RIVER CITY GIRLS 2 Is An Amazing Sequel To A Great Game
The team at WayForward has really hit it out of the park with their River City Girls games. The original quickly became one of my favorite games for its fun writing, phenomenal voice work, great music, and just pure fun as a beat ‘em up game. The follow up, River City Girls 2, has really delivered and maintained the high standards already set up in the first game. The sequel has been able to really build on what has already made the first game great while adding to the fun by allowing more people to join in the action.
First the writing. The games have always had a really fun sense of humor that breaks the fourth wall just enough to be funny without overdoing it. This has kept that up and has really been improved with the introduction of more playable characters. Not only do we have the always great banter of Misako and Kyoko, but now with Riki, Kunio, Provie, and Marian there are just even more personalities to work with.
Speaking of more characters, the voice work for everyone is still great. Misako and Kyoko still remain my favorite characters, but I love how good everyone sounds. Nobody just phoned it in for their performance and it really shows. Playing a game like this with such good voicing really makes me wish that more games could have talent like this. Something else that is fun is that the main theme has Kyoko and Misako speak on it, but neither of their voice actors sing on it. Cristina Vee and composer Megan McDuffee are the singers on the track but they do such good impressions of the characters that I thought it was actually them in those speaking moments. It really goes to show the level of talent they got for all aspects of the game.
The music for this game really blows me away. McDuffee once again has proven herself to be a perfect match for this game series. The blending of various genres and featuring different artists really makes the soundtrack dynamic. It does such a good job at blending into the background of the game while you’re playing but still sounds great when you do stop and pay attention to it. It just does a really good job at blending in those old school soundtrack sounds with modern music. I like it outside the game too, give it a listen next time you need some upbeat background music while working.
Now for the nitty gritty, how the game actually plays. The answer is really well. The moves between characters are similar enough that changing isn’t a huge task while each one is still pretty unique. By that, I mean the move combos are executed in a similar button sequence with each character getting some unique special moves and combos. Though the execution of the main attacks is similar, they look really different between characters. The team did a good job at making each character feel distinct even though they arguably have similar fighting styles. Misako and Marian for example both fight using fists, but Marian has some bigger hits and is slower than Misako. One of my only hang ups is really that parrying feels quite difficult to pull off, but I’ll admit this could definitely be a personal problem of mine. There are also a few sections where you do something other than fight, for example you have to get a high score on a dance machine. These little moments help break up the action without being too cumbersome or annoying.
The game has a new hideout feature which is really nice. Each map has a different hideout that will allow you to change characters, heal up, and adjust your friendly fire setting. You can also choose to respawn at your hideout for no money loss when you are defeated which is always a nice option. The hideouts also tend to be close to bus stops so traveling distances from them is made easier.
I think one of the only things I didn’t love was the Honkr feature. Don’t get me wrong, it is a ton of fun having a Twitter like app on the phone, but the important notifications would pop up on screen during gameplay and if you were fighting enemies could easily get lost in the shuffle. My personal preference would just be to have main story objective honks pause the game automatically to let you read them. The reason this doesn’t lower my opinion of the game is that it is purely personal preference, you can easily pause the game and go in and read them all yourself just for me sometimes the important ones would get lost in the shuffle so to speak.
Overall, I had a ton of fun with this game. If you like a good, challenging beat ‘em up game then this is definitely one worth checking out. Some of the boss fights are insane but so satisfying when you finally win. And you can have up to four people play which is always a plus. I give this game a 10/10. You can find the game on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
