Thanks to Wayforward for the review code
Title: River City Girls 2
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $29.99
Release Date: 12/01/2022
Story
Taking place right after the original game, Sabuko tells her father about her defeat at the hands of Misako and Kyoko, and Sabu goes on a quest for revenge by taking over the city! It’s now up to the girls, Riki and Kunio, and two former adversaries to team up in order to reclaim their turf.
Plotwise, the game continues the zany style of humor found in the original game, while continuing to have fun references to prior River City titles and Double Dragon Neon. It doesn’t do anything too extreme or outlandish, and the self aware humor is definitely not for everyone, but I enjoyed the plot well enough during my time with the game.
Presentation
Just like the first game, RCG2 uses a very expressive pixel art style that feels like a natural evolution of the Kunio formula from the NES era. A lot of the returning sprites are similar to that from the first game, but plenty of new moves and animations have been added, along with a bunch of new characters, backgrounds and other new aspects with their own sprites, and they blend in perfectly. The UI is also really snappy and the phone theme works a lot better than it did last time.
Sadly the performance here isn’t quite up to par, and at launch when I played this in co-op with a friend, it was pretty bumpy being around 30FPS with dips. Being a Switch port, this wasn’t too unsurprising, but this was apparently the case on other consoles for a while as well, and over the last year Wayforward added several patches to smoothen some things out. Now while the game still targets 30 on Switch, I found it to be a lot more tolerable and when playing solo off and on for the past month via my Lite, the pixels looked great on switch and the game ran fine enough for me. Still not as good as the first game was outta the gate in this regard, but decent enough considering the bigger scope of RCG2’s maps.
The music also continues to be typical for the series. Megan returns with more vocal songs and a lot more rad instrumental tracks, and this OST I liked quite a lot more than the first game, even! The boss themes in particular were much stronger and the town tracks are good enough that I didn’t mind hearing them loop a ton during my travels. Yet again we have a lot of great voice acting and funny dialogue as well, and this time we even have Japanese voices, which was also added to RCG1 via a patch. I prefer the English VA here due to that being the voice track the game was meant for, but both are fairly well acted.
Gameplay
Unlike the first RCG, which was a pretty linear affair and simple Point A to B belt scrolling action, RCG2 opens the world up a lot more and has more to do, even though your main goal in the story is still focused on getting to the next boss and hunting down the Yakuza. You start with the main two girls, along with Kunio or Riki being playable, and eventually unlock two more characters later in the story, all with their own movesets. There are also several difficulty options, along with a friendly fire toggle, making this game pretty approachable depending on who you want to play with, and it also helps that dying just takes you back to the start of the screen upon continuing, so you can usually just keep trying before you get unstuck from a situation. Likewise, items are available to purchase to help heal your characters in a pinch.
Just like RCG1, the controls are pretty typical belt scroller ones, with each character continuing to have their level up path, so at the end of the day who you wish to main will depend on which character has a move you like the most. (or one you’re willing to take to the Dojo and purchase their special moves for, since every character has at least one move worth learning from there) Regardless of who you pick though, the story scenes still primarily focus on the two girls and the newer unlockable characters, which was a bit disappointing since I would have really found it funny if the scenes changed depending on if you were playing as Kunio or Riki, or doing 4P Co-Op in general.
Speaking of areas, this is one aspect where I vastly prefer RCG2’s approach over the first game. While there was still a map and general idea on where to go in the original game, the RCG2 map is just a lot easier to bring up, read, and navigate, which is way more helpful considering how much bigger the city is this time around. There are several bus stations to fast travel you between parts of the city, which also helps to cut back on the tedium of traveling between areas. (Though some games between stations can be a little annoying to go back and forth between)
The areas here are a lot more memorable and fun compared to some from the first game, and a lot of them even have cute nods to pre-RCG Kunio games, and Technos as a whole, which was cute to see. All of the post launch RCG1 QOL features are also here from the getgo, with the biggest for me being the fact that hitting the Y button while over an entrance no longer makes you enter it, as now you have to hold the button down before the transition begins, making the flow of combat uninterrupted near entrances and no longer making them a dangerous spot to fight around.
So, the combat is fun, the town is more interesting to explore (if a little overwhelming at times), and the sidequests are a fun diversion that are better than the last game’s, so what is there to drag this game down? Well, for me that would be the minigames. Every now and then the game will throw a minigame at ya in order to shake things up a bit, and none of them really clicked with me and felt like pace breakers. You have a dull dodge ball game that makes me wish I was playing Super Dodge Ball instead, a dancing minigame that’s a cute idea but little else, and some others I didn’t have much interest in getting to.
There’s also quite a few mandatory fetch quests in RCG2 as well, akin to how the first had a couple at times, and while the quality of the combat means you’ll at least be doing something entertaining as you go hunt something down, I was way more engaged in the game when it was just pure combat and dealing with waves of enemies, since that was what the first game was best at and RCG2 refines it even more, especially with weapons aplenty and four player co-op as an option here. Unlike moments in the first RCG where I felt annoyed at some encounters the game threw at me, here in RCG2, the combat improvements made them a lot more exciting, and way less repetitive, which is why it was a bummer to have some of these minigames and fetch quest missions break the flow I was vibing with here.
Conclusion
In the end, River City Girls 2 continues what made the first game such a fun refresh in the Kunio series, but doesn’t do much else to add onto it besides a decent bit of polish and making the world a lot bigger. Four player co-op and more characters are great additions, and the pacing of the game is a little bit better than the original, but otherwise RCG2 can be a bit tedious at points, and like before is a lot more fun with friends around. The performance on this Switch version, while way better than when it first launched, is still not as smooth as it should have been, and the loading times are especially annoying, though also better than they were at launch. (The initial load to start the game up is still horrible, however)
It also doesn’t help that the controls feel a touch sluggish too, but the fun combat helps to keep my mind away from that aspect and I managed to enjoy my time post-patch a lot more than pre-patch, even though I’d definitely like to pick this one up and finish it to the very end on another platform, solely due to how much better loading would speed up those slower backtracking moments.
All in all, River City Girls 2 is a fine sequel and a good time with friends, but don’t expect it to reinvent the wheel or be as much of a fresh surprise as the first game, and be wary of the game’s loading times here on Switch, even with the updates. If you liked the first RCG and wanted more of it, then this sequel does just as it was supposed to and is a lot more open, but if you hoped this would get the Mega Man 2 treatment and perfect everything the first game did and then some with so many new ideas, then alas, RCG2 isn’t quite there, though the combat improvements at least help it move in the right direction.
I give River City Girls 2 a 7 out of 10.