I loved River City Ransom growing up, so I put River City Girls on my wishlist as soon as it came out. Only took me 5 years to actually get around to it!
I'm glad I did get around to it, though. I had a great time with the game. I was really surprised by the quality of the presentation -- the animated scenes, character portraits, and manga scenes were all great. I absolutely loved the sound track, both the chiptunes and the vocal tracks. The humor also landed pretty well for me. Not laugh out loud funny, but I was always happy for another story scene.
The overall structure of the game was what I hoped. You have your traditional River City open roam, with levels, money for food that heals and provides stats, plenty of goons to beat up, and weapons to grab as you go. All good stuff.
Unfortunately, there were some misses on the combat for me. It wasn't bad, but there were enough frustrating elements that it degraded the experience a bit. Enemies were pretty tanky and hard to air juggle, so there was a lot of stomping on them while they were on the ground and dodging their counters as they got up. Weapons ended up being a very slow option as well, since they almost always knock the enemy down on a single hit, which doesn't work well with the difficult air juggling. It was easy to accidentally pick up a weapon that an enemy dropped since that action was bound to light attack, so that was a minor annoyance as well. Grappling was mostly just a bad thing -- it provides no I-frames, so you're a sitting duck for the second it takes you to throw the enemy. It's easy to accidentally grapple an enemy you unexpectedly stun in a combo, which could be rather frustrating. I'm not sure if this was just user air, but I kept accidentally using the "power dab" (forward heavy attack) while trying to use my neutral heavy attack. It has a very long recovery, so it led to a lot of frustrating damage as well. Running is a double tap, which I had a bit of issues with as well, which could result in mispositioning or using the wrong attack. Not entirely sure if that's on me or if there were some detection issues, but I would have preferred it to be mapped some other way. It's not a big deal, but the accessories in the game were oddly bad as well -- I really don't care about a 5% damage boost against half of the enemies. I'm not going to notice that. None of these issues are huge, but taken together, they noticeably reduced my enjoyment of an otherwise solid beat 'em up combat system.
All that negativity aside, none of those issues really amounted to much in the way of problems for me. I took my time and kept plenty of food around to heal at all times, so I was never really in danger after the beginning sections of the game. I wasn't really here for a challenge, more just to soak up some vibes and beat down some dudes, so I don't think I minded it in the context of this game.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time with the game despite the annoyances with the combat and will likely swing back to River City Girls 2 later this year.
I'm glad I did get around to it, though. I had a great time with the game. I was really surprised by the quality of the presentation -- the animated scenes, character portraits, and manga scenes were all great. I absolutely loved the sound track, both the chiptunes and the vocal tracks. The humor also landed pretty well for me. Not laugh out loud funny, but I was always happy for another story scene.
The overall structure of the game was what I hoped. You have your traditional River City open roam, with levels, money for food that heals and provides stats, plenty of goons to beat up, and weapons to grab as you go. All good stuff.
Unfortunately, there were some misses on the combat for me. It wasn't bad, but there were enough frustrating elements that it degraded the experience a bit. Enemies were pretty tanky and hard to air juggle, so there was a lot of stomping on them while they were on the ground and dodging their counters as they got up. Weapons ended up being a very slow option as well, since they almost always knock the enemy down on a single hit, which doesn't work well with the difficult air juggling. It was easy to accidentally pick up a weapon that an enemy dropped since that action was bound to light attack, so that was a minor annoyance as well. Grappling was mostly just a bad thing -- it provides no I-frames, so you're a sitting duck for the second it takes you to throw the enemy. It's easy to accidentally grapple an enemy you unexpectedly stun in a combo, which could be rather frustrating. I'm not sure if this was just user air, but I kept accidentally using the "power dab" (forward heavy attack) while trying to use my neutral heavy attack. It has a very long recovery, so it led to a lot of frustrating damage as well. Running is a double tap, which I had a bit of issues with as well, which could result in mispositioning or using the wrong attack. Not entirely sure if that's on me or if there were some detection issues, but I would have preferred it to be mapped some other way. It's not a big deal, but the accessories in the game were oddly bad as well -- I really don't care about a 5% damage boost against half of the enemies. I'm not going to notice that. None of these issues are huge, but taken together, they noticeably reduced my enjoyment of an otherwise solid beat 'em up combat system.
All that negativity aside, none of those issues really amounted to much in the way of problems for me. I took my time and kept plenty of food around to heal at all times, so I was never really in danger after the beginning sections of the game. I wasn't really here for a challenge, more just to soak up some vibes and beat down some dudes, so I don't think I minded it in the context of this game.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time with the game despite the annoyances with the combat and will likely swing back to River City Girls 2 later this year.