko is slightly better than Misako, (Misako the honey, btw) but both are skilled in various little situations. Misako early on can clear out a line of enemies and back them off while Kyoko gains more shorter-range but harder enemy-sweeping moves as the game progresses.
Where River City Girls drops the ball is in its little things. The game doesn't hold your hand after you leave the tutorial, but it holds back some really helpful information. My friend and I didn't know we could hold on to food items for use in the pause menu until we hit the fourth boss.
We also figured out that buying an item from a shop the first time gives you one permanent stat boost, but the items exact uses are locked until you buy them. So you could've been buying something expensive and weak instead of something cheaper and more useful.
Boss fights are tough, some of the consistently toughest I've played in a game recently. A good spread of challenge, although the last two were surprisingly easy. Bosses occasionally will have some cheap move that is either way too punishing or unpredictable.
River City Girls was a fun time. While the repetition started to set in by the final third of the game, the aesthetic, presentation and soundtrack hard carried me through the endgame monotony. It's got some cool replay value, but not worth it for me playing all over again.
The first thing you'll notice about River City Girls is its god-tier aesthetic. If you miss the tragedy-stricken Scott Pilgrim game, this is the next best thing. WayForward went all-out on the sprite work to the point where it made me love the look of a pixel indie game in 2019. Every animation is smooth as butter and backed up by the toasted bread that is the music: banger after banger after banger. On top of its bass-y chiptune beats, there's even a few lyrical songs, which are one of the three things that makes any game better.
Finally the presentation is wrapped up in some great manga-style artwork done by the artist of the Devil's Candy webcomic and animated (short) cutscenes by Studio Yotta. They're brief but go a long way in amping up the feel of the game.
The combat is surprisingly deep. While you won't be pulling off any high-flying double-digit combos, you will be smacking bitches across the screen and powerbombing their spines onto the concrete. You unlock more moves as you play, but some are very much better than others. I'd say Kyoko is slightly better than Misako, (Misako the honey, btw) but both are skilled in various little situations. Misako early on can clear out a line of enemies and back them off while Kyoko gains more shorter-range but harder enemy-sweeping moves as the game progresses.
Where River City Girls drops the ball is in its little things. The game doesn't hold your hand after you leave the tutorial, but it holds back some really helpful information. My friend and I didn't know we could hold on to food items for use in the pause menu until we hit the fourth boss.
We also figured out that buying an item from a shop the first time gives you one permanent stat boost, but the items exact uses are locked until you buy them. So you could've been buying something expensive and weak instead of something cheaper and more useful.
Boss fights are tough, some of the consistently toughest I've played in a game recently. A good spread of challenge, although the last two were surprisingly easy. Bosses occasionally will have some cheap move that is either way too punishing or unpredictable.
River City Girls was a fun time. While the repetition started to set in by the final third of the game, the aesthetic, presentation and soundtrack hard carried me through the endgame monotony. It's got some cool replay value, but not worth it for me playing all over again.