RIVER CITY GIRLS ZERO Review: Punching Down The Truth

Nintendo Switch Review Code Provided by WayForward

Rebuilding a classic title from the ‘90s so it can be available on modern consoles, all while creating new games for the series, is always a great move for fans of the original game. WayForward and Arc System Works have been building up the River City Girls series by releasing their first game on modern platforms last year and setting up River City Girls 2 to these platforms as well.

While working on these series continuation titles, they also ported River City Girls Zero to the Nintendo Switch and are just about to launch on more platforms this month. Originally known as Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka, developed by Almanic and published by Technos Japan Corp, this classic game was a beat ‘em up from 1994 as part of the Kunio-kun game series.

Story

Kunio and Riki are convicted of a hit and run which lands them in a juvenile correction facility as they insist to claim to be innocent. The next morning, they are visited by a friend that informs the pair of a series of suspicious events. These events all seem to take place in and around Nekketsu High School, including sightings of a boy with a strong resemblance to Kunio. Suspecting that they may have been framed for a crime they didn't commit, Kunio and Riki escape from prison and set out to find the person who framed them and clear their names.

Gameplay

As you would expect with most classic titles, the gameplay itself is pretty straightforward. You pick a save file, select a difficulty, and then start up the game. The first screen you’ll see is a list of the controls which include punching, kicking, jumping, jump kicking, blocking, special attacks, and character swapping. You can’t really refer to this in a pause menu so if you forget anything, you can just load up a fresh save file and check the screen again or just simply screenshot the move screen so you have it on hand.

From there, the game is going through a series of dialogue filled moments that show off the attitudes of our main characters and how they fit to the nickname ‘Kunio’ - meaning “hot blood tough guy.” After some dialogue between characters, you’ll learn a bit more of the lore and move a bit further through the story. It is almost always followed up by a series of fighting to get through though, so get ready to put your fists up with each encounter.

Something to point out early on is that there are no healing items. Instead, you have multiple characters that each sport their own health bar. If one character’s health is getting low, you need to switch out to a different character. At the start of the game, there are only two characters, but it isn’t long before their girlfriends join the mix and give you four characters to play as. Of course, the game also has two-player so in that case, you would have two characters for each player. But note, if the character you are actively using is dropped to zero health, that’s a death. For two players, if a player falls to 0, they will be rendered dead and the character they were last using won’t be accessible until the remaining player either defeats the current scene or falls themselves.

The fighting itself is pretty direct and plain, giving only a handful of combo options on a strictly 2D fighting plane. Some enemies will show a variety of different fighting moves, so it is a shame that they didn’t bring that creative mix to the player. But once you get the hang of landing your combo’s, switching through characters, and taking as little damage as possible, you’ll be playing through the game on the Normal difficulty in no time.

It is worth noting that if you beat the game on the Easy difficulty, it will stop you at the end fights when you first approach Ken. From there it will suggest using password 0222 to start at the High School on the Normal difficulty. Of course, thanks to the fact that you can reach just about any point in the game on either difficulty with the right password, you can always look up a way to get to that fight on the Normal difficulty, but I definitely suggest going through a few levels and boss fights prior on Normal difficulty to get some practice in.

Audio and Visual

Even to this day, the 16-bit design is always going to hold its own appeal to it. I will say that even for the time that this game was originally developed, the animations felt rather stiff and short. But I like how they added a variety of options to the screen borders as old games never fit on the new-gen gaming screens and it is nice to have something more aesthetic than the black void on the sides.

Musically speaking, this game has an interesting theme song right there upon loading up. From then on, all the music and sound effects are what you would expect from a pixelated ‘90s game that was originally developed to be played on the SNES. Listening to the retro battle music is quite nostalgic though.

Replayability

This game only takes a little over two hours to beat, so if you enjoyed it then there’s no reason not to replay it. Plus, the added feature of using passwords to get right to the level or boss fight that you want to do again or start from specifically is always nice.

What It Could Have Done Better

Given this is an old game being ported up, there is obviously a ton of stuff that could have been better. That said, it is worth noting that this game is one of the more plain beat ‘em ups with too much direct focus on bee-lining into fights. Opening up the ground to give a more 3D feel, simply by widening the movement space, is an easy way to make the fights more entertaining to get through. Limited direction, limited control, limited space, and limited fighting moves makes for a limiting experience.

Verdict

River City Girls Zero makes for a good base game to build a series out of and I am sure it is going to be improved when made with today’s technological capabilities. It may not be the best classic beat ‘em up and it may feel limiting, but it offers the unique health control style of character swapping and has a good story that is easy to follow with characters that are easy to get behind. I just wish they would have done something about the actual fighting controls during the port. I look forward to the next chapters in this series.

River City Girls Zero is now available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S and coming to PC via Steam on Sept. 22nd.