What's the Greatest Video Game: River City Girls

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I am a big fan of River City Ransom (see here), but outside of that game, the other games in the universe just haven't grabbed me in quite the same way. Granted I have not played all of the games in that universe, but I have tried those that are available and the magic is missing. So, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that River City Girls was considered a good game and one that hopefully would not just make me nostalgic for the ole NES version.

River City Girls is a beat-em up, but instead of just moving from left to right, you navigate an entire map as you look to find out what happened to your boyfriends whom you believe were kidnapped. You can play as either Misako and/or Kyoko as you take up this task going through the city of River City punching everyone in the face that might get in your way. It has co-op play, so you can go through the world fighting side by side, or as a single player you can switch characters each time you load your save in case you want to try out each fighter.

There is a lot to like when we compare RCG to RCR. There is the obvious fact that this game just looks really great in comparison, and while the style is different I still felt it belonged in the same universe. The characters are charming, the dialogue is actually funny, and the plot while when looked at it from afar can seem pretty rote (girls look for boyfriends), the beat to beat is enjoyable as you accuse nearly everyone as stealing your boyfriends. It is very obviously a switch from RCR where it is dudes looking for their girlfriends, but I think it plays on that story just enough to make the story interesting. Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to be a video game story that you pass down to your kids for generations to come, but I found it enjoyable. This is doubly so, if you, (like I do), choose to believe that the canonical ending is not the "true ending" but rather the ending you get should you choose to not break every statue. No spoilers here, but I think that ending is far superior than the 100% ending.

Now I wouldn't be doing the game justice if I didn't talk about the combat. Gone are the days of two button fighting, with feet and hands regulated to different buttons. Instead we get a more nuanced fighting system complete with combos, aerial attacks, and specials. Each girl has their own unique moveset, and while they start off fairly basic, you can eventually buy special moves from the dojo. Special moves in this game are regulated to an energy bar that fills up when you fight without using specials, from there you can press the special attack button (perhaps with a direction) and attack for more damage or hit a wider range of enemies. Some moves are callbacks to RCR like Stone Hands for Misako, which causes here to do a 3 punch combo using the special that knocks enemies back. It's not quite the same as a rapid fire attack in RCR, but I appreciate the callback nonetheless.

Depending on how you spend your money, it is very likely that you will be able to purchase all the moves prior to completing the game, which means you will have a full arsenal that allows you to really decimate the regular enemies. My favorite combo, which was hard for me to pull off, was a dropkick to an enemy against a wall causing them to bounce in the air, and then I would grab them out of midair and powerbomb them to the ground. It was incredibly satisfying to pull off and netted big damage when I managed to do it. Outside of some bosses, there actually isn't a huge need to use specials that often. For the beginning 30-50% of the game you can manage just fine with a regular combo of mixing your weak and strong attack buttons. Since Specials are purchased at stores, and it is always possible you can't afford or miss the dojo, the game seemed relatively balanced that you might not need them at all.

In addition to just purchasing new moves, you do have a regular XP gauge that you can fill up and level up which grants you some small stat upgrades, full health, and occasionally a new move as well. It gives you a reason to actually fight the generic waves of enemies early on. I don't think I ever hit a hard level cap, but I did reach a point where it was less advantageous for me to fight generic enemies when i was saving my health and time for future boss fights.

There are a couple things that I felt they adjusted for this game that I just didn't vibe with. For instance there is equipment that you can give to your character. At any time your character can equip two different pieces of equipment that was either purchased at a store or given for the completion of a mission/boss fight/etc. The equipment is fairly useless unless you are willing to constantly swap it out on nearly every screen. For instance some bonuses are based on if you are fighting when certain songs are playing in the background, doing 2% more damage to a certain gender, or potentially getting double money drops from enemies. There is a whole mess of them, and I obviously won't discuss them all, but I rarely found a piece of equipment that I felt was that useful. Sure doing more damage is always a plus, but an extra 2% is pretty minimal, and double loot is nice, except that when I got that item I already had bought all of the expensive items in the game. Granted this is pretty minor and after equipping your first two items you probably don't ever need to revisit.

Outside of equipment, all items purchased at shops refill your health X%. Gone are the days where you might buy something that raises your punching or kicking damage. Sure, there are some items that might increase strength by 1, but you aren't really buying items to mold the character into a unique powerhouse like in RCR. While I did appreciate the change where after you use an item for the first time, you now know what it does at the shops so you can buy it again without seeing a bunch of ????s telling you its use, but when everything just tells you it refills health X% it kinda takes the fun out of the shops. Now I'll be fair, one of my critiques about RCR was blind buying items (assuming you aren't playing with a guide) and then having to mentally note down what each did for you, so that you don't keep buying items that you don't want. This rectifies half of that issue, but it also makes all items fairly the same. In a casual playthrough, you aren't paying $100 an item for 70% health refill when you can pay $30 an item for 45% health refill. The benefits the $100 one MIGHT have is that it increase strength by one, but it doesn't actually appear as part of the description so you will just have to remember using it prior and seeing if that was the same effect.

My final gripe with the game is that I felt the actual weapons you could pick up were not nearly as useful as just your combos. Weapons might deal more damage, but not only do they break upon use, but there is only one attack animation for the weapon and it immediately knocks down your enemy so there is no combo you can use for massive damage. It might kill an enemy in three hits, but you might be taking longer simply waiting for the enemy to get up over and over before they finally drop their goods.

What I find very strange is that you can earn two more playable characters upon completion of the game, but I guess I don't see a reason to replay the game from scratch. While it's no long RPG that is going to take you days to beat, the game is around 10 hours and outside of seeing new moves, I don't know what is worth replaying.

Overall I enjoyed my time with River City Girls, and while I can say the game has improvements over its predecessor, I don't think it ranks really that much higher. Its hard to ignore RCR being a classic, and I can see this games humor not landing for a fairly big selection of people, but overall its a good game. The one thing I didn't feel while playing RCG is overpowered. In RCR if you spend enough time honing your stats, buying books to learn moves, you can potentially feel like a street-fighting god, but I never got that in RCG. I think that has to do with special moves costing something (unlike RCR), but even still I never felt that I was mopping the floor with anyone.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: Not today

Where does it rank: Its a good game, and a fun beat-em up, but I think it falls really close to the original RCR. Its certainly better overall, but does miss a few things that I enjoyed the original had that this game doesn't. I have River City Girls ranked as the 22nd greatest game of all time. It sits between Mirrors Edge Catalyst (23rd) and Legend of Zelda (21st). For comparison sake I have River City Ransom at the 24th Greatest game of all time.

Up Next: Mutant League Football (Ps4)

*For those people who may have grown frustrated that it seems I am only playing Switch and PS4 games at the moment. I am currently fixing up my game room so I can hook up more non HDMI systems and play those more regularly. However, as of now if I want to play an old system I have to route it through my computer and thats just a lot of hassle. When Everything is set up I will probably go on a binge of retro games. (I'm also still spinning to see what games I play)*

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for Listening.

22nd seems like a decent spot for this game, I enjoyed it. It ranks high on my beat em up list.

@wmoyer83: thanks for the read. I think the only beat-em up I (currently) have higher is Turtles in time. It was a really fun game, but I do wonder if it will have the staying (replayable) power Ransom and Turtles have.

@imunbeatable80: Do you have a list somewhere that we can see at any time the current rankings?

The music in this game is incredible. It stands out massively, second only to Scott Pilgrim in the genre.

I made a huge mistake by picking the cheerleader instead of the girl with the wrestling moves. Don't make my mistake if you play this.

@ginormous76: I do indeed it should be the last link in my write-up (final paragraph). There are a couple different tabs on there, but one of the tabs is the complete listing, with links to every game I have written about. Here is another Link

@alistercat: I played as Misako as I also think she has the cooler personality, but from what I saw, it doesn't seem like the cheerleaders moves are that terrible, but I could be wrong.

@ginormous76: I know notifications were broken when I commented initially, but if your interested above is a link to the full list.

@alistercat: Honestly from what I remember most of her wrestling moves were kinda shit? I definitely preffered the other character more.