REVIEW: ‘River City Girls 2’ – Charming With A Few Hickups (XSX)

I have never played the first River City Girls game, so understand that this review has no reference point to either the plot or the gameplay of the first go-around of this beat ’em up. However, my thoughts on Way Forward and Arc System Works’ River City Girls 2 are on its own merits, as Kyoko, Misako, and their respective boyfriends, Riki and Kunio, bound off to save River City, or really, themselves, from the Sanwakai Syndicate.

From the first second you turn on the game, you’ll be graced with three things that tell you exactly what quality and tenor of a game you’re getting into: a dope OVA upon bootup, a strong visual presence, and a ton of attitude. These aesthetic elements are what really make River City Girls 2 shine. For me, starting off like this placed all of the gameplay and plot as instantly secondary to the atmosphere the game was establishing. Likewise, the soundtrack is incredible, with the right cadence for every moment but always completely pumping. The colors are bubblegummy on the outside but fit for the gritty streets of River City on the inside. And even the character designs and animation are all evocative of the same single aesthetic throughline.

River City Girls 2, for the most part, is precisely what you want from a modern beat ’em-up game and then some. The combos flow and the moves look cool, for starters. In addition, the attack patterns are diverse and can really go with the player’s preference, especially if you choose to make one of your two held items boost specific types of attacks attuned to your style. I did find, though, that the blocking mechanic was nearly impossible to use. I could never get the timing right, and mid-combat became useless since enemies needed to finish a combo on you before you could maneuver again.

You can choose from the onset to play as any of the four main characters, each having essentially the same movesets with visual distinctions. Each character levels up separately with some slight rubberbanding, and levels equate to new moves or things unlocking in shops. Each shop, by the way, has a unique owner that oozes personality visually and through their dialogue. Each character’s stats and items are accounted for separately, both needing to be purchased at shops as you play. This essentially locked me into playing as one character the whole time since even if the other characters leveled up slightly over time, they were void of stat increases to power or weapons or stamina and so forth, so their utility was truncated immediately.

Each main character has a distinct personality, and whoever you choose to play as in single player will dominate the dialogue. That every manga-inspired cutscene and mid-game dialogue moment is fully voiced is essential to helping create and maintain the personalities beyond merely relying on visual stereotypes and obvious scripting. All of the dialogue feels just a level above the standard action-game affair.

The world is also enormous. As you play River City Girls 2, you move across stages left to right beating up enemies like in any other beat ’em up, but you do so at your own will across a giant map where every stage is connected to another. When you enter a location, there is a set number of enemies, and when they’re waylayed, you’re free to move around for a time until more spawn. Each stage might have several weapons to pick up and carry around until they break or you lose them, shops to buy healing/stat items or held items in, and plenty of personality with stage hazards and background characters and art. Every zone is distinct, too, creating the natural feeling of a whole city to be explored as you complete your main quest and find side missions with frequency. I only wish that the game didn’t take so unreasonably long to load between screens.

I did find the menu system just a little irksome. For example, if you open the map from the main menu, you can’t return directly to the main menu; you have to close the map and reopen the menu to navigate your items, mission logs, and other apps in the smartphone-inspired menu system. I also appreciate that there is a move list of sorts to keep track of what new moves you unlock and how to execute them. Still, because there is neither a visual cue on what they look like nor enough clarity on how to distinguish the starting position for certain moves against each other, I found myself unable to ascertain certain maneuvers for long periods, if at all—especially grabbing enemies.

And speaking of enemies, this game is full of them. There are many unique foes to face throughout the streets, not to mention that they all come in multiple color palettes. Sometimes, if you’re patient, you can even get a sense of their distinct movesets. But unfortunately, most of the time, I either initiated combat too quickly for them to pull off their special moves, or they just didn’t use them with enough regularity. So ultimately, most of the differences between enemies came down to aesthetics and health rather than a need to approach them differently, which was disappointing. However, you can at least get a sense of their capacities if you’re lucky enough to have them beg for your mercy and choose to recruit them. Every enemy is recruitable and can be set to one trigger or the other as an assist.

River City Girls 2 is a solid beat ’em up on account of both its aesthetic and its gameplay. While it’s hampered by some elements of its combat not being as clear or precise as I’d hoped, the overall atmosphere and experience of playing the game are quite fun.

River City Girls 2 is available now on Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Nintendo Switch.