• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

Discussion River City Girls is the next NSO trial game. From December 6th to December 12th

Reinhard Schneider

Forgotten vampire hunter
Pronouns
He/Him
I'm surprised to not find any thread about it, but oh well.

As the title says, next NSO trial game at least here in EU is River City Girls, Wayforward's brawler in the universe of Kunio-kun that was a smash hit on release and is receiving its prequel next year. The game is also on sale until December 12th.

 
Insanely fun co-op game. Hope as many people as possible are able to play it that way.
 
0
It’d be pretty awesome if this coincides with a surprise patch to backport online play
 
0
Okay wait help me out, I've never done a game trial before, how do I do it? Where's the button for it?
 
It’ll show up in the NSO menu and let you download it. Then it’ll check and see if it’s live. Does require internet
Gotcha thanks, I'll just.. keep checking, I guess. 😅

All my NSO menu shows right now is all the different icon rewards, and a reminder that Pokemon and Switch Sports are out. 🤷‍♂️
 
0
Nice, good way to hype the sequel, and looking at the eshop it seems they put it for dec 15th (but it could be only a placeholder) so it makes sense

Now that’s an excellent way to drum up interest for the sequel, even if you can’t play it online unlike the sequel
Funny thing currently RCG2 doesn't have online play, guess that's the reason they delay it for the west
 
Nice catch! Yea that would be a major downer considering it’s been a headlining feature for the sequel.
Also the game has TONS of bugs and softlocks, but still decided to go for the asian release. I guess they had contractual issues with arcsys as they publish it over there, but clearly there is going to be a patch before the western release
 
0
This game sold me on the start menu and then slowly unsold me as the actual game commenced. I'd say it's the typical Wayforward experience of charming presentation holding up so-so gameplay, but even the charm is a mixed bag here with River City Girl's portrayal of its characters.
 
This game sold me on the start menu and then slowly unsold me as the actual game commenced. I'd say it's the typical Wayforward experience of charming presentation holding up so-so gameplay, but even the charm is a mixed bag here with River City Girl's portrayal of its characters.
FYI both the characterization and most of the gameplay structure are all carryovers from the OG Kunio series. They’re just being loyal to the source
 
Finished the first boss fight. Very classic beat em up with some expansions to the formula eg equippable items. Agreeing with @Sheldon that the presentation is carrying the game, but it’s not like the gameplay is clunky or anything.
 
Finished the first boss fight. Very classic beat em up with some expansions to the formula eg equippable items. Agreeing with @Sheldon that the presentation is carrying the game, but it’s not like the gameplay is clunky or anything.

Not clunky exactly, except for the double tap run. Double tap to run isn't smooth. If I was playing this with a buddy on the couch, you'd hear no complaints from me, but the map, items and customization made me hope for something deeper from the solo experience, which, for all its little extra systems, isn't amounting to much so far. I'm still waiting for the enemies to get interesting or for more fun attack options to open up.
 
Well at least it's not costing me anything to find out that I suck at River City games. 😳
 
Double tap to run isn't smooth.
Oh good I thought I was the only one. Wasn’t sure because my controllers sometimes bork out.

map, items and customization made me hope for something deeper from the solo experience, which, for all its systems, isn't amounting to much so far
I see! Guess I’ll see how my impressions change when I get to play more later in the evening
 
. Played until the first boss with the fat shaming.
. Also love being unable to grab a weapon fast enough to not get combo’ed by ennemies.
. I don’t know if this is character specific or something to learn with level up or at a store, but not being able to do a sprint + kick is pretty weird.
. Urgh, the tutorial popups…
 
I was coming to post something by the style of the other posts. I LOVE Kunio/River City Ransom/Street gangs and i found myself not... being exactly a fan of this.

It keeps the humor and general tone of RCR, but the game doesn't feel smooth or snappy, and found myself annoyed more times than i'd like to.

Also
. I don’t know if this is character specific or something to learn with level up or at a store, but not being able to do a sprint + kick is pretty weird.
Holy shit this. Why does this happen!?

I was ready to buy the game, but backed off big time. I'll keep playing, but it lost all the appeal it had to me aside of the art.
 
Played some more and the small annoyances kept piling up.

Like the finickiness of the stomp.

Like how none of the characters are likeable or unlikeable in a funny way.

Like the fact that picking up a weapon opens you up to enemy attacks, and it shares a button with the fast combo, and also rooms may have foreground elements obscuring the floor so you can't see where an item dropped.

Like it being a negative to buy certain moves. Picking up enemies is fun but now everytime I'm surrounded by knocked down foes I lose access to my quick attack.

Like all enemies being pretty basic with a 1 frame attack, so I'm fighting the same way no matter what group is on screen.

Like the decision to have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen in a brawler for the cinematic feel AND have bosses with projectiles that fly off screen and back in, giving you less time to see them and react to them.

I made it to the third boss and I think this is where I'm gonna call it quits. I switched around between the two main characters, so both seem underleveled for this point of the game and I'm doing little damage to a boss with already frustratingly few vulnerability windows and a long health bar.

On the bright side: I got to line up half a dozen stunned enemies and then poisonrana them one by one. That was awesome.
 
Last edited:
I could play for just 15 minutes. It doesn't feel responsive or good to control... coming from Streets of Rage 4 or TMNT this one is clearly worse.
 
Played some more and the small annoyances kept piling up.

Like the finickiness of the stomp.

Like how none of the characters are likeable or unlikeable in a funny way.

Like the fact that picking up a weapon opens you up to enemy attacks, and it shares a button with the fast combo, and also rooms may have foreground elements obscuring the floor so you can't see where an item dropped.

Like it being a negative to buy certain moves. Picking up enemies is fun but now everytime I'm surrounded by knocked down foes I lose access to my quick attack.

Like all enemies being pretty basic with a 1 frame attack, so I'm fighting the same way no matter what group is on screen.

Like the decision to have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen in a brawler for the cinematic feel AND have bosses with projectiles that fly off screen and back in, giving you less time to see them and react to them.

I made it to the third boss and I think this is where I'm gonna call it quits. I switched around between the two main characters, so both seem underleveled for this point of the game and I'm doing little damage to a boss with already frustratingly few vulnerability windows and a long health bar.

On the bright side: I got to line up half a dozen stunned enemies and then poisonrana them one by one. That was awesome.

I could play for just 15 minutes. It doesn't feel responsive or good to control... coming from Streets of Rage 4 or TMNT this one is clearly worse.
For better or worst, in the end this is is based on the Kunio jankiness if it can be called that way, which it veeeery different from the konami / Sega beatem ups era.
 
It's a pretty terrible game! The air stomp is so inconsistent that they might as well not have put it into the game.

RCRampage didn't feel this jank, I don't think.

Maybe I just played too much Turtles in Time before this and I'm being a bit unfair, but noooooo thank you for me.
 
For better or worst, in the end this is is based on the Kunio jankiness if it can be called that way, which it veeeery different from the konami / Sega beatem ups era.

I'm glad you say that because I was honestly questioning myself whether I misremembered how tight those older beat em ups felt compared to how unresponsive to my controller input this game behaves when it comes movement and blocks or some seemingly inconsistent hit boxes.

I'd still recommend this to friends looking for a cheap fun co-op title because I think half the issues that bother me wouldn't be noticed in 2 player mode, let alone alone bring down the mood.
 
Last edited:
I'm glad you say that because I was honestly questioning myself whether I misremembered how tight those older beat em ups felt compared to how unresponsive to my controller input this game feels with movement and blocks or some seemingly inconsistent hit boxes.
No, it's not you. This also happens in River City Saga 3 kingdoms, which is the most "modern" kunio game with the same style: opening yourself to attacks when picking weapons, not having a ground recovery move, inputs having some delay time because animations, blocking being not that reliable. That's how Kunio games works, so it's really a matter of personal taste.

Even the black bar was there (thouh only in the bottom)

CrwKyDJ.jpg
 
That ... is the most baffling choice.

I'm almost forced to give River City Girls props for finding a way to pay tribute to this quirk while making something approaching sense of it.
Yeah, I think they did a good job to modernize the look while keeping the Kunio spirit in the gameplay... the main issue being that the kunio gameplay was never on par with other beatemups. Not going to say its bad, but rather it expects you to adapt to its quirks. But once you get them you become a beast:
 
Yeah, I think they did a good job to modernize the look while keeping the Kunio spirit in the gameplay... the main issue being that the kunio gameplay was never on par with other beatemups. Not going to say its bad, but rather it expects you to adapt to its quirks. But once you get them you become a beast:

jesus
Like I said, I suck at River City games 🤣
 
0
So I figured out what my problem was.

I was leveling up, but not eating food. And since enemies scale with your level and you're meant to eat food to gain more stuff like attack and health points, I was going into boss fights with woefully inadequate stats. I was spending like a half hour on each boss, dieing I dunno how many times each, getting frustrated to the point where I thought I wouldn't be able to progress, then literally having my hands hurt by the end and calling it a night. And then I looked up some guides, saw the thing about food, went on a shopping/eating spree, and beat the next boss in one damn try. And every fight after that felt much better. The sluggish movement that was bothering me was even fixed, as the problem with that was I had a garbage agility stat. Because I wasn't eating.

So I finally got to a point where I can enjoy the game, and might even get the sequel one of these days.

"I found this shirt at a bus stop"

Misako won me over, sorry Kyoko
"I got expelled for stealing basketball hoops!"

Kyoko all the way 🤘
 
I'm team Kyoko too. I'm always partial to kick chicks (or dudes).
Same
Well now I've googled what food does and what the FRACK. I just beat the game and those boss fights wouldn't have lasted an hour if I'd bothered to change up Kyoko's diet!
I'm actually surprised it isn't stated more up-front in the game. The food is expensive early on so I didn't wanna blow all my money on it and it doesn't tell you what it does until you eat it, and even then it only tells you how much health it replenishes, not what stat boosts it gives you upon first consumption. It's like it's a special secret but then it's almost required to progress..?
 
I'm actually surprised it isn't stated more up-front in the game. The food is expensive early on so I didn't wanna blow all my money on it and it doesn't tell you what it does until you eat it, and even then it only tells you how much health it replenishes, not what stat boosts it gives you upon first consumption. It's like it's a special secret but then it's almost required to progress..?
There's probably an assumption by the devs (either Arc or Wayforward) that people picking this up are somewhat familiar with the River City Ransom mechanics, but that's not really a reason to not put some sort of tutorial or hint of some sort that food = stats.

It's genuinely kinda surprising that River City, SaGa, and The World Ends With You are some of the only franchises that derive stat growth from eating. Or at least ones that I'm familiar with. You'd think by now there'd be more games with it.
 
I'm actually surprised it isn't stated more up-front in the game
Especially since the tutorials in the beginning are kind of excessive already, so I don’t see why they don’t put in an explanation for how the food works.

The food is expensive early on so I didn't wanna blow all my money on it
Exactly! I prioritized buying gear/moves, and I always made sure I didn’t have a lot of money when I was about to take on a boss. So I didn’t buy any food until after like the 4th boss when I was having difficulty finding stuff to buy so I figured might as well spam healing items.
 
Exactly! I prioritized buying gear/moves, and I always made sure I didn’t have a lot of money when I was about to take on a boss. So I didn’t buy any food until after like the 4th boss when I was having difficulty finding stuff to buy so I figured might as well spam healing items.
Platinum fan detected I think? 😂

Honestly that's basically how I played Bayonetta 1 & 2. I think going from Platinum / "character action" games to Kunio would require a little bit of an adjustment since there's enough shared language, but Kunio (or at least the River City subseries) leans more into the RPG side of things.
 
Same

I'm actually surprised it isn't stated more up-front in the game. The food is expensive early on so I didn't wanna blow all my money on it and it doesn't tell you what it does until you eat it, and even then it only tells you how much health it replenishes, not what stat boosts it gives you upon first consumption. It's like it's a special secret but then it's almost required to progress..?
They actually corrected this in 2, now when you go to a store it tells you what stat and how much you gain from it
 


Back
Top Bottom