River City Girls 1-2 is part of the ever-expandingRiver City franchise. It is one of the many fighting game series from Arc Systems Works.It focuses on the girlfriends of the main characters going on a series of misadventures to stop the Yakuza in the ultraviolent world of River City.In the first game Kyoko and Misako must defeat Yakuza gangsters who have kidnapped their boyfriends. The second game starts immediately after the events of the first game where the girls are expelled from their school after it is taken over by the Yakuza.
Two new characters are added. Provie is a street performer looking for her friend, and Marion is a character from the Double Dragon series.River CityGirls 2 has a more acrobatic based combat where attacking and forming combos in the air is more so encouraged.The game can be played in co-op mode.
Combat wise,it’s beat em up mixed with RPG elements and you can unlock and explore more areas as you progress through the game, and you can fast travel to certain locations. There is a varied collection of enemies and a larger world to explore.You can purchase accessories designed to aid you in combat. Sometimes you have to defeat waves of enemies before you can progress through the game.
The graphics and artstyle in the game are really good and the animated cutscenes are enough for it to have a potential for full anime adaptation because it was just so well done.The pixel animation too was superb.The music too was also really good and very enjoyable. The atmosphere is pretty cheery and lighthearted in spite of the ultraviolent setting of River City.None of the characters, are really that likable as time goes by you really start to see more of their true colors. since they come across as just really tropey even by fighting game standards.
In River City Girls 1, as you progress through the game, you see that lot of it is just a mess caused by misunderstandings duefight first ask questions later. The ending was just confusing and messy. Thankfully though, there is another ending you can unlock after defeating a hidden boss that gives a much more satisfactory outcome compared to the original one.
You can unlock other characters to play as depending on certain things you do in the game, in addition you can sometimes recruit people who you fought with to assist you in battle, and the second game introduces a partner you can hire to help you out in combat.
The voice acting was serviceable enough especially considering how purposefully bad, the dialogue is.You can learn various moves as you progress through the game be it by purchasing them at the dojo to leveling up.There are minigames you can take part in too.Loiter mode and new game plus give the game some more replay value.In addition,purchasing food items, can also boost your stats to help you during combat.
Both games have shortcomings. The platforming can be pretty awkward especially in one section in the game where you had to sneak to get a security guard’s key and one slight misstep means you have to re-do the whole thing again and again till you get it and that was one of the many instances of unnecessary padding and filler to hinder your progress in the game.Some boss fights are huge disorganized mess. While they do have some creative merit, at the same time dodging projectiles and running across the place can be really annoying when you’re trying to focus on defeating the boss.If you stay in a certain place for a while, don’t focus on defeating enemies that respawn as often, they don’t carry any xp and they only have the lowest amount of money available too.
The Switch version which I played felt kind of stiff in certain areas.
Overall it was a pretty good beat em up game.
It gets 4 out of 5 stars.